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French Doctors to Perform Zero-Gravity Surgery
STFS writes "NewScientistSpace has a story about a team of French doctors who will attempt the worlds first zero-gravity operation on a human aboard an Airbus A300 dubbed "Zero-G". The patient, according to forbes.com, was chosen because of his experience with 'dramatic gravitational shifts' as an avid bungee-jumper. The operation will serve as a test for performing surgery in space."
I am a doctor, and this is the worst type of medicine: publicity medicine. The goal is to get on the news rather than patient care. If these guys really wanted to experiment (and it is an experiment) with low-gravity surgery they would be doing it on animals long before human trials. With surgery, there are so many complications that cannot be predicted. Who knows how low-gravity affects clotting? Perhaps this guy will have a pulmonary embolus and die... there are a million what if's here that be accounted for and it's irresponsible at the least.
How unethical? How unecessary. If you actually took the time to read the story, you see that the guy is a VOLUNTEER. This type of research, on VOLUNTEERS, is a necessary thing if we are ever going to learn how to perform emergency procedures in microgravity. To compare this to a NAZI death camp is immature, irresponsible, and just plain ignorant.
Probably constant dabbing with sponges or gauze would be useful in stopping the blood from flying away...but keep in mind...the surface tension of blood will keep it sticky to the site of incision, the instruments, and to their gloves. That is of course assuming they don't cut a high pressure spurting artery...then all bets are off. Point is, I don't think this minor surgery will dig that deep.
Having spent a lot of time in microgravity, my main concern would be in keeping the area sterile. Dust, hair, and everything else floats around a lot better in microgravity...and keeping particulate matter out of the incision site is going to be a task. It's hard enough to keep the planes clean of the big dirt from your shoes...it doesn't take much to spread microscopic contaminants