Treating the Dead

FlyByPC writes "According to a NewsWeek article, oxygen deprivation doesn't kill patients as much as the resumption of oxygen does. This discovery could bring about new ways of resuscitating people whose hearts have stopped."

Comments

Makes a little bit of sense. . .

[MagusSlurpy]

I remember reading somewhere in the last few months (possibly here on /.) that the new preferred version of CPR was 10 compressions to one breath, as opposed to the traditional 3. More compressions = less oxygen. . .

Re:I'm continually amazed at

[CastrTroy]

This reminds me of Freezing Frogs. Basically they fill their cells with glucose, and are actually able to freeze themselves for the entire winter and then wake up in the spring. I remember a radio show where they were saying you could freeze them over and over again, without any adverse effects.

This makes sense in a lot of ways.

[Cadallin]

Trying to chill the body of someone in Cardiac arrest, for example, makes perfect sense. People survive hypothermia, even with after they stop breathing and their heart stops beating, remarkably well. I've read about Russians having used this technique during open heart surgery. They lacked machinery like cardiac pumps, so they cooled the patients down and stopped the heart and breathing, while doing the surgery on a bed of ice. It apparently worked far, far better than our technophile medicine in the USA would lead us to believe.

It even makes sense to me why sudden resumption of oxygen should be lethal. Oxygen is extremely toxic and aerobic organism, such as ourselves, had to evolve complex cellular machinery in order to utilize it for metabolic efficiency, while keeping the oxygen from damaging cellular structures, especially DNA. The sudden surge in oxygenated blood would probably overload this system. Apoptosis in this case may be a protective step by killing the cell before its DNA becomes damaged and possibly cancerous. Thus, flooding the heart with oxygen causes the whole heart to "take one for the team," and shut down completely.

The discovery that the cells are still alive, and can be revived with special treatment is extremely encouraging for the development of better techniques.

Re:This was discovered in the US?

[FooAtWFU]

This is one of the big arguments against socialized medicine: since you can make $$$ off medicine, lots of people go into medicine to make $$$ and come up with new and interesting stuff. And this cannot be entirely replaced by government funding. And after the companies have made their billions off the drugs, the patents expire, and after a few decades you've got trillions of dollars worth of medical knowledge that you wouldn't have been able to get otherwise. The cost of this? The poor cannot afford the good medicine.

Other arguments against socialized medicine include: years-long queues for certain sorts of procedures (which aren't strictly Necessary, but may be Incredibly Useful), the sheer cost of paying for it, and a tricky sort of little moral hazard problem with implications against freedom. (Specifically, if the government has to pay for your health care, then a - you're probably less likely to try and take preventative measures to maintain your health since the Government will deal with it and you won't have to pay for it as heavily as you would otherwise; this contributes to a larger problem: b- being unhealthy means more money out of the federal budget, so the government has a big incentive to make unhealthy activity illegals, and the next thing you know, they could be forcing tofu cubes down your throat screaming "it's good for you!!!!!" when all you want is a hamburger, a simple hamburger, for the love of all that is holy - well, figuratively speaking, anyway; you get the idea.)

The unarguable fact that's in support of socialized medicine is "it will make certain peoples' lives better". It will also probably make people's lives worse - rich people, healthy people who pay taxes, and Future people. For typical middle-class people, it's less than clear.