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Mitochondria and the Prevention of Death
H_Fisher writes "Research into mitochondria — small structures within a cell that have their own DNA — suggests that they may be a cause of cellular death, according to Newsweek. The article The Science of Death: Reviving the Dead reports on people who have recovered from sudden death due to cardiac arrest through the use of medically induced hypothermia. The cooling process may help stop the death of brain and heart cells initiated by the mitochondria once they are deprived of oxygen. The article goes on to probe delicately at the question of where a person's personality 'is' between death and later revival, and describes several ongoing scientific studies of near-death experiences."
A person's personality goes off to Digg when they are Mostly Dead.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
While I dont see this as a fountain of youth. This research could be very useful for long distant space travel. Especially as we are pondering going to Mars. I wonder how well this could be coupled with cryogenics.
I don't want to troll, but I prefer not to get my science from MSNBC and other mainstream media sources.
Palpatine: Did you ever hear the Tragedy of Darth Plagueis the Wise?
Anakin Skywalker: No.
Palpatine: I thought not. It's not a story the Jedi would tell you. It's a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midi-chlorians to create life... He had such a knowledge of the dark side he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying.
Anakin Skywalker: He could actually save people from death?
Palpatine: The Dark Side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be... unnatural.
Anakin Skywalker: What happened to him?
Palpatine: He became so powerful the only thing he was afraid of was...losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep. It's ironic; he could save others from death, but not himself.
Anakin Skywalker: Is it possible to learn this power?
Palpatine: Not from a Jedi.
So what they're saying is that the Mitochondria, the organelles that use oxygen to generate ATP (the primary source of chemical energy in your body), cause death when they no longer get oxygen? I hope the Nobel prize committee is listening.
Most importanly, as this article alludes to, this new approach valdiates some of the science surrounding cryonics. As far as I can tell, cryonics is the only possible way for any of us to get our selves and our memories to the distant future where we can live superlong lives, or maybe even forever.
Homo Sapiens Americanus--A documentary in p
Miracle Max: See, there's a big difference between mostly dead, and all dead. Now, mostly dead: he's slightly alive. All dead, well, with all dead, there's usually only one thing that you can do.
Inigo: What's that?
Miracle Max: Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
I used to carry a bottle of whiskey for snake bite. And two snakes. -Nefarious Wheel
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Looking to trade in for a newer girlfriend? Now there's a place!!
Qxe4
I was diagnosed with "sick sinus syndrome." Well, not until I had basically died a few times. The electrical impulses that cause the heart to fire, ceased. I flat-lined, and was essentially "dead." The first few times (twice at home, 2 or 3 times at the hospital) I came back on my own. There was no "where am I?" questions upon regaining consciousness; I knew where I was, and I knew _something_ had happened, but I didn't know what. It wasn't until the last "episode," after they had attached a heart monitor with the little sticky-pads that the doctors actually knew, for sure, that I was flat-lining. They immediately ran a catheter up my groin, into my heart, and attached to an external pace-maker. A day later they implanted a pace-maker. Now, almost three years later, the pace-maker's computer says it has never "paced." In other words, I haven't really needed it. :-/
My point is this: when I was "dead," I never "left my body," I never saw myself and the doctors in the hospital from "above," I never experienced anything. It was like a light-switch was simply flipped. I was just gone. No angels, no bright light, nothing. So. My advice, for what it's worth, is that you should do whatever you need to do. Whatever you need to accomplish. If my experience is any indication, there is no second chance. Do it now. Don't expect anything else after you're gone. When you're gone, you're gone. There appears to be nothing else. And while that may not be what you wanted to hear, that was my reality.
Don't live your life in fear of death, but don't take anything for granted, either. As Warren Zevon said, "enjoy every sandwich."
(Of course, Zevon also said, "I think I made a tactical error by not going to the doctor earlier." So don't do that.)
"I might have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years." -- Warren Zevon
Programmed cell death (apoptosis) is normally considered a good thing. Cell death is the front line against Viruses, toxins, and other pathogens. When a cell is hopelessly invaded it will immediately try to kill itself or be told to kill itself by it's neighbors? Why? Well first single cells by themselves don't have much defense against stuff so when the jig is up there's no point in trying to live on. An inveded cell is a danger to it's neighbors since the virus will use it's machinery to replicate. Thus it's a mutually assured destruction strategy. And the first thing most bugs do on entering a host is attack the signals for apoptosis. Indeed Cancer is dangerous because it's immortal.
Thus it's interesting to find a way to override perhaps the most important response shared by cells in the body.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
> The article goes on to probe delicately at the question of where a person's personality
> 'is' between death and later revival...
Do they also discuss the color of zero or how wide is up?
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Starting with the hypothesis that consciousness is purely a physical thing (i.e. the atoms and electric signals firing in your brain, and there is no soul or wonky business like that)--a hypothesis that I happen to agree with. It is a *profoundly* mysterious question if it would, in fact, be the same "you" inside if your brain were switched off for a while and then turned back on. Suppose in the time you were shut off, it were possible to make an exact copy of yourself, down to the atomic level, and then both copies were turned back on. Which one is "you"? Obviously both of you would think you were the original since you share the exact same memories.
:)
It's one of those questions that seem unanswerable. Personally I feel it has something to do with the continuity of brain activity. You interrupt that, and whatever that "spark" is ceases to be, and if the brain is turned back on, it would be a different "you". Which is why I'd never take a transporter ride and think actual working cryonics would be pointless since I would never experience waking back up, it would be a different consciousness, albeit one that thinks everything went just fine. If ever underwent either, I would assume the "me" that woke back up would have some lingering doubts.
One of the many philosophical papers on this: http://www.benbest.com/philo/doubles.html
I've known that mitochondria cause cell death ever since I played Parasite Eve. Of course, the immediate cause of cell death was the fireball that the 3 tailed rat just threw at you.
But this is precisely what the bible teaches about death. [note: no one is required to read this]
Dead cannot think:
Psalms 146:4 His breath goes forth, he returns to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.
Ecclesiastes 9:5 For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not any thing, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten.
It also says the soul dies at death:
Ezekiel 18:4 Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinning, it shall die.
Romans 5:12 Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.
Therefore the soul cannot think either. Aka no out of body experiences. Please note I'm not discussing heaven etc, just the state of the dead/soul.
Hammer me down mods! [flamesuit="on"]
Some interesting thought experiments regarding consciousness are these:
Suppose that, one day, we develop the technology required to scan and emulate the human brain with total precision. Now, this means that we can shove your head into the scanner, and presto, some amount of time later, we have a computer running a simulation of your brain. It's pretty clear that your consciousness stays in the same place, especially if anesthesia is not required for the scanning process. Yet there is a copy of your brain running on that computer. From its perspective, does it have the same sort of consciousness that you still do?
Suppose that instead of just scanning your brain to make a copy, we instead put you under, scan your brain, start the simulation running, and kill your old body. We wake up your simulated brain. What happens to your consciousness? Have you achieved a mortality unencumbered by the failure of your biological body by doing this? From the perspective of your simulated brain, did you fall asleep and wake up running on the computer? What about from the perspective of your now dead physical body?
Suppose that instead of scanning your brain, we can replace a portion of your brain with equivalent nanotech. For all purposes, this nanotech behaves exactly as your old neurons behave. The nanotech can be implanted gradually, neuron by neuron, on the fly - as each neuron is replaced and killed, the nanotech neuron takes its place and picks up exactly where the old neuron left off. So, we perform this procedure on you, and ultimately, your brain is replaced with its nanotech equivalent. What happens to your consciousness in this process? Is this sort of gradual process necessary for your consciousness to survive the transition from your old wetware to your new hardware?
Is your consciousness an expression of a dynamical state - perhaps even including state variables we haven't detected yet - in your brain that must be preserved in order to survive any such transition, or do your memories suffice to keep your perception of consciousness continuous, even if most of that dynamical state is temporarily lost?
I think I saw this on star trek once...
The Right Reverend K. Reid Wightman,
This is asking the question of where "you" go when the power to your brain is switched off. It seems probable to me that - as neurons and the connections between them are modified, weakened, or strengthened by the signals that pass through them - when power is restored to the brain it has to move through these unique pathways and your consciousness is restarted based on the saved state.
Why did I have the impression this is a well established fact? In addition, mitochondria not signalling the cell to die is the main reason that cancer cells don't die. It's many months now that research into dichloroacetate (DCA), which has been used for other purposes too, causes cancer-cell mitochondria to resume their operation and cause the cells to eventually die. See an example of a similar report.
I speak England very best
Tell you what, get back to me when we figure out how to create an AI capable of passing a Turing Test.
Seriously, this isn't an out of hand dismissal. To say that the brain, or consciousness is somehow like a computer is, to me, more of a stretch than espousing an afterlife, or a soul.
Now I know that slashdot isn't likely to agree with me, and normally I'm loath to invoke a god-of-the-gaps, but if and when the time comes that we can fabricate intelligence in a box, we're going to have some serious rethinking of philosophy to do. Until then, I really do think that the burden to produce evidence lies with the mind-is-a-computer crowd, i.e. to me the mind looks a lot more unlike a computer than like it.
My major concern, how do we know that consciousness as we know it doesn't depend on some yet unknown quantum effects or isn't somehow governed by Godel's incompleteness theorem? In other words, is the brain deterministic? If the brain is deterministic then don't concepts of right and wrong go out the window?