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Suspended Animation In Mice Without Freezing
Predictions Market writes "Low doses of hydrogen sulfide, the toxic gas responsible for the unpleasant odor of rotten eggs, can safely and reversibly depress both metabolism and aspects of cardiovascular function in mice, producing a suspended-animation-like state that does not depend on a reduction in body temperature and include a substantial decrease in heart rate without a drop in blood pressure. The researchers measured factors such as heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature, respiration, and physical activity in normal mice exposed to low-dose (80 ppm) hydrogen sulfide for several hours. In all the mice, metabolic measurements such as consumption of oxygen and production of carbon dioxide dropped in as little as 10 minutes after they began inhaling hydrogen sulfide, remained low as long as the gas was administered, and returned to normal within 30 minutes of the resumption of a normal air supply. 'Producing a reversible hypometabolic state could allow organ function to be preserved when oxygen supply is limited, such as after a traumatic injury,' says the lead author of the study. 'We don't know yet if these results will be transferable to humans, so our next step will be to study the use of hydrogen sulfide in larger mammals.' The full report is available online."
after inhaling hydrogen sulfide for 30 minutes, trust me, you'll wish you were dead.
We can clone mice. We can cure mice cancer. We can put them into suspended animation, allowing them to live on into future generations (meaning they will probably be the first organic space pets). Something tells me that the rats of NIMH are already in the execution phase of some higher level plans with all the work we've managed to accomplish on their genetics.
many things that can save our lives (major surgery, chemotherapy) also leaves us wanting to die. Just because something is horribly painful doesn't mean we should avoid it.
While that's insightful in its own right, from reading the summary, I get the impression that they're not aiming for the kind of suspended animation where you freeze someone for 1000 years and wake them up later. Doing that at room temperature would be kinda dangerous anyway, since if you slowed their immune system 10 times they'll rot alive sooner or later anyway.
I'm getting the impression that this is more for rushing you to a hospital when they picked you up half-dead and bled half-dry off the side of the road.
If you're in serious shock for example, if the other mechanisms still work, the body will try to keep the brain alive, even at the cost of cutting off oxygen supply to the other internal organs. Which decay very fast. (Muscles have their own oxygen reserves, so they tend to survive, your liver doesn't.) Cells run out of oxygen and essentially commit suicide in an orderly fashion, i.e., apoptosis.
If it doesn't have enough even for the brain, which is often the case, the damage is irreversible and often fatal. Very fast.
So if they can slow your metabolism a lot, that might just give them extra time to haul you into ER. It might just turn that 5 minute rush before your brain starts getting massive damage, into, say, 50 minutes. Which might just do the trick.
I.e., briefly: it's not for colonizing Alpha Centauri, mate, it's just while they haul you to ER.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There are always places where harmful chemicals can be useful. Even if this causes damage/death after a few days/weeks/months, there are situations where it will prevent death that would occur in minutes.
Just off the top of my head, mines. Mandatory pressurized bottle w/ masks at every junction in a mine, in case of collapse (I'm thinking it *has* to be less explosive than storing bottles of pure oxygen). If it slows oxygen consumption to 25% (pulled out of my ass, because examples need numbers!) of normal, that gives rescue workers 4 times a long to dig out live bodies.
Once they are out, the hospitals/trained medical professionals can go about treating them for Crush Syndrome and for the poison that kept them alive by killing them slowly.
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
Induced hibernation
In 2005 it was shown that mice can be put into a state of suspended animation-like hypothermia by applying a low dosage of hydrogen sulfide (80 ppm H2S) in the air. The breathing rate of the animals sank from 120 to 10 breaths per minute and their temperature fell from 37 C to just 2 C above ambient temperature (in effect, they had become cold-blooded). The mice survived this procedure for 6 hours and afterwards showed no negative health consequences.[6] In 2006 it was shown that the blood pressure of mice treated in this fashion with hydrogen sulfide did not significantly decrease.[7]
Such a hibernation occurs naturally in many mammals and also in toads, but not in mice. (Mice can fall into a state called clinical torpor when food shortage occurs). If the H2S-induced hibernation can be made to work in humans, it could be useful in the emergency management of severely injured patients, and in the conservation of donated organs.
As mentioned above, hydrogen sulfide binds to cytochrome oxidase and thereby prevents oxygen from binding, which leads to the dramatic slowdown of metabolism. Animals and humans naturally produce some hydrogen sulfide in their body; researchers have proposed that the gas is used to regulate metabolic activity and body temperature, which would explain the above findings.[8]
However, a 2008 study failed to reproduce the effect in pigs, concluding that the effects seen in mice were not present in larger mammals. [9]
Just -1, Troll talking to another.
They can suspend a mice, but making Ubuntu suspend on my laptop and work afterwards; that they can't do. It's a strange world
Thats OK. Large scale software projects never have conflicting requirements.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I read recently (on /. I think) that it was discovered the tissue damage was done when RISING o2 levels triggered apoptosis. Meaning there is actually a period as long as 2hrs where little or no tissue damage has occurred. If the o2 levels can be brought up in a way that keeps the trigger from thinking a massive o2 spike is about to mutate all the DNA we might realize the dream of Herbert West. I also read about this a while back and they didn't think it would scale to humans, but if it did, it might stack nicely to allow delaying reanimation even longer.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
... some towns around the planet have quite a reputation for having a high sulphur rate in their atmosphere (Rotorua in NZ is nicknamed "Sulphur City" because of that -- you can actually smell it when you're getting close to the town, and it takes a little while to get used to breathing that air !). Why don't they conduct a survey on the metabolism of the people naturally exposed to those gases ?
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