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Mad Scientist Brings Back Dead With "Deanimation"
mattnyc99 writes "Esquire is running a a jaw-dropping profile of MacArthur genius Marc Roth in their annual Best and Brightest roundup, detailing how this gonzo DNA scientist (who also figured out how to diagnose lupus correctly) went from watching his infant daughter die to literally reincarnating animals. Inspired by NOVA and funded by DARPA, Roth has developed a serum for major biotech startup Ikaria that successfully accomplished 'suspended animation' — the closest we've ever come to simulating near-death experiences and then coming back to life. From the article: 'We don't know what life is, anyway. Not really. We just know what life does — it burns oxygen. It's a process of combustion. We're all just slow-burning candles, making our way through our allotment of precious O2 until it becomes our toxin, until we burn out, until we get old and die. But we live on 21 percent oxygen, just as we live at 37 degrees. They're related. Decrease the oxygen to 5 percent, we die. But, look, the concentration of oxygen in the blood that runs through our capillaries is only 2 or 3 percent. We're almost dead already! So what if we turn down the candle's need for oxygen? What if we dim the candle so much that we don't even have the energy to die?' " The writer Tom Junod engages in what Hunter Thompson once called "a failed but essentially noble experiment in pure gonzo journalism." If you can suspend your inner critic for a time, it's a fun ride.
Braiiiiins!
Klatu Verata Nictu!
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
This reminds me of a This American Life episode I listened to (and you can too by clicking on Full Episode here). Basically it explores a very bad chapter of early cryogenics. Before I listened to that, I thought that this was pretty cut and dried ethically (dead bodies are dead bodies, do what you want) but you see how it negatively affects other people who misplace hope in this process.
Also, isn't Ikaria the worst name to pick? "Hey, our company hopes to aim too high and fail hard." They should have gone with Promethea in my opinion.
My work here is dung.
Is it any coincidence that DARPA is Sanskrit for arrogance in this situation?
The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments. - Nietzche
I think this article will open up a can of worms on Slashdot. The issue I have here is that bringing someone back from suspended animation where they were alive to begin with is not the same as 'reviving the dead'. I think nature has been doing this in hibernating animals for millions of years. If someone could freeze a medically dead person and then make him alive again with his memories, personality etc. intact, (i.e. not cloning, which is already feasible) then they can claim they have revived the dead. Other than that, it is just playing with semantics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_West%E2%80%93Reanimator
I don't know how I could have messed that up.
Quick, get him CVS commit access to all the BSD projects!
Trolling is a art,
You forgot about mostly dead.
You're either dead or you're not. It's rather binary. There's no continuum.
Schrodinger's cat says hi. Or maybe he doesn't.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
Whoo-hoo-hoo, look who knows so much. It just so happens that you can be MOSTLY dead as well.
/*obligatory miracle max
There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Mostly dead is slightly alive. With all dead, well, with all dead there's usually only one thing you can do.
Go through his clothes and look for loose change.
Either you're dead or you're not--Tell that to someone who's brain dead. Or someone who's suffered a stroke that effects their brain stem, or people that suffer from being "locked in". Tell that to someone who 'died' on the operating table during heart surgery but 'came back'. What exactly constitutes being "alive" verus dead? Are self-replicating proteins "alive"? Because last I looked, prions are not alive though they can kill you (mad cow disease). And this isn't even discussing non-literal definitions of dead or alive -- such as being emotionally dead (suicidal thoughts anyone?), concepts of heaven and hell, etc.
There is indeed quite a spectrum between dead and alive; Life has never been easy to classify and put into boxes, because the curious thing about it is you never observe the same thing twice looking at it.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
People have been clinically dead (no pulse, no breathing, would not continue to live without specific processes of intervention) and have been successfully revived. Many have gone on to live perfectly normal lives, while others have been left dead too long and their tissues suffered for it, leaving them with reduced faculties. I wouldn't call it quite as cut and dried as dead or not. We can tell when someone is really, truly alive, and we can identify conditions when someone is really, truly dead, but there are plenty of conditions where one could be potentially alive or dead (with apologies to SchrÃdinger) and that further actions will determine what state a person goes into.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
that will be cured.
And no, overpopulation won't be a problem becasue humans, like all biological creatures will only expand to meet the amount of food that is available.
The rest will starve.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Well, this could be useful in space travel, barring we develop hyperdrives. Sci fi have been playing around with sleeper ship concepts for decades. It might also be useful for people who have terminal cancer for example, who might want to opt to be frozen in the hope of a cure being developed during the interim (though there will be the problem of reintegrating into society after even just a few years). A more plausible use maybe is to put into suspended animation a critically injured person until he can be transported to a hospital and treated to minimise cell damage (assuming the serum does less damage).
Yes, your friend here is only mostly dead. Had he been all dead there would have been only one thing to do -- go through his pockets for spare change.
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
You're either dead or you're not. It's rather binary. There's no continuum.
There's no "rather binary". It's either binary or it's not.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I don't know how I could have messed that up.
That's exactly what this guy'll say when he's locked himself inside his underground laboratory to keep out the hordes of flesh eating undead.
Just pining for the fjords.
Sure there is! It's just like regular binary, except it only uses the numbers "one-ish" and "probably nothing".
I'm so excited I just made water in my pantaloons!
You're either dead or you're not.
Define death.
As the cryonicists say, "Death is not a state. It's a prognosis." It's a claim that the organism will not be restored from its current state to a level of function that is considered alive.
Last time I looked (which was a while ago) trauma centers were regularly reviving victims who drowned in cold water and had been "dead" for half an hour. Surgeons were taking advantage of this by precooling patients who needed surgery that would leave the brain without blood flow for similar times. And research labs had perfused a dog with suitable protective substances, stopped its heart, cooled its body to freezing temperatures, left it that way for some time, then revived it. (And this guy has improved on that using H2S.)
Were the drowning victims "dead"? Was the dog?
There are people who are long since frozen - in full body or brain only - in the hope that they can some day be repaired (or built into a fresh body). If that is successful, are those people now "dead"? Or are they just resting at liquid nitrogen temperatures?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The kind of life where you could be transported from the battlefield, with its limited facilities, to a large, fully equipped hospital to patch you up, then woken up. There is a reason Darpa is funding him. Many soldiers die of reasons that they would easily survive in a hospital, with access to an unlimited supply of the best doctors. (unlimited because you can simply wait in that state until the doctor has helped other patients before you.)
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
A useful kind.
Doing surgery is like trying to fix a car while it's running. If this idea works, you could simply stop the engine for awhile, making many surgical procedures (heart bypass, for example) far, far, far simpler (and thus far less likely to get screwed up) and likely opening up a bunch of currently-impossible things, like spreading a long, complex procedure over multiple days, allowing the doctors to rest, which would help prevent mistakes caused by sleep deprivation.
And of course, there's the sci-fi stuff like sleeper ships (as even at relativistic speeds, you're talking stupid lengths of time for interstellar travel.) or the old standby "Life is boring. Wake me up when X happens.".
upon the advice of my lawyer, i have no sig at this time
we can finally unfreeze Walt Disney, and bring Elvis back to life. Maybe we could bring back George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to advise Barrack Obama? :)
Ah for the good old days when only Jesus could raise the dead.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
But, look, the concentration of oxygen in the blood that runs through our capillaries is only 2 or 3 percent. We're almost dead already! So what if we turn down the candle's need for oxygen? What if we dim the candle so much that we don't even have the energy to die?
"Can I buy some pot from you?"
As an EMT volunteer we're told that a person isn't dead until they're warm and dead. Many people have been declared cold and dead, stored in the morgue, then scared the living crap out of the attendant complaining that it's bloody cold in there!
Vik :v)