Scientists Keep Rabbits Alive With Oxygen Microparticle Injections

ananyo writes "Rabbits with blocked windpipes have been kept alive for up to 15 minutes without a single breath, after researchers injected oxygen-filled microparticles into the animals' blood. Oxygenating the blood by bypassing the lungs in this way could save the lives of people with impaired breathing or obstructed airways (abstract). In the past, doctors have tried to treat low levels of oxygen in the blood, or hypoxaemia, and related conditions such as cyanosis, by injecting free oxygen gas directly into the bloodstream. But oxygen injected in this way can accumulate into larger bubbles and form potentially lethal blockages."

Comments

One step closer

[alexbgreat]

And with this...we're one step closer to the zombie apocalypse.

Re:One step closer

[toopok4k3]

Time to play some DayZ to get practise then!

Re:One step closer

[GoodNewsJimDotCom]

Or Night of the Lupus...

Joking aside, this sounds seriously legit! Will ambulances be carrying around machines to inject this into people like an IV?

Re:One step closer

[Garridan]

Yeah... something tells me that "kept alive" means "killed" in this study.

Re:One step closer

[interkin3tic]

You mean we're one step closer to the futurama head jars. Or gills for people maybe?

On a more serious note, probably also a step closer to easier surgeries like lung transplants. Maybe a step toward treating cystic fibrosis.

But zombies, absolutely not. There's nothing contagious here, and I thought zombies breathe. I mean, if they weren't using their lungs and windpipes, how are they always moaning... always moaning... day and night, keeping me awake... realizing that it's inevitable...

Re:One step closer

[joebagodonuts]

That was my first thought as well

Re:One step closer

[C_amiga_fan]

Just have to lock yourself in the bomb shelter with your MREs and wait for the zombies to rot. Then come-out and rebuild society.

*
*Anybody know where I can get cheap MREs?

Re:One step closer

[viperidaenz]

Your ancestors came from Africa too. It's just a matter of when.

Re:One step closer

[viperidaenz]

They don't use their lungs for breathing though. Shots to the chest do little to stop a zombie, you need a head shot.

Re:One step closer

[Deathmoo]

I hope so! Why not have a machine that could do this for you indefinitely? Would beat the hell of these silly "lung" things we've been using.

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to play some DayZ to get practise then!

the important thing is, niggers didn't come up with this. niggers take all they can get. niggers contribute nothing back. they're parasites. we should have left them in africa.

Who are you to say no African scientist contributed to this? you don't know shit and are ignorant as shit, intelligent websites like slashdot shouldn't have unintelligent bigoted people like you commenting on articles let alone even browsing the site.

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yeah... something tells me that "kept alive" means "killed" in this study."

It's a rabbit. If sacraficing a creature so stupid to not even be self aware can save hundreds or thousands of human lives, so be it. Science is cruel, but well worthwhile.

Re:One step closer

[agm]

"Yeah... something tells me that "kept alive" means "killed" in this study."

It's a rabbit. If sacraficing a creature so stupid to not even be self aware can save hundreds or thousands of human lives, so be it. Science is cruel, but well worthwhile.

How do you know they're not self aware, and if you don't know 100% that they're not is it worth the risk?

Re:One step closer

[tibit]

Said a bozo who doesn't realize that a human skin color goes from all black to all white in 100 generations.

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

It always does with these poor lab animals.

Plus, "alive for up to 15 minutes" sounds better than "died after 16 minutes".

I feel horrible that we, as a species, do this type of testing... you take a perfectly healthy rabbit... and then proceed to smother it while injecting "microparticles" to see what happens... all in the name of "science". They probably paralyzed it before starting the process to minimize oxygen use because it would undoubtedly freak out with higher heart rate, muscle use, trying to get away which would have lead to lower "alive" times in their study.

Even if they live through the test, they're probably euthanized because they're now unsuitable to be used for additional testing... they're just go get another one because these animals have no value as a life, only monetary value as a lab supply (and sadly one of the less expensive supplies as well).

Re:One step closer

[devleopard]

Not sure if it'd make transplants easier, but it could increase survival rates among Cystic Fibrosis patients as they wait for a lung transplant. (I have CF)

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

And with this...we're one step closer to the zombie apocalypse.

Traditionally the Zombie is created through the use of dark/tribal magic.
The medical version is a pandemic apocalypse. (And Madagascar is always safe.)

Re:One step closer

[tbird81]

It's a fucking rabbit.

Re:One step closer

[mug funky]

there's no action that you can perform in this world without directly causing death to many creatures.

a vegan just draws the line a little lower than everyone else.

in nature, all is expendable. better get used to it.

Re:One step closer

[Thiez]

Because it will *hurt*. You still need to breathe out to get rid of carbon dioxide. It is not lack of oxygen, but build-up of CO2 that makes you feel like you need to breathe. Don't breathe out long enough and you'll find the pH of your blood going down, which is not very healthy. I imagine having these oxygen injections without breathing will feel a lot like asphyxiation, except that instead of passing out in 3 or 4 minutes, the experience will last 15 minutes.

Also, as mentioned in the article, these microparticles don't magically disappear so you can't keep adding them indefinitely.

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

The "fucking" adjective is redundant, but it does point out what should be obvious - nature has no problem replacing a few rabbits that were sacrificed in the lab.

Re:One step closer

[L4t3r4lu5]

Jesus, they could have let him finish off first.

One last hooray, if you will.

Re:One step closer

[queazocotal]

Indeed - the rabbits should be re-homed afterwards.
Mmmm - delicious rabbit pie.

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

'we should have left them in africa.'

A bit late but you got it. Nice.

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

'Your ancestors came from Africa too. It's just a matter of when.'

No, his ancestors were created from mud in the middle east 6016 years ago.

Re:One step closer

[azalin]

As far as rabbits are concerned, 15 minutes should be plenty.

Re:One step closer

[azalin]

It might also be a way to increase "shelf life" of organ transplants. It won't allow long term storage, but even a few extra hours might help a lot.

Re:One step closer

[DrXym]

The flip side is that if could become a treatment used to resuscitate / stabilise people with lung damage, or smoke inhalation, or who've drowned, or choked etc. There is a huge potential for this research in saving many thousands of lives.

It sucks to be the rabbits of course, for which there is no plus side at all. I suppose someone could make the case that the rabbits were bred for experimentation so their very existence relies on their usefulness in the lab but it's cold comfort to a rabbit which ends up being experimented on, dissected and dumped in an incinerator.

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

No biggie. The pain will subside with oral ingestion of neural transmitters. The problem is that with the pH dropping, some skin flakes may fall off. And the person is going to have impaired body balance, walking and running in an awkward way.

Re:One step closer

[Shifty0x88]

HAHAHAHA, yes I could never get Madagascar to get infected unless it started there. They always close their ship and air traffic so early......

Re:One step closer

[Muad'Dave]

It's never Lupus, and it's "Night of the Lepus" anyway.

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

An activist draws the line. Veganism is a dietary choice.
There's a strong overlap between the two, but not eating animals has benefits other than saving animals.

Re:One step closer

[Hillgiant]

"Just" a rabbit?

Follow. But. Follow only if ye be men of valour, for the entrance to this cave is guarded by a creature so foul, so cruel that no man yet has fought with it and lived. Bones of full fifty men lie strewn about its lair. So, brave knights, if you do doubt your courage or your strength, come no further, for death awaits you all with nasty, big, pointy teeth!

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

Are insects animals? Because vegans eat them. There is no way to avoid it. Dust mites and other microscopic critters are in any food you choose to eat.

The only way to avoid taking animal lives in this world is to give up your own life.

Re:One step closer

[Ryanrule]

What about all those poor bacterium? Vegans better not breath, least some bit of bacteria get stuck in their nose and dies.

Re:One step closer

[Cruciform]

Ever see what gets caught in a combine?
Wheat is murder!

Re:One step closer

[j00r0m4nc3r]

Veganism is an ethical stance about the eliminating the exploitation of animals, not natural processes. Maybe some reading will help to relieve the ignorance...

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

assuming there is selective pressure to go from black to white... or white to black.
if the diet and/or environments don't penalize for being or not being a given colour, then nothing will likely happen.

that is why dark kids who live further than.. 38? degrees latitude away from the equator need vitamin d in the diet, or sunbath a lot, to avoid getting rickets.*

*I read it in a book once, must be true.

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

Who are you to say no African scientist contributed to this? you don't know shit and are ignorant as shit, intelligent websites like slashdot shouldn't have unintelligent bigoted people like you commenting on articles let alone even browsing the site.

I agree slashdot would be better with both the comment and the poster removed. However, like many posters across various internet forums, I think you're too quick to cry racism (or bigotry in your case) when it's more easily explained as simple equal opportunity trolling.

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

This is insightful? And you "software developer" pussies shit and piss on MBA people all day saying they're heartless? Hypocrisy thy name is Virgin Code Monkey.

Re:One step closer

[Zeromous]

So what you are saying is, it's an ethical stance based on logical fallacy?

Re:One step closer

[airdweller]

Yes. Thank you. Everybody knows that eating animals is not a natural process.

Re:One step closer

[Golddess]

Science is cruel

No it isn't. Science simply is. It is how we humans chose to use it that makes it cruel or not cruel. Note that I am not saying that there is always a non-cruel way of doing something, however...

As someone else pointed out down below, put a rabbit in an air-tight box, fill it full of nitrogen, and it will die peacefully and painlessly. While I was already aware of the painlessness of nitrogen asphyxiation, that post did cause me to wonder why the researchers chose to block the windpipe of the rabbit. Wouldn't putting the rabbit in a pure nitrogen environment be a better test for the longevity of such a treatment?

Though I suppose if what they wished to learn was how long it could keep one alive in the event that the person is unable to breathe at all...

Re:One step closer

[Anonymous Coward]

Thiez, are you a diver? I was thinking the same thing. In addition to stimulating the breathing response, CO2 loading also results in paranoia, tunnel vision, panic... I've taken a CO2 hit before and it's not fun. Not fun at all.

Re:One step closer

[shutdown -p now]

Whoa, how'd you get Jew rabbits?

And I wager those are not kosher?

Re:One step closer

[shutdown -p now]

A spine shot works just as well.

Re:One step closer

[viperidaenz]

Depends where on the spine, A zombie with functioning arms can still move around

Re:One step closer

[green1]

Though I suppose if what they wished to learn was how long it could keep one alive in the event that the person is unable to breathe at all...

This is likely the case. Research like this is ultimately done to help humans, and the risk of a human suddenly being stuck in an nitrogen filled box is significantly lower than the risk of a human having their airway blocked in such a way that it can not quickly be unblocked.

I suspect that surviving on this machine would not be pleasant, intuitive, or even possible in the long term. However the human brain is so sensitive to lack of oxygen that anything that can prolong the oxygenation enough to allow emergency surgery to correct the problem is an amazing leap forward.

Re:One step closer

[cavebison]

a creature so stupid to not even be self aware

In all seriousness, you have no idea if I or anyone else you encounter is self-aware. You only know you are.
A rabbit is, therefore, pretty much on the same level for you, subjectively, as other people.
Just because they behave differently, in ways we don't socially interpret easily, doesn't mean much.

One should err on the side of caution. But then we wouldn't have rabbit stew.

Re:One step closer

[Occams]

If we are not supposed to eat animals, why are they made of meat?

Re:One step closer

[KingBenny]

mh ... don't worry, the rabbits are soon to be replaced with illegal downloaders from hell so there's enough money left to fund the jailing of rapists and sociopaths ... and then china lays off about 10k a year and uses their organs for people who need transplants ... what if they were to shoot 10k rabbits instead ? good thing there's no good or bad, only the norm of the moment

Re:One step closer

[Garridan]

I'm not "worried" about the death of rabbits. Animal testing is A-OK in my book. Just amused by the choice of language.

Re:One step closer

[KingBenny]

i can't say i'm ok with it but barring the use of convicted death row criminals i don't really see another alternative (when it comes to medicine). I'm absolutely 100% opposed to animal testing for cosmetic products. That they can put in my milennium goals

Re:One step closer

[airdweller]

Have your sarcasm-o-meter checked and calibrated please.

The Matrix

[retroworks]

Ok, that's what they were pumping into Neo's backbone... Right?

Re:The Matrix

[EdIII]

You forgot about that huge contraption that he had to pull out of his face....

Choking Mice

[mutherhacker]

I wonder if the researchers chocked the mice with their bare hands.... Poor mice. R.I.P.

Re:Choking Mice

[SuricouRaven]

Standard procedure for killing test animals is nitrogen. Animal in chamber, nitrogen in chamber, oxygen out of chamber, animal dead. It's painless, and it doesn't cause any damage that might obscure important features.

Re:Choking Mice

[X0563511]

... and before some clueless person likens it to suffocation:

it's the CO2 buildup that causes the pain/discomfort there. Nitrogen does not block CO2 exchange, so the animal just falls unconscious.

So instead of just pumping it in,

[pecosdave]

they had to use a carburetor.

That's a way to make use of "new" technology.

Re:So instead of just pumping it in,

[aaronb1138]

Makes sense. The automotive carburetor came long after fuel injection and at the time was revolutionary for power production and fuel economy.

Re:So instead of just pumping it in,

[davydagger]

the internal combustion/electric engine "hybrid" was perfected in ww2 in submarines.

They then figured out it could also work for cars 60 years later, and called it a breakthrough in technology.

Re:So instead of just pumping it in,

[viperidaenz]

Its the opposite of a carburetor.
it's not like they were squirting blood in to oxygen...

Re:So instead of just pumping it in,

[Jeremi]

They then figured out it could also work for cars 60 years later, and called it a breakthrough in technology.

To be fair, the cost, size, weight, and safety standards are a little more stringent in the private passenger car market. I suspect the breakthroughs involved meeting those requirements.

Re:So instead of just pumping it in,

[tibit]

The "perfected" part is a figment of someone's imagination. The batteries were heavy as hell, and those diesel-electric boats had very limited electric range and speed. It was barely usable I'd say.

Good luck making an electric car with, say, 100 mile electric range and lead-acid batteries. The technology simply wasn't there 60 years ago. Even if you could accept the outrageous weight and volume requirements, you still need electronics to do individual cell management. Lead-acid batteries need it too if you wish to prolong their life. It's no different from Ni-MH or any other modern cell, really, if you want to keep it rolling in spite of inevitable bad cells.

Re:So instead of just pumping it in,

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps, but you don't need to worry about where to put the torpedo tubes.

Re:So instead of just pumping it in,

[mcgrew]

I think your sarcastic joke was pretty flat, considering the fuel injector came along only 40 years after the carburator. Fuel injection was in widespread commercial use in diesel engines by the mid-1920s, and was in gasoline engines by 1925 (see wikipedia for details).

Fuel injection only seems new, because until relatively recently most cars had carbs.

Re:So instead of just pumping it in,

[davydagger]

that was my point. I was being fececious on the original comment about how this new device is merely a carberator. Surely they made much needed improvements before they went from injecting engines with air, that sometimes worked, to doing it to a living breathing thing.

Lots of applications

[Grayhand]

I can see this as a major help in organ transplants like lung and heart. Also there's a potential for cystic fibrosis since it bypasses the lungs.

Re:Lots of applications

[demonlapin]

No, it's not useful for those. You already have an established airway for those. And in CF, the lungs aren't often the killer, these days.

Re:Lots of applications

[Narrowband]

Or maybe super-deep dives, space station/vacuum suit emergencies...

Re:Lots of applications

[demonlapin]

No. The volume requirements alone will rapidly render this useless. To supply an adult human, you would need 300-600 mL of infused volume per minute. Given that an adult has a blood volume of roughly 5 L, you can imagine that you're going to run into problems pretty quickly.

Re:Lots of applications

[MightyYar]

But you might target the brain?

Re:Lots of applications

[durrr]

You could create an arteriovenous fistula and use something like a dialysis machine that ensures a proper fluid load, a proper removal of depleted particles and a fresh supply of new ones.

Although you'll likely not use something the size of a dialysis machine as a diving aid. And for medical care there's already extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machines and techniques.

An artificial gland that releases its stored particles when blood is severely hypoxic would be a neat solution though.

Re:Lots of applications

[viperidaenz]

Your lungs don't have a problem integrating that much oxygen in to just 5L of blood.

Re:Lots of applications

[interkin3tic]

To supply an adult human, you would need 300-600 mL of infused volume per minute. Given that an adult has a blood volume of roughly 5 L, you can imagine that you're going to run into problems pretty quickly.

I don't see why. They inject the microparticles directly into the blood, and this rapid infuser at least can move 1000 mls of fluid per minute.

The mircoparticles themselves sound like they could be made fairly rapidly:

The microcapsules are easy and cheap to make, says Kheir. They effectively self-assemble when the lipid components are exposed to intense sound waves in an oxygen environment — a process known as sonication.

The article notes that this would probably not be something you would do for long term though, and that there are already techniques to oxygenate blood externally then pump it back in, used during surgery.

Re:Lots of applications

[tibit]

Established airway for a lung transplant? Huh? Sure you can use an external heart-lung machine, but the problem is always with hemolysis and clotting. Deleting the "lung-" part from the "heart-lung" machine would certainly help with both.

Re:Lots of applications

[tibit]

As long as that "gland" would somehow inform you that it was triggered. It'd be silly to switch over to the backup only to use it all up unaware -- say in oxygen-deficient atmosphere.

Re:Lots of applications

[devleopard]

In CF (I have CF), most people do still die of upper respiratory infections, rejected lung transplants, or lung failure while waiting for a transplant.

Re: Lots of applications

[slashrio]

How do you 'mod one up'? After all the bullshit produced off-topicly above, I would like to mod this Grayhand up for posting the first sensible comment in this thread.

Re:Lots of applications

[Swampash]

I see a huge potential market in the form of catastrophically obese Americans.

Re:Lots of applications

[BeanThere]

Clearly, lungs are impossible.

Re:Lots of applications

[demonlapin]

You have no choice but to use cardiopulmonary bypass for the reasons I outlined elsewhere - briefly, this method administers oxygen but cannot clear CO2, and in order to administer adequate O2 you're going to need a very, very, very high-volume venous access. Unless you can do a heart-lung transplant in 20 minutes of cross-clamp time, it's not getting you anywhere.

Re:Lots of applications

[demonlapin]

Planning to stick needles into both of their carotid arteries at the same time? If it were easy, we'd already be doing it.

Re:Lots of applications

[demonlapin]

Once you've bothered to tether them to a dialysis machine (and I'm not sure even they could handle this kind of volume), why not just put them on a real ECMO/CPB? Neither one is small enough to travel with you.

Re:Lots of applications

[demonlapin]

There are lots of rapid infusion machines that claim to achieve 1000 mL/min or more. There are not a lot of IV's through which you can put 1000 mL/min without rupturing the vein, the IV catheter, or both.

Re:Lots of applications

[demonlapin]

Blood has hemoglobin (and the RBC's it's in) to carry oxygen, and the average adult pair of lungs has a surface area comparable to a tennis court. Different battle.

Re:Lots of applications

[X0563511]

Maybe i'm missing something, but wouldn't the blood's hemoglobin absorb this infused O2 anyway?
It's the surface area of the lungs that does the magic.

Re:Lots of applications

[demonlapin]

Yes... so long as you have plenty of blood. We are talking about serious resuscitation here, so that's not a given.

Re:Lots of applications

[viperidaenz]

Why is it impossible to create an artificial device with that much surface area? Lungs also have to deal with only breathing air, which is 80% useless nitrogen. You'd only need 1/5th of a tennis court if you supplied pure oxygen. Lungs are also capable of supplying enough oxygen to the blood for a marathon runner, I think the goal is to keep someone alive, not break world records.

Re:Lots of applications

[demonlapin]

It's not impossible - cf. the standard cardiopulmonary bypass machine or an ECMO. It's just large, non-portable, requires a specially trained person to run it, and requires complete anticoagulation.

This is a great discovery if it leads to something. As it is, it's an interesting research compound.

Re:Lots of applications

[viperidaenz]

So it is just impossible to make existing technology smaller, more portable and more automated? Why doesn't my blood coagulate in the tubes while I'm giving blood?

Re:Lots of applications

[demonlapin]

There are significant physical limitations to such a device because it has to maintain a fairly high flow rate (a peristaltic pump capable of, say, eight liters/min flow) as well as integrating blood supplies coming from various places, all while performing gas exchange.(which requires a reasonably large cylinder) and excluding as much cellular debris as possible.

Your blood doesn't coagulate in the tubes while you're donating because it's not in them long enough to do so. The bag at the end of that tubing is full of anticoagulant.

Re:Lots of applications

[tibit]

I figure there may be ways for it to clear CO2 as well. It involves, apparently, a single-use liquid that's pumped in then dumped out. You may as well add some chemicals that bind CO2 and keep it in the liquid. No clue what those might be, though. And it might need a mighty lot of pH buffer too. Overall I think it would be great if there was a synthetic emergency blood substitute that worked, and this might be the first step in right direction. Sure blood does more than gas exhange, but for short periods of time doing what amounts to a major immune shutdown might be OK I hope.

Beats current techniques

[niftydude]

This sure is better than having someone perform an emergency tracheotomy with a steak knife on you.

Re:Beats current techniques

[demonlapin]

The experimental solutions contained 50-90 mL of O2 per deciliter - to sustain an adult human, you need about 300 mL O2 per minute. At least 300 mL of IV fluid and as much as 600 mL per minute is going to have to go through one hell of an IV. I doubt you could achieve such infusion rates without specialized equipment (e.g., 8.5 French rapid infusion catheter + Level One pump) or multiple intraosseous needles.

Furthermore, this is temporizing just like any other O2 delivery method. Oxygen is essential for life, but eventually you have to clear the CO2, or it's pointless. As a bridge to a secure airway or crash on to cardiopulmonary bypass? Sure, it's not a bad idea, except that the only thing that matters in that kind of life-or-death situation is how long it takes to get it in the room. By the time you get this stuff out of the refrigerator in pharmacy and run it to the OR, ER, or ICU, you could have gotten a surgeon there to do the cricothyrotomy or even a proper tracheostomy.

Re:Beats current techniques

[Auroch]

The experimental solutions contained 50-90 mL of O2 per deciliter - to sustain an adult human, you need about 300 mL O2 per minute. At least 300 mL of IV fluid and as much as 600 mL per minute is going to have to go through one hell of an IV. I doubt you could achieve such infusion rates without specialized equipment (e.g., 8.5 French rapid infusion catheter + Level One pump) or multiple intraosseous needles. Furthermore, this is temporizing just like any other O2 delivery method. Oxygen is essential for life, but eventually you have to clear the CO2, or it's pointless. As a bridge to a secure airway or crash on to cardiopulmonary bypass? Sure, it's not a bad idea, except that the only thing that matters in that kind of life-or-death situation is how long it takes to get it in the room. By the time you get this stuff out of the refrigerator in pharmacy and run it to the OR, ER, or ICU, you could have gotten a surgeon there to do the cricothyrotomy or even a proper tracheostomy.

That's all technically true. I think the question you AREN'T asking is the most important one - what if you're not trying to sustain a human, but simply lengthen the amount of time before cell death? If I recall my first aid training (and I do), even an extra 10 minutes can be the difference between brain damage and 100% recovery.

Re:Beats current techniques

[csumpi]

Except for the forming of larger oxygen bubbles, that can block small blood vessels (like give you a stroke and kill off half your brain).

Until they figure that minor detail out, no thanks. I go with the steak knife in the throat.

Re:Beats current techniques

[DigiShaman]

Would this help at all in the transplant of organs?

Re:Beats current techniques

[MrMista_B]

Hell, not to mention organ donation. If you have a severe enough head trauma such that the person is /undeniably/ dead, something like this could save a lot of organs, and by extension, a lot of other lives.

Re:Beats current techniques

[EdIII]

If there is one thing that religious people have taught me in this life, it's that there is no such thing as "undeniably" dead.

They can deny, deny, deny, and then deny some more.

More likely this will lead to more vegetable gardens being carefully maintained. That's their decision really and I hope I am never faced with it.

Re:Beats current techniques

[ThePeices]

"..., but simply lengthen the amount of time before cell death? "

This would be awesome for meat. You could have the tissue alive right until you chuck it on the grill.

mmmm, tender meat.

Re:Beats current techniques

[durrr]

You won't do tracheotomies with steak knives, you'll do a cricotomy.

Re:Beats current techniques

[Idarubicin]

You could have the tissue alive right until you chuck it on the grill. mmmm, tender meat.

Well, no, actually.

The tenderest beef has been dead for days or even weeks. As the cells within a cut of beef die, they release enzymes that slowly digest connective tissue (mostly collagen). "Live" steaks would contain intact, live cells that wouldn't have a chance to release any digestive enzymes before being cooked.

Re:Beats current techniques

[Anonymous Coward]

I carry a sharpened Bic pen casing, just in case.

Re:Beats current techniques

[niftydude]

I can't believe everyone is taking my comment so seriously.
Let me guess: You've never watched the Police Academy movies.

Re:Beats current techniques

[ed1park]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beef_aging

Re:Beats current techniques

[Anonymous Coward]

You could have the tissue alive right until you chuck it on the grill. mmmm, tender meat.

Well, no, actually.

Definitely no. It's not a happy meal.

Re:Beats current techniques

[SuricouRaven]

I wonder how many people have died as a result of untrained laypeople thinking it's just like in the movies and trying to perform an emergency tracheotomy on someone who is choking or undergoing an asthma attack?

Re:Beats current techniques

[azalin]

I'm not sure if noticed: Many people around here are terrible at sarcasm or humor detection. Obscure references are a little better but not that much.

Re:Beats current techniques

[demonlapin]

And in that ten minutes, in the field, do you have the kind of IV's that can put that kind of volume into a human body? Do you have access to a bunch of (properly stored!) bags of this fluid? No. You have neither. And saving that person for ten minutes is going to take between three and five liters of the stuff.

It is perhaps somewhat difficult for the average person to appreciate how abysmal our success is with coding people even when it happens in an operating room with monitoring equipment to tell us the moment something goes wrong. In the field? Ask any paramedic for stories of the places they've gotten called to, or any ER doctor who's worked small towns about the various degrees of rigor mortis that "found down" patients are known to exhibit. Now, if they get the density up, great, maybe this can have a role some time, but this is a long, long way from being clinically useful.

Re:Beats current techniques

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/MRI-NEJM-Vegetative-State-Conscious,news-5742.html

"However, one of the patients managed to answer a series of yes or no questions using the MRI machine. Asked a series of six questions (such as, "Is your father's name Thomas?"), the patient was asked to think of one type of imagery for 'yes' and another for 'no.' brain activity on the MRI matched that of a control patient."

It's all fun and games until you can't control your body and would prefer not to die and you observe the doctors pulling that proverbial plug.

Re:Beats current techniques

[durrr]

Especially obscure references that are not purely fictional. People choke on food in resturants, that happen to be full of steak knives. If the heimlich don't work, then your options is to try your luck with the steak knife or watch the person turn blue.

Re:Beats current techniques

[durrr]

Unless you quit halfway due to the bleeding or whatever else you can manage it as an amateur, you can palpate both the trachea and cricothyroid ligament through the skin so you're unlikely to miss them.

Re:Beats current techniques

[SuricouRaven]

Amateur means not knowing what a criocothingie ligament is. The non-expert approach is to just feel for the trachea and slice deeply with a knife.

Re:Beats current techniques

[wagnerrp]

That's the whole purpose of this thing. They're not just injecting oxygen into your blood stream, as like you said, that would cause an embolism. The oxygen is contained within a fatty liposome, and the gas slowly diffuses into solution through the membrane, rather than in any concentration capable of producing dangerous bubbles.

Re:Beats current techniques

[X0563511]

So if the brain was nothing but a pulpy mush, or outright destroyed, you wouldn't consider them undeniably dead?

Re:Beats current techniques

[X0563511]

What we need is some kind of tool we can shove down their throats and pull out obstructions with. Same basic idea as this (that's meant for toilet clogs).

Perhaps something smooth with a balloon on the end, like those little things they use to clear arteries?

Re:Beats current techniques

[EdIII]

I would.

However, I can easily some relatives back in the Midwest that would claim something about God, Jesus, whatever and how that person could still live because the Jesus could find a way to heal them.

It's very much like Star Trek Science. There is something you want to accomplish, so you just fudge the details like the Heisenberg Compensator. To religious people Jesus is the bridge, or the glue, in the logistics of something seemingly impossible or improbable happening.

The amazing thing, to me, is that they don't see anything illogical about that at all. It's normal, and fundamental to their faith, even though it is quite arbitrary.

Re:Beats current techniques

[X0563511]

Ah, I see. I misread you, my apologies.

In regards to those "Jesus will find a way" people: As Ron White loves to say... "You can't fix stupid!"

Re:Beats current techniques

[green1]

It isn't useful tomorrow, but it's still a major step toward being useful. And this isn't about codes, in a code the heart isn't beating, and that's the primary concern, without the heart, nothing else really matters. This is more for a severely blocked airway that can't be quickly cleared.
As for what you can do in 10 minutes in the field, you can get a couple of 16 gauge IVs started each one capable of over 200ml/min, and as for "properly stored"... that depends. some fluids don't require any special storage procedures other than "throw out on expiry date" (I don't know what this particular fluid will require) Any decent ambulance crew can have 2 IVs running and being pressure infused in under 10 minutes.
This won't keep someone going long term, but anything that gives you a few more minutes to get to that trauma surgeon is a good thing.
This sounds very promising, it's still a long way from being field ready, but all breakthroughs have to start somewhere.

Re:Beats current techniques

[Anonymous Coward]

True, which is why this version likely isn't going to end up as a product for your medicine cabinet. However, it's a great start for dO2 vehicles which can reliably and effectively provide oxygenation to tissues intravenously. Think about it; it's a one way mimic of oxygenated red blood cells. If they can develop a reusable or two way compound, we may eventually have a viable synthetic replacement for blood, if only for temporary use. That's what I got out of this at least, not that anyone planned to actually use this experimental compound anywhere.

Re:Beats current techniques

[demonlapin]

If you don't call a code on me when I have a "severely blocked airway" I swear I will haunt you from beyond the grave you're putting me in. Just because you're not giving epi/atropine/vasopressin doesn't mean it isn't a code.

I'm not knocking the skills of EMTs - my logic is that you have generally five minutes between cessation of respiration and irreversible brain damage. This may make that fifteen. Unless the crew is passing the house in question when the call goes out, and Grandma is in the foyer, and the university ER is two blocks away, what do you think the odds are that you'll have her from you to a cric monster in fifteen or less?

You're right that this is a promising development. I've spent most of my effort in this thread trying to point out why it's not ready for prime time, since the /. hordes often have a very limited knowledge of how medicine actually works - I'll be hearing people in a few years tell dark stories about how someone made this oxygen-carrying liquid that could replace blood, but the pharma companies killed it because they wanted more people to be disabled or some such.

Re:Beats current techniques

[green1]

the word "code" is used differently in the pre-hospital world from in the hospital... in prehospital (at least around here) it referes exclusively to cardiac arrest.
That doesn't mean that repiratory arrest doesn't get the same level of response, we just don't call it the same thing.
Right now this makes it 15 minutes, for rabbits, in a lab. tomorrow it could make it 20 or 30 (I sure wouldn't count on much more than that) for people in the field. Response times of course vary, in the city the target is under 6 minutes for this sort of thing, and while yes, it does mean we are often "too late" for a perfect outcome, there is only so much you can do, and every little bit helps. When we have a call like this right now (without this option) despite the 5 minutes before brain damage, we don't show up, look at our watch and say "oh well, it was 7 minutes, no point in trying", we do everything we can, and either get an airway quickly, or get them to the hospital while continuing to try. We don't do this just for the fun of it, we do it because despite all this some of those people will survive.
I'm also not suggesting this take the place of current procedures, just that it be one more trick up the sleave of the crew that shows up in case the other procedures don't work out. Will it save everyone? definitely not! will it save someone? hopefully some day it will.

So what?

[Digital Vomit]

Scientists Keep Rabbits Alive With Oxygen Microparticle Injections

So what? I have a pet rabbit that I can keep alive with regular oxygen particles.

And I don't even have to inject them or anything. They just go into the holes in his face.

Re:So what?

[Sarten-X]

Ah, but this removes the need for those holes. It's a useful technique if you ever need to remove the faceholes... you know, for cleaning or something.

Science...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm all for science and testing, but damn. Imagine feeling like you are choking to death for 15 minutes... not a way I'd want to go...

Re:Science...

[spire3661]

Thats interesting, I wonder if they had to take precautions against shock.

Re:Science...

[theshowmecanuck]

Fair comment. I wonder how many PETA vegans who develop fibrosis in the lungs will turn down any potential treatment to keep them alive developed from this. That is what the lung transplant girl from Ottawa recently in the news suffered from. I was acquainted with someone who passed away from this. And there were an inordinate amount of workers at a plant in Missouri that made flavouring for microwave popcorn that developed fibrosis in the lungs too. Essentially your lungs get hard like scar tissue and can't flex, and you basically suffocate because you can't draw in enough air. That has to be just as shitty.

On another note, there are a lot of scifi stories where people are immersed in liquid which is super oxygenated in order to combat G-force. I wonder if this new discovery could be used in conjunction with a potential solution to high G-load.

Re:Science...

[Ironhandx]

Thats something sci-fi pulled out of the US Air Force books actually. Also Canadian Air Force books. It was originally thought up as a concept in canada to combat the massive g-forces the avro arrow could generate. It turned out it wasn't needed. Its been tested extensively by the US since(and there was some testing done in canada as well) but never used for any regular procedures afaik. It has also seen some testing for under water purposes, deep diving(Similar problems to massive g-forces and ridiculous altitudes)

I've actually tried it myself at a marine research facility. Its extremely fucked and you can choke to death while being fully oxygenated(if you're a wuss, essentially). Also excess fluid left in the lungs can cause infections etc to set in.

Doing something dangerous enough to have a paramedic crew standing next to you when you start it is a bit of a head trip too.

Once you're in there tho... its not even slightly comfortable. It feels like your chest is being heavily pressed on and you have this constant drowning feeling that takes a bit to get over. Overall, I'd say thats probably the main reason it hasn't been used much. On paper the whole deal is fantastic. In reality, not so much.

Re:Science...

[NFN_NLN]

I'm all for science and testing, but damn. Imagine feeling like you are choking to death for 15 minutes...

Your mom never complained.

Re:Science...

[cheekyjohnson]

I wonder how many PETA vegans who develop fibrosis in the lungs will turn down any potential treatment to keep them alive developed from this.

If someone somehow found a cure for cancer by sacrificing a million human babies, and no more babies would need to be killed afterwards in order to treat people, would you refuse the treatment? That would be pointless. The ones who died are already dead, and refusing the treatment will not bring them back.

Re:Science...

[Ylleks]

Except that if everybody refused the treatment then they might not cure the next disease by killing a million more human babies.

Re:Science...

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean that stuff from the Russian submarine episode of Seven Days is REAL?!

Re:Science...

[tibit]

Let me get this straight: you've been inhaling an oxygen-saturated liquid? For how long?

Re:Science...

[wonkey_monkey]

you have this constant drowning feeling that takes a bit to get over.

I nominate this for understatement of the year.

Re:Science...

[mug funky]

man, there's some mods that really need an injection of sense-of-humour particles...

Re:Science...

[cheekyjohnson]

The person who killed them would be punished. However, the treatment is already there, so what's the point? Throw out a perfectly good cure for cancer and pretend it doesn't exist? The person who came up with the treatment could not profit off of it, so it's utterly pointless to refuse it. And I believe most humans don't like to die, so I believe they would take the treatment.

Re:Science...

[Anonymous Coward]

The question is whether it would be public knowledge or not. If it is public knowledge, everyone has to refuse the treatment otherwise it sends a signal that doing that again is OK.

Re:Science...

[cheekyjohnson]

everyone has to refuse the treatment otherwise it sends a signal that doing that again is OK.

I think that's silly. For one thing, the one who came up with the cure would be punished. Second of all, could you really say you'd be willing to throw out a perfectly good cure for cancer meaninglessly?

Re:Science...

[Ironhandx]

It was 30 minutes when I did it. I was lucky enough to get a shot at it while they were doing some broader range testing to see about potential emergency medical uses. Short answer: It will likely never be used.

Re:Science...

[Ironhandx]

Well, it DOES suck for the first few minutes, and anyone that can last more than a few minutes with it without having already had experience in situations that cause similar breathing forces(IE Fighter pilots and deep divers) is relatively rare.

I did not have this experience and was one of two out of 30 that didn't get yanked back out of the procedure almost immediately. I did have some volunteer fire department training with oxygen tanks and like one scuba lesson under my belt. I believe most of the volunteers they had were in a similar boat. The other guy that pulled it off was an actual fire fighter.

However, I should mention, that after the first like 3 ish minutes of near-agony its not that terrible. You get used to it and relax a bit. You still feel like you're being crushed(I guess an extra 30kg of what is essentially water in your lungs will do that) but as you get used to it it feels more like a heavy weight, as though you just put on 100lbs in 2 minutes.

Occasionally the instinct of "What the fuck, I'm not supposed to have water in my lungs, I'm drowning" starts to resurface again and your heart rate goes back up and you start to panic reflexively but that happened to me twice at around the 8 and 15 minute mark and then I was good for a solid 15, told them I could keep going, and they stopped it because they said they had what they needed.

At first it was just me trying to NOT think about what I was doing and then after a little bit I just used the excitement about the tech to basically psych myself back up and get comfortable with it. At least, as comfortable as I think anyone could ever get with that. In reality: Breathing water like a fucking fish, even if its engineered water, and not really water, is really fucking cool, and I'm still glad to have gotten the chance to do it.

As a side note: That has to be the best chest/core workout anyone could ever do. I could barely move for days afterwards. My back was sore, my diaphragm was fucking killing me, it was nuts. It didn't feel like that extreme of a workout while it was happening though. I can't imagine the kind of cardio system you'd have if you did that on a regular basis. Assuming some side-effect of having that much fluid in your lungs for long-ish periods of time didn't completely destroy your lungs.

Re:Science...

[YttriumOxide]

Out of interest, I recall reading somewhere that a similar concept was being considered for essentially "washing" the lungs for dangerous foreign contaminants that are otherwise very difficult to get out. Unfortunately, my Google skills seem to be weak today and I can't find anything about it. As one of the rare few who has actually had some experience with the "breathing liquid" thing, do you know anything about that?

(of course, I imagine it would be an extraordinarily uncomfortable medical procedure, and so your average Joe with lung problems (hence, needing the procedure) is likely going to need to be knocked out first)

Re:Science...

[Ironhandx]

It has been attempted in at least one extreme case here at the Health Science center that I know about. Its a zipper job at the moment however. They crack you open and essentially detach the lung, rinse it out, reattach and stitch you back up. Its been attempted successfully in the one case I know of here, someone inhaled a pea and it was causing infection but was difficult to dislodge without surgery for some reason(I think maybe it had some sort of fibers growing around it in the lung?). It was a last ditch before they basically removed the chunk of lung the pea was lodged in

They used some of this sort of fluid so that they didn't damage the lung further from what I recall. It only made the local news I think so it'll be pretty hard to find on the web. Its a pretty fringe case where its useful. I don't know if it could be used for any sort of "cleaning" of harmful contaminants, though it seems likely to me that something of the sort could be accomplished. I'll tell you one thing, I breathed better after I recovered from it than I had since I was quite young. That could partly have been due to the extreme workout my cardio system got though.

From what I could get out of them(which wasn't much) when I was doing it they were testing it as an emergency process to keep someone alive in the event that their lungs were collapsed/collapsing etc. This is both harsher and more gentle than current methods. It can be used to flush blood out of someones lungs and get them oxygenated at the same time while surgeons repair rips, tears, and stop the bleeding etc, plus, you know, the benefit of them actually living long enough to make it to a surgeon.

Traditional respirators cause even more blood to pour in and are at best a stop-gap that only helps because they'd die even faster without any oxygen. The liquid would actually be a bit of a treatment for the problem, life expectancy could extend a LOT for some cases and theoretically could often push someone into "Getting their asses onto a surgeons table" range, plus give the surgeon more time to actually fix the injuries, drastically increasing survival rates for those sorts of injuries.

The worry was someone waking up during and having their lungs full of fluid might send them over the edge and cause a heart attack immediately, basically killing them outright and making the surviving due to the fluid a moot point. The worry was extremely well-founded as it turns out.

They wouldn't say exactly how the system would work to do this etc, but that was the general idea. The fluid is actually perfectly safe for your internal organs to be exposed to for short periods of time, so it leaking out of your punctured lungs isn't a huge problem.

Given that 28 out of 30 lasted less than 2 minutes before their vitals went so wild that they yanked the plug... I don't think we'll be seeing this application any time soon. Maybe once they come up with some better drugs to keep someone under while injured. Morphine et al just dull pain, this is an entirely different sensation.

I doubt the results were even ever published since they were pretty much a total disaster.

Any sort of use of this stuff for medicine is going to require some heavy drugs along with it unless they figure out a drug to shut off the "I'm drowning" feeling. It takes a very large amount of will power to keep it down. They did give me something beforehand but I never did find out what it was. It could be that the thing they were testing was the shit they gave me instead of the procedure itself. It was a private testing company, though they were using government facilities.

Re:Science...

[Ironhandx]

Hmm, that reminds me, I could be violating some sort of NDA... whoops. I know I signed something, but as to what it all entailed I was a bit too excited about the prospect of breathing water to bother with that.

Oh well, its not like I know anything that could actually hurt whatever company it was(I can't even recall who, lol)

Re:Science...

[X0563511]

They just put em in a nitrogen atmosphere. No CO2 buildup, so no pain. Feels like normal respiration, except unless oxygen is provided in some way, you just pass out and die.

Re:Science...

[badkarmadayaccount]

Did the try weed? Enough of the good stuff and you wont give a shit what you are breathing.

Obviously not...

[Narrowband]

...they were experimenting with Rabbits.

Re:Obviously not...

[Anonymous Coward]

Poor poor playboy bunnies with erotic asphyxiation syndromes.

Re:Obviously not...

[dubbreak]

..and if they were manually suffocating the rabbits they would have choked them not placed them on blocks or wedges.

Re:Obviously not...

[mug funky]

the mice were there just for fun...

Re:Obviously not...

[Anonymous Coward]

No, if Playboy Bunnies were involved the researchers would have been choking their chickens.

How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder how many rabbits they sacrificed to doing this.
From the summary, it sounds like the rabbit died after 15 minutes.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I'm pretty conflicted about animal experimentation myself. I think if there really is an underworld, it won't be guarded by Cerberus, but by all the animals humans have subjected to experiments through the ages, and you'll have to fight your way past them to get out.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[BrianH]

Probably less than 1/10000th the number of rabbits that were sacrificed for dinner plates last night alone.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and they probably had to test on a statistically significant number of rabbits, not to mention all the failed attempts. It's staggering how many animals die in research labs, some for better reasons than others, IMO.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[bmo]

>Yes, I'm pretty conflicted about animal experimentation myself

When it comes to life saving medicine, I'm not conflicted one bit.

Thumper or...

Me.

I vote me.

--
BMO

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, well you know for insulin and the pancreas they killed around 10,000 in London, Ontario alone just trying to figure out what was going on.

The more you know...but if your morals are getting in the way of saving the life of type 1 diabetics. I understand, try a starvation diet, it's much the same thing.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[toQDuj]

I vote Thumper.

(I kid, I kid. but there are some people who say that when they would be faced with the choice of saving the life of a human or a dog, they would save the dog.)

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, but the rest of us prefer Thumper. Less smugness

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[kevmitch]

This seems to be the consensus among slashdotters given the consistent downmodding of people who even remotely question, let alone challenge, the ethics of animal experimentation. However, no one seems to address the rational justification for elevating humans to a higher level of worth. I'm not saying that experimentation is outright wrong, but the ethical assessments like these should never be automatic.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[catmistake]

Oh, well you know for insulin and the pancreas they killed around 10,000 in London, Ontario alone just trying to figure out what was going on.

The more you know...but if your morals are getting in the way of saving the life of type 1 diabetics. I understand, try a starvation diet, it's much the same thing.

The problem with a never ending and profitable drug treatment is that is kind of removes the incentive to develop a cure.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[Anonymous Coward]

When a rabbit can give a convincing argument for choosing it over the human then we'll talk.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[cheekyjohnson]

I don't believe it's possible to give a convincing argument for choosing you over a member of something else's species. If other beings did this to us, I would hope humans wouldn't be so arrogant as to claim they're special snowflakes deserving of special treatment.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[bmo]

>I don't believe it's possible to give a convincing argument for choosing you over a member of something else's species.

You are drowning.
Thumper is drowning.

Who am I to save. Hmm.... let me think about it.

Oh wait, I shouldn't think about it because I should pick you over Thumper. Because only people with absolute lack of empathy would pick Thumper.

Sorry if this annoys you.

--
BMO

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[cheekyjohnson]

Please read the comment I replied to. He mentioned a member of one species trying to come up with a convincing argument about why a member of another species should save them over a member of their own species. While it might be possible to do, given instinct, it's unlikely. But there is no reason that a species above humans should treat humans any differently than they treat others (unless they wish to). I find it funny how often humans treat their species as special (not surprising) and as if some magical entity decided they are more objectively important than anything else.

Because only people with absolute lack of empathy would pick Thumper.

No, it's just that you lack the imagination required to imagine a scenario where someone has empathy for both members of other species and members of their own species. You could, for instance, view either death as a tragedy, but still choose to save the one you like the most (which might very well be Thumper or the human in this scenario).

Sorry if this annoys you.

I'm going to state my opinion as a fact and act as if that's the end of that. Sorry if this annoys you.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[bmo]

>No, it's just that you lack the imagination required to imagine a scenario where someone has empathy for both members of other species and members of their own species.

We had people like this. We called them eugenicists. The idea was a disaster, because while the basic idea may have seemed noble at the time, it led to the deaths of millions.

I could go further, but I shall not.

I shall simply change your status.

--
BMO

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your compassion and selflessness is overwhelming.

Try researching it, you'll find that animal research is a fraud and has delayed numerous discoveries.

The comments here show that most Slashdotters are inhuman and incapable of feeling the suffering of others.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[cheekyjohnson]

We called them eugenicists.

What? I don't believe that has anything to do with what I said.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[bmo]

>I don't believe that has anything to do with what I said.

It does, actually. We, as humans, have more than once decided who is more worthy of life among ourselves than another, with disastrous results. And you've gone down this road mentally, thought about it, and wrote down that you're not sure if certain humans should be allowed to live versus another species or whether humans are worth sticking up for at all.

Don't message me back.

--
BMO

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[bmo]

You seem butthurt.

Medical testing on animals may be done badly by some researchers, but there is no substitute for the method. When done correctly by people who know what they're doing, the science works spectacularly. To do away with it would be the death of millions.

But hey, don't let reality get in the way of your blind rage.

--
BMO

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[cheekyjohnson]

And you've gone down this road mentally, thought about it, and wrote down that you're not sure if certain humans should be allowed to live versus another species or whether humans are worth sticking up for at all.

It depends on the situation. Deciding whether or not to save a member of another species you love over a human has nothing to do with eugenicists.

I didn't say anything about whether humans are worth sticking up for at all or not. That's a subjective matter.

Don't message me back.

Then don't reply to me in a place where I have the ability to reply to your comments.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't worry, if you were drowning, and my cat was drowning, I would dive right in there and save my cat.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[cheekyjohnson]

Unfortunate for me, but less so for your cat. You do know the cat more than you know a stranger, after all. Sort of like choosing to save your child over choosing to save a stranger.

Re:How many rabbits were sacrificed?

[Anonymous Coward]

Until you donate your own live body for the same medical testing, then it doesn't matter what you think, we will use animals.

The other option is to say "Hmm I wonder if we can inject this liquid directly into the human blood stream... Lets find out!" and killing a human being. Likely many human beings, until by chance the one working method is discovered.

With animal testing, we get to skip testing the failed methods on people and reserve the working ones for them.

That's remarkable.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you published anything about him?

Re:That's remarkable.

[EdIII]

I suspect that he has tried and it has only resulted in several restraining orders.

they forgot something

[v1]

CO2 must also be removed. that's probably what ultimately killed the rabbits.

Besides overloading the red blood cells with CO2 and preventing the removal from the cells, it also screws up the PH of the blood really quick. I assume that with this process it could get bad enough to lead to shock.

Now what would be really cool would be if they could come up with a sold-state exchanger for CO2 to O2. Something like a fuel cell in reverse - create a chemical exchange from an electrical power. Implant that into a body and it could run on batteries instead of breathing. But I don't think that technology in that form currently exists. They have "rebreathers" but those are huge space-suit-size affairs and operate on a far more involved process.

But I bet someone's working on it right now. Probably several someones.

Re:they forgot something

[demonlapin]

You can't turn CO2 + H2O into O2 + C(H2O) efficiently unless you're a plant, and you'd have to get the CO2 out of solution quickly (easy) and get more O2 back into solution quickly (hard).

Rebreathers just scrub CO2 from the atmosphere and lock it up as a carbonate. They need not be particularly large, though - the CO2 scrubber on the GE (Datex-Ohmeda) ADU Carestation is about the same size as a pint glass. The rest of the system is the bulky part, and in most situations could actually be done without.

Re:they forgot something

[interkin3tic]

I don't think they -forgot- that, I think they just focused on one step at a time.

Re:they forgot something

[Auroch]

I don't think they -forgot- that, I think they just focused on one step at a time.

Gee Karl, did you forget to remove the CO2 from my kid's pet rabbit? It went all floppy after I gave it back to him.

Sorry Stan, It must have slipped my mind. Good for science, though!

You're right Karl, look at me still talking when there's science to be done.

Re:they forgot something

[jo_ham]

Breaking two C-O pi bonds and two C-O sigma bonds to form an O-O sigma and pi... That's going to be an energy expensive process.

CO2 > O2 +C

Energies in kJ/mol^-1
1x O=O: 498
2x C=O: 2*(803) = 1606

So you're putting in about 1600 kJ/mol and getting back 498 kJ/mol, plus some carbon, so you need to find about 1100 kJ/mol of energy from your battery.

I think there's a reason that plants don't bother cracking CO2 right down into O2! Plus, what do you do with the solid carbon? Would you have to keep changing a filter?

Re:they forgot something

[RivenAleem]

Can't they just shake them to get the dissolved CO2 out? Works for a bottle of coke. What if they gave the rabbit a Mentos?

Re:they forgot something

[azalin]

Thank you for this very sick image. $fait_in_humanity--;

Re:they forgot something

[miscGeek]

CO2 must also be removed. that's probably what ultimately killed the rabbits.

Besides overloading the red blood cells with CO2 and preventing the removal from the cells, it also screws up the PH of the blood really quick. I assume that with this process it could get bad enough to lead to shock.

Now what would be really cool would be if they could come up with a sold-state exchanger for CO2 to O2. Something like a fuel cell in reverse - create a chemical exchange from an electrical power. Implant that into a body and it could run on batteries instead of breathing. But I don't think that technology in that form currently exists. They have "rebreathers" but those are huge space-suit-size affairs and operate on a far more involved process.

But I bet someone's working on it right now. Probably several someones.

Yeah, someone is probably working on it but Apple probably has a patent on it already.

Re:they forgot something

[v1]

I think it's necessary to put it into perspective on the moles though. We're dealing with gasses here, and not particularly high flow rates either. Plants do this in a roundabout sort of way in their chlorophyl, using only sunlight as energy. Thing with them though is they're doing it pretty slowly, and at a much slower rate than an animal breathes at. The process can't be that prohibitively expensive if plants are doing it all the time and haven't already evolved a way around it. You're a lot farther ahead on the chemistry than I am so maybe you can figure the answers if you have the right questions.

What needs to be worked out here is how much energy is required for say, an hour's breathing time for a moderately active average adult, assuming perfect efficiency which we know we won't get, but just for starters lets go with that. Need to figure out how many moles of CO2 need to be processed, and then multiply by your previous results, and finally convert that into a number most of us are more familiar with, such as watts / amp-hours (instead of Joules), since we're really talking about running something like this on DC power, possibly battery.

I really don't know what to expect, which is why this whole thing interests me. Assuming a process can be developed that does it, (a previous poster said "only plants can do this", well that's only because we haven't figured out an easy way to do it using our crude methods, look at what new doors fuel cells have opened recently) it would be very interesting to see if the process has a reasonable energy requirement. If this requires say, 5-10 watts, that would be very practical. And I have some confidence that the number of moles above is going to be small enough to make this worth a serious look.

Re:they forgot something

[X0563511]

Pretty sure he meant as an exchanger. Pull the CO2 out, do something with it (just vent it?) and put O2 in. Pretty much exactly what our lungs do.

Re:they forgot something

[demonlapin]

That's a cardiopulmonary bypass machine or an ECMO. There's a reason they're big. O2 doesn't diffuse nearly as easily as CO2.

Re:they forgot something

[jo_ham]

Ah, but plants don't make O2 from CO2 - that way is very expensive, as we've see, Plants generate oxygen as a byproduct of water splitting. There's an enzyme pumped by an electron transport chain fed by sunlight that cracks water to generate protons. The byproduct is oxygen, which is a waste product at this stage.

The CO2 is fixed into various sugars in a different light-pumped reaction, so it's never actually pulled all the way down to bare carbon.

Splitting water to harvest protons (or hydrogen) and oxygen is less energy intensive (but still pretty costly) than trying to generate oxygen from CO2.

We'd be much better off oxygenating blood by cracking water - after all, there's plenty of water around in the body, and the protons are slightly easier to deal with than elemental carbon as a by product. The trouble is doing it energy efficiently - we're still nowhere near as good at it as Photosystem II, but we are working on replicating that remarkable Ni/Fe hydrogenase metal centre.

Re:they forgot something

[Anonymous Coward]

But I bet someone's working on it right now. Probably several someones.

Yes, Top Men no doubt...

This will change the Tour de France forever

[Teresita]

But will Lance Armstrong submit to a blood test for oxygen microparticles?

Re:This will change the Tour de France forever

[phantomfive]

He submitted to a blood test for everything else

Deep Sea Diving

[Anonymous Coward]

A liquid breathing technology is important at depth because pressurized gasses are inefficient at transferring oxygen in to the blood. A liquid oxygen source allows for submarine escapes that don't involve screaming to prevent your lungs from bursting and more volumetric density. Suppressing the urge to breath might be as simple as breathing closed circuit helium or Perfluorocarbon. Possibly using cryogenic rebreather technology to condense out the liquid co2 from the blood and then separate it based on density.

Past attempts at liquid breathing have been frustrated by the mechanical difficulty of using lungs to circulate a fluid more viscous than air.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing

With an IV based infusion, this circulation becomes irrelevant.

COME ON COHAAGEN

[mozumder]

GIVE THESE RABBITS AIR

Lame

[lessthan]

Why, why, why are these stories always "save peoples lives" angled? How cool would it be to dive with this stuff running in your veins? I bet the liquid is incompressible too. I wonder what the ratio of volume of the liquid versus how much oxygen contained within it is.

Re:Lame

[ff1324]

Didn't see The Abyss?

Re:Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

If it makes you feel better... they did at least choke out some bunnies.

Re:Lame

[Orgasmatron]

Well, liquids aren't compressible in general, so I suspect that is already covered.

The problem with diving isn't the blood, it is the lungs, and later (when you resurface) the difference in solubility of various gasses in your tissues under different pressures.

The amount of, for example, nitrogen that can dissolve into your blood (again, for example) depends on the pressure. As the pressure goes up, more can dissolve. As the pressure goes down, less can dissolve, which means that when you surface, nitrogen dissolved in your body can suddenly reappear as a gas bubble which requires many times the volume that it took while dissolved. In a joint, or long muscle or fat, this can be painful. In an important artery or in your heart or other important organ (most of them), this can be fatal.

Re:Lame

[Jeremi]

Why, why, why are these stories always "save peoples lives" angled? How cool would it be to dive with this stuff running in your veins?

Dunno if I'd want to have to inject myself with a hypodermic every 3 minutes while diving. On the other hand, if there was a pill I could swallow that would somehow release oxygen into my bloodstream via the intestines, that would be pretty cool. As a bonus it could double as a propulsion device.

Re:Lame

[Anonymous Coward]

Honestly, I'd rather just prefer a large efficient battery and a water splitter than generates oxygen strapped on to my back.
That would last infinitely longer than standard diving if we can get it small and efficient enough.

Of course, this in a larger container strapped to your back and a simple mouthpiece to breath out CO2 would be far far more efficient.
Not only could the thing be made much smaller, it could likely last much longer too.

This should also have barely none of the bad parts of diving with respect to nitrogen toxicity.
Still going to have to deal with the rest of that though, but eliminating the need for an inert gas for balance is always a good step.

Re:Lame

[azalin]

As a bonus it could double as a propulsion device.

Now that would be a way to get rid of the excess CO2

Re:Lame

[canadiannomad]

Just as you run away from nitrogen toxicity you have a seizure due to oxygen toxicity... Time to take your nitrox course...

Yawn. ECMO, anybody?

[SlowGenius]

Nothing new/useful to see here. Move along, move along. Feel free to Google "ECMO" as you're heading out the door....

Re:Yawn. ECMO, anybody?

[swillden]

Nothing new/useful to see here. Move along, move along. Feel free to Google "ECMO" as you're heading out the door....

How many ambulances carry an ECMO machine?

Re:Yawn. ECMO, anybody?

[green1]

Problem is that ECMO, while technically better than this process, still involves a very large, complex, and expensive machine. this breakthrough would require IV supplies and some bags of fluid. Basically this is something that (unlike the ECMO) could be administered by a paramedic in the field. It won't keep you alive in the long term, but it might just extend someone's life long enough to get them to emergency surgery, or on to one of those large, complex, and expensive machines.

Long term space flight

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can be kept in suspended animation for a few millennium (and all this equipment works for thousands of years), how cool would it be to explore some distant solar system?

Re:Long term space flight

[Thiez]

If you are using oxygen then you are not in suspended animation and you will age. Also good luck accumulating a thousand years of CO2 in your blood.

Green women?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't turn CO2 + H2O into O2 + C(H2O) efficiently unless you're a plant, and you'd have to get the CO2 out of solution quickly (easy) and get more O2 back into solution quickly (hard).

I see. So if we were able to get chlorophyll in there too, and subsequently turn the person green we would have green women like on Star Trek?

I like it!

Rule 34.

Cruel experiment

[exploder]

Yeah, about the CO2 thing...you know that visceral panic you feel when you can't breathe? It's not triggered by lack of oxygen, but rather by excess CO2. I'm sure dying from asphyxiation is unpleasant enough, but having the experience dragged out to fifteen minutes (or more, once the methods are improved) must be horrific.

Re:Cruel experiment

[Baby Duck]

As a long time sufferer of Panic Disorder (which comes with it an oversensitivity to excess CO2), this was the first thing I thought of. My second question is that even though they "lived" this way, were they in a comatose state or hopping around?

Scientists Keep Rabbits Alive (for up to 15 min)

[Anonymous Coward]

Fifteen whole minutes without killing a rabbit. I doubt the results would be as good with rats, but it's an achievement nonetheless. With enough training maybe one day we will be able to release these scientists in the wild without every creature getting cancer and dying soon afterwards.

Less than indefinitely is as good as dead?

[__aaltlg1547]

Why 15 minutes? Weren't they confident they could keep the bunnies alive indefinitely?

What happens after 15 minutes? How are the microparticles cleared from the body after the oxygen in them is used up? How fast can they be absorbed and does is it too slow for the rate at which the body uses oxygen. (I suspect that's the root of the time limit.

Re:Less than indefinitely is as good as dead?

[dbIII]

At a guess it's because getting oxygen into the body is only one half of respiration.

Re:Less than indefinitely is as good as dead?

[Anonymous Coward]

Blocked windpipes.

They should have really made the windpipes one-way, outwards, that should have worked.
Of course, the feeling of breathing is going to be much worse because the lungs would take forever to fill up with CO2, the thing that makes you feel like you are starving for air. Most will be re-absorbed as well.
So they will have to deal with that too if it was to ever be used as anything other than emergency situations.

Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[l0ungeb0y]

Suffocating rabbits to death for experimentation is cruel and inhumane no matter how you try to spin it. I can only imagine the sick creep of a lab tech who sits idly by after injecting these bunnies and watches them die one after the other day after day.
Was torturing neighborhood pets to death a hiring qualification?

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[ThatsMyNick]

This is something that could save a lot of lives. I am perfectly fine with it. Now, if you are taking about cosmetics research (the one that has the most demand for rabbits), I agree. It is cruel.

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, sorry Mrs. Smith. There might have been a technique that couuld have saved your boy; but we couldn't kill the rabbit. Would you like to pet the rabbit? So there's Mrs. Smith at her son's funeral petting the rabbit, and that makes up for it.

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Better them than us.

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I probably would be against it if no anesthetic was used. However I believe the laws on this sort of research would require anesthetic to be used if possible, and I imagine that in this case anesthetic would help.

I find it hard to understand the people who claim that *any* amount of animal suffering is enough to justify saving a single human life. It seems that this is just slavish adherence to the current political ideology ("we are all human"). 100 years ago Europeans probably would have felt that while suffering of Black people was unfortunate, any amount of suffering by Black people was justified to save a European's life (after all, "we are all European Christians"). Since animals can suffer and feel pain (and can experience happiness like humans) why should we not trade off animal suffering against human life and suffering? That is place importance (though not equal importance) on both?

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you, your parents, and your offspring all die a painfully, you peta piece of shit.

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

I knew a guy who knew a guy who worked at a lab that was working on an automated colon resection machine. Basically, the idea is that if you had colon cancer or something, they'd shove this thing up your butt, it'd grab onto your colon in two separate places, cut, remove the diseased section, and join the two ends together, all in a continuous action.

They used canines to test it out. Supposedly once a week he'd see a big cart being pushed down the hallways for waste disposal. The cart was covered, but there'd be paws hanging out.

Of course, this could all be a horrible joke. But there you go.

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[SurfaceMount]

Suffocating rabbits to death for experimentation is cruel and inhumane

If they are conscious then thats pretty cruel to them, but I cant see a reason they wouldn't be anaesthetised.
They dont feel anything or suffer if they are KO.

Something like 15 million chickens are killed daily worldwide for food, how is the deaths of a few rabbits any worse?

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[drinkypoo]

You're not the only one, but you're probably in the minority here.

I bet you believe humans are the only ones who kill for pleasure. At least this is for science.

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is cruel no matter what. The least requirement should be that the test animals be made unconscious so they don't suffer unnecessarily.

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[ThatsMyNick]

I am not sure if this test requires suffering. But I would be fine with animals suffering if they are used for real research. The tests have to be performed on *someone*. I would rather it be animals than some uneducated african suffering during clinical tests.

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[ThatsMyNick]

What happens when it's you?

I dont want it to be a human, that is exactly why I am suggesting rabbits as alternatives.

Why is your life worth more than that of a rabbit?

Because I human. Humans have evolved to value a human life more than a rabbits life. Human are naturally social creatures, we connect with fellow human beings. We feel empathy towards the suffering/joy of a fellow human. We are not naturally empathetic to rabbits, it offer no evolutionary advantage. We have also killed rabbits for food for quite a long time. So to summarize, as a human, I value a fellow human's, and my own life (because of the survival instinct I guess) more than a rabbit.

Is a murderer's life worth more than that of a rabbit? Why?

Yes, see above reasons. Murderer is still human.

What if YOU were one of those rabbits? When did you choose to be born a human, and how?

If I were a rabbit, I wouldnt be answering these silly questions. I would look at strange humans, and wonder what they are upto. Then suffer and die.

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

"We feel empathy towards the suffering/joy of a fellow human. We are not naturally empathetic to rabbits, it offer no evolutionary advantage."

You'd be surprised how few humans, especially males, reached that evolutionary level and are capable of feeling any empathy at all.

I do feel empathy for any creature that can suffer. That doesn't mean I treat all creatures equally.

"We have also killed rabbits for food for quite a long time."

Killing is not the worst you can do. Causing suffering, ie, torture, is the worst. Your suffering is no more elevated or worthy of empathy than that of a lab rabbit. So I'm saying do what you have to but don't make them suffer (in this case, suffocation).

I heard on NPR how they tested surgery and anesthetics in the U.S. in the 19th century. They took slaves, tied them down and cut out their lower jaws while they were awake (can't remember what for). That made my stomach turn. Can't have been fun for those poor souls, either. For the researchers, the test patients were out of their realm of empathy.

Today, similar atrocities are committed to test animals. No, saving future human babies doesn't justify it.

Re:Am I the only one NOT OK with this?

[Anonymous Coward]

Queue the sexist vegan, card carrying ALF member!

ST:TriOX.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Rabbits with blocked windpipes have been kept alive for up to 15 minutes without a single breath, after researchers injected oxygen-filled microparticles into the animals' blood.

Star Trek;s TriOX compound. Remember when Spock and Kirk fight during Spock's Pon'far on Vulcan in the original series?

Compressibility

[Beryllium Sphere(tm)]

It's shells of lipid (fat) around gaseous oxygen, so it should be compressible.

Nobody tell the State Department

[Majik Sheff]

You think waterboarding is torture? Wait until some goon figures out how to use this technique to allow them to keep their victim alive as they experience their own suffocation. Over. and. Over.

Obviously so...

[RawsonDR]

Yes, the rabbits were the subject of the experiment. The mice were being choked to pass the time. It's just what these researchers do.

Oh god

[SmallFurryCreature]

You see no problem with pumping a human being full of a non-blood liqued at a rapid rate?

The human in question would either explode OR the blood will become ever more diluted until all you got is the new liqued which isn't blood. And you need blood to survive, even if you are not a vampire.

The article makes this pretty damn clear, it is not for surgery, it is for emergencies. There already exist perfectly fine methods for putting oxygen into blood, they are used routinely during surgery. But they are bulky and slow, so they can't be used on the scene of an accident or in an emergency room.

This method is for keeping a patient alive until surgeons can save him. It is to stretch the window between incident and surgery to give emergency services more time. You would be suprised how advanced medicine is in saving people and how hard it is to get that advanced care available fast enough to work in an accident that could happen anywhere EVEN outside a hospital! Amazing I know but people do insist on getting accidents more then a minute away from a emergency room.

If it could be allowed legally, it might become possible for ambulance crew to give patients a shot of this stuff and make sure their brain has oxygen enough to survive until proper life support systems can take over.

But you CANNOT just pump a human being full of non-blood and expect them to survive.

Re:Oh god

[tibit]

I think that as long as the non-blood provides gas exchange (not merely oxygen, but also CO2 removal), pH balance and some sugars to keep the cells happy, it shouldn't be much of a big deal short-term, right? I'm sure over longer times the wacky haemodynamics will tend, for example, to kill liver, but for a couple of hours I don't see why it wouldn't work.

Re:Oh god

[tibit]

The only real problem I see is lack of clotting: that liquid will leak like crazy from any broken vessel...

Re:Oh god

[demonlapin]

There's nothing here to carry CO2, and the total volume starts to be a big problem.

Re:Oh god

[interkin3tic]

You see no problem with pumping a human being full of a non-blood liqued at a rapid rate?

If the volume is mainly oxygen and exhalation of CO2 still occurs at a comparable rate, not really. That's making an assumption about the density of the foam I suppose.

The article makes this pretty damn clear, it is not for surgery, it is for emergencies. There already exist perfectly fine methods for putting oxygen into blood, they are used routinely during surgery. But they are bulky and slow, so they can't be used on the scene of an accident or in an emergency room.

But.. that's... I had already said... Okay, well at least we are in agreement about this much and we both read the article if not each other's posts...

Re:Oh god

[green1]

You see no problem with pumping a human being full of a non-blood liqued at a rapid rate?

If the volume is mainly oxygen and exhalation of CO2 still occurs at a comparable rate, not really. That's making an assumption about the density of the foam I suppose.

And there's the problem. there is no exhalation of CO2 in this case. We're talking about a situation in which, for whatever reason, there is no gas exchange whatsoever, no intake of O2, no elimination of CO2. This breakthrough solves half of that problem (the introduction of O2) however it does not address the removal of CO2. So you are stuck in a situation where you are adding volume, but not removing any. Now we can always drain blood easily enough, so we can stop the person from exploding, but you just dilute the bloodstream which causes you all sorts of other issues.

The human brain is quite dependent on oxygen, and starts to have major problems very quickly without it. This breakthrough could some day provide a way to prolong life long enough to get someone in to emergency surgery. But it will take at least one more breakthrough to be at a point where this could keep anyone alive for any prolonged period.

Human dignity

[SmallFurryCreature]

So you are saying that it is okay to use human babies as fertilizer for your lawn and skin them to make lamp shades? After all, they are already dead.

Morality isn't about efficiency, it is about saying "I won't do this because I think it is wrong". And yes, for some this includes making use of research obained through immoral means. Most human beings just get this and don't need to have it explained. That you do, says a lot about you.

For most, "everyone else is doing it" is thankfully not good enough or we all be living in a world like Somalia and other hell holes where individual morals have disappeared. The daily proof is that we don't eat our dead. It is often perfectly fine meat, why throw it away? Even vegan's couldn't protest. Just try suggesting it however as a efficient and perfectly sensible course of action. I predict you will be shunned. Well, more so then you are already.

There are things you do and things you don't do. Amazing as it may appear to you, some people would indeed refuse such a treatment. It is what makes them human. Being human is not about walking upright or having opposable thumbs, it is about being able to make decisions beyond instinct for survival. That you can't means you are an animal. No less then an animal, most animals don't eat their own.

Re:Human dignity

[cheekyjohnson]

So you are saying that it is okay to use human babies as fertilizer for your lawn and skin them to make lamp shades?

No, I was saying that I think it's pointless to refuse a treatment because of the methods used to develop it that are no longer in use. The scenario I described was a one-time thing, and the perpetrator would be punished, but the treatment would remain available. I suppose you could refuse the treatment, but I just think it's meaningless.

And yes, for some this includes making use of research obained through immoral means.

What a meaningless sacrifice.

That you do, says a lot about you.

That I have a different opinion than you?

For most, "everyone else is doing it" is thankfully not good enough or we all be living in a world like Somalia and other hell holes where individual morals have disappeared.

Individual morals likely never disappear as long as you're human. I don't see where anyone mentioned the fact that everyone else is doing it, either.

The daily proof is that we don't eat our dead.

I thought that was unhealthy, anyway? And who is "we"? I'm sure there are some cultures that do.

I predict you will be shunned.

Eating human sounds rather unappetizing to me, so I'll pass on that. But I find it amusing that a few sentences prior to this you mentioned "everyone else is doing it," and here you basically say, "no one else is doing it!"

Amazing as it may appear to you, some people would indeed refuse such a treatment.

I never said that they couldn't. I just said I thought it was meaningless.

It is what makes them human.

And people who don't are... goblins or something? No True Human would go through with the treatment! Statements such as these always amuse me. They attempt to state as a fact what a human being should act like, and anyone that doesn't follow their made-up rules must be some sort of alien in disguise as a human.

That you can't means you are an animal.

All humans are animals, and I believe you'd be hard-pressed to find a human being that doesn't have any morals whatsoever. Them having different morals than you doesn't mean that they don't have any at all.

Re:Human dignity

[azalin]

So you are saying that it is okay to use human babies as fertilizer for your lawn and skin them to make lamp shades? After all, they are already dead.

I think Germany can claim prior art to that. There was a lot of amoral medical experimentation going on between '39 and '45. Studies on hypothermia, crash test, diseases, drowning etc. After the war people had the results of which many where quite unique and faced that moral dilemma. Some of the stuff was later published had references to human test subjects removed (and replaced by pigs I think)
Oh and the lampshade thing too - just not baby skin (to small).

Re:Human dignity

[yndrd1984]

So you are saying that it is okay to use human babies as fertilizer for your lawn and skin them to make lamp shades? After all, they are already dead.

Why not? That's not immoral, it's just gross. On the other hand, we would probably need to have a regulatory regime to make sure that they're from *already* dead babies, because killing babies for parts would be immoral.

Most human beings just get this and don't need to have it explained. That you do, says a lot about you.

That we're more rational? Thanks!

That you can't means you are an animal.

No, that means we have a better understanding of what 'moral' means that you do. If I were to die in some immoral experiment, I can't think of a better legacy than to have other people use that information to ease suffering, as long as they concede that what was done was wrong and they don't do that sort of thing themselves.

Re:Human dignity

[tgd]

So you are saying that it is okay to use human babies as fertilizer for your lawn and skin them to make lamp shades? After all, they are already dead.

Aggregations of phosphorus and nitrogen rich chemicals and collections of proteins made by a set of cells following a program. The chemistry is essentially identical in the production of those materials regardless of the animal that did so. So you must be drawing the line because of, essentially, unrelated software differences. Where is the line in which the identical biological processes as I've got suddenly go from "wrong" to "okay"? .5% genetic difference? 1%? 5%? Does it matter which sequences are different? A male chimpanzee is about 1% different, genetically from me. A female human has almost 3% more DNA than I do because she's got two X chromosomes, so I'd suggest 2.5% difference isn't a particularly good bar for you to pick.

I'm curious what the defining parameters of your morality is. Most of the traits you mention that make someone "human" are traits that have been demonstrated in dozens, if not hundreds, of species, so they're not really valid reasons to elevate humans above other species. Is it a cliquish sense of sticking together with other reproductively compatible creatures? That would at least be defensible, although it does ignore the fact that the cells that make up "you" are less than 50% cells that actually contain the DNA your parents passed along that could be analytically identified as "human".

Re:Human dignity

[Anonymous Coward]

ur perty dumm!

Re:Human dignity

[theshowmecanuck]

There was a quote I read once. It said, "morals are only for those that can afford them." Others would argue it is a cultural prerogative. I think it is a bit of both. But I'll say at the start that I think in almost all cases, harming someone else who is minding their business and not harming others is immoral (what constitutes "harming" is another discussion). Eating another person in most if not all modern societies is considered immoral. Killing someone to eat them most certainly. In some parts of the South Pacific up to the 1930s it was considered high humour to invite someone to dinner and not tell them they were dinner (I read this in an interview in the Toronto Star around 25 years ago with an aged man who was one of the last practicing cannibals until he was "converted" by missionaries in the 1930s). On the other hand if we were lost in the Andes and going to die from starvation, an already dead, previously frozen soccer player might go down good. And I believe that most religions would absolve you of it even if they might shun you a bit after. Most people inherently understand morals are based in part on the economics of the situation. Even if they act high and mighty (righteous in truth) when not under pressure.

Aqua Man

[oil]

Holy Shit! This sounds like the plot (fore-story) to an AquaMan movie.

Re:What do you do for a living?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why mod him down? Should it again be reminded that -1 is not substitute for "I disagree"?

A lot of /. readers are emotionally stunted young

[SmallFurryCreature]

A lot of /. readers are emotionally stunted young men, I wouldn't expect most of them to have any morals beyond their own immediate instinctive needs. It is not how things work.

A decision as to how to live and die only comes when dead becomes a reality. Like people who decide to stop treatment of a fatal disease because they want to live the remainder of their live with some dignity rather then have a tiny hope with misery of dangerous medication. But you cannot judge this, until you have faced death.

In some games and lots of movies and books, this is explored, from sophies choice, to Lawrence Oates self-sacrifice. What would YOU do? The current zombie game "The walking dead" gives you such choices, who do you save? There is a site that shows all the choices people made in the first episode. Of course, such a game is not real. But I wonder if the choices made are influenced by the players history. Will a person from a civil war, a parent, someone who lost someone dear, a young man, a woman who had an abortion for convenience, etc etc, make different choices NOT for gameplay reasons but because the choice fits with their world view?

Hard research because there is a LOT of prejudice at work in just the previous sentence. Not just the abortion one, even presuming a young man is a different type then the rest says a LOT. Not sure what it says, it is just a lot.

But when you are young you tend to think in "Me, me me" terms. It is as you experience more (and that happens as you age) that you develop a more rounded view of life. Including perhaps one day, the choice as to how the end of your life should be. But statements as "It is better to die a free man then to live as a slave" are only truly understood by people who had to make the choice. Do you take every option to survive or do you say "no, this line, I will not cross". Ultimately, if you are faced with such a choice, it defines you. Just not for very long. But often moral choices such as that come down to, "could I live with myself if I did this?". For some the answer will be yes, for some the answer will be no.

But I wouldn't expect to find a many non- "me me me" responses on a site aimed at emotionally stunted young men. Or one aimed at young women either for that matter. And that is good. No reason for the young to think about how they are going to die, clutching at every straw, taking your own life or refusing to extend it at all costs. That is something for the old and terminally ill, let the rest believe they are going to live forever and that hanging on as long as possible is the only thing that matters.

Glad I'm not a rabbit

[Barlo_Mung_42]

Sometimes when they lengthen the lives of rats or cure them of cancer I think it must be nice to be a lab rat. Certainly much better than being a lab rabbit apparently.

Is it economist pretending to be engineer week?

[dbIII]

There is far more truth in saying that the modern automatic transmission was "perfected" in the Model T Ford. It's epicyclic gearbox is very similar but it's not quite the same, so even then it would be almost as stupid a statement as the one above. Submarine and Toyota engines have a lot of differences even if there is a connecting idea. Deisel Locomotives are probably closer.

Re:A lot of /. readers are emotionally stunted you

[mug funky]

high and mighty much?

you seem to have this idea that everyone who would allow research into novel ways to keep people alive are amoral.

like you say above, there's a line people wont cross.

but it is not an absolute line - it differs from person to person, and from circumstance to circumstance.

so please get off your high-horse. you're hurting it's back.

I love mad science.

[Karmashock]

These guys should get a grant to retrofit an old castle... and HR should start recruiting for a devoted amoral hunchback for the job title of "Egor."

Further, HR should employ a voice coach to ensure that all researchers are able to pull off an appropriately disturbing maniac laugh. It's important.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apEZpYnN_1g

No really.

NOT a treatment for cyanosis!

[Anonymous Coward]

This is in no way a treatment or cure for cyanosis.

Cyanide disables the cell's ability to use oxygen. It makes no difference how much oxygen is available for your cells to use because the cell's oxygen metabolizing mechanism is disabled.

One symptom of cyanosis is bright pink flushing from _excess_ oxygen in the blood, caused by the cells in the body ceasing oxygen uptake. The pain caused by cyanide poisoning is due to the cells switching to anaerobic respiration, which creates boatloads of lactic acid. So, before you die screaming, you basically feel like you're in muscular failure from working out way too hard.

If there was ever an inhumane way to kill someone, cyanide poisoning is it. You spend the last few minutes of your life screaming in pain and gasping for air even though your blood is full of oxygen.. and if the administered dose is low enough, such as in a typical gas chamber, it can take 20-30 minutes to die a horrible, screaming, inhumane, cruel and unusual death. I know, because I have witnessed a gas chamber execution.

It's like being drowned and burned alive at the same time.

Re:NOT a treatment for cyanosis!

[canadiannomad]

I'm no expert, but my understanding is that cyanosis can be caused by any number of things, not just poison.

Re:NOT a treatment for cyanosis!

[green1]

Cyanosis is not cyanide poisoning. and is in fact not even related. the "cyan" part of the word does not come from the word cyanide, it comes from kyanos which is the greek word for blue. and cyanosis in fact is the medical term for your skin turning blue or purple due to lack of oxygen. So yes, this is a treatment for cyanosis.

tri-ox anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like Bones will finally have his tri-ox hypospray.

Perfect timing

[snsh]

This is just in time for the Olympics. Let's see how well Phelps can keep up with microparticle enhanced bubble-head mariners.

We should just try it out on people.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think people are a lot more capable of giving feedback afterwards. In addition, I think the experiments themselves would be a lot more thoughtfully and ethically designed. Dying through artificially-prolonged asphyxiation can't be very pleasant.

Rabbit choice

[phorm]

If a rabbit could choose humans or rabbits, which would it likely choose?

Re:Rabbit choice

[Zeromous]

Lettuce. Definitely Lettuce.

Re:Rabbit choice

[kevmitch]

There is a paradox in using our capacity to act unselfishly as justification to act selfishly.

They invented Tri-Ox compound

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Tri-ox_compound

Re:A lot of /. readers are emotionally stunted you

[rizole]

An eloquent and compelling argument. You nearly had me until I glanced at your ID.

You'd say anything to avoid the micro-particle injections wouldn't you?

What the fuck is wrong with you people ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are any of you being serious right now REALLY ?

Using animals for lab experiments is DEAD WRONG no matter how you spin it!
I don't care how many lives it saves.

I hope.

[Anonymous Coward]

Some day i find you and have a gun in my hand.

I HATE THIS!

[hesaigo999ca]

>Rabbits with blocked windpipes

How did those rabbit get blocked windpipes???

They were forced to have the blocked windpipes, to then be able to use this treatment...

For once I would love humanity to get a taste of their own medicine....
experiment on your own species...for f*ck sakes!
Who made you the decider that the human race was better then all other living beings
and could use those species to their own ends!!!

I would love for an superior intellectual alien race to come down and start doing to us
all in the same name of their medicine, what we have been doing to all these poor living creatures...
To test all these supposed "needed" medicines....ie- special shampoo for scalp treatments being dripped into
the eyes of the creature...to see if it will be tearless...
because we are so vain we need another dandruff shampoo ..
like the 1001 shampoos out there just aren't enough....

I have given up on humanity's goodness a long time ago....except for one culture....
Once humanity is brave enough to experiment on their own kind, and allow progress to actually
hold its value at their own kind's cost....then I will accept it again in my heart as being worth saving...

Man do I understand why it rained for 40 days and 40 nights....