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

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.

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.