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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."
...they were experimenting with Rabbits.
Yeah... something tells me that "kept alive" means "killed" in this study.
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...
Probably less than 1/10000th the number of rabbits that were sacrificed for dinner plates last night alone.
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
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.
Quartz Extreme and Core Image. Are there any other real reasons to spend all that money on generic hardware?
He submitted to a blood test for everything else
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
But you might target the brain?
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
You forgot about that huge contraption that he had to pull out of his face....
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.
Yo dawg, I heard you like the Ackermann function, so OH GOD OH GOD OH GOD
They don't use their lungs for breathing though. Shots to the chest do little to stop a zombie, you need a head shot.
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.
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.
~Idarubicin
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.
>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
"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?
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.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
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.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's a fucking rabbit.
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.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
We called them eugenicists.
What? I don't believe that has anything to do with what I said.
Filthy, filthy copyrapists!
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.
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.