NationStates Jolt Archive

I found this article rather fascinating...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18368186/site/newsweek?GT1=9951

Apparently, conventional wisdom holds that once the brain and heart have had no access to oxygen for several minutes, cell death occurs, and a patient can no longer be revived. Researchers are discovering the opposite - that cell death occurs once you re-introduce oxygen into the cells.

So, theoretically, one can be 'dead' for much, much longer, and be resuscitated.

But if the cells are still alive, why can't doctors revive someone who has been dead for an hour? Because once the cells have been without oxygen for more than five minutes, they die when their oxygen supply is resumed. It was that "astounding" discovery, Becker says, that led him to his post as the director of Penn's Center for Resuscitation Science, a newly created research institute operating on one of medicine's newest frontiers: treating the dead.

I found this article rather fascinating...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18368186/site/newsweek?GT1=9951

Apparently, conventional wisdom holds that once the brain and heart have had no access to oxygen for several minutes, cell death occurs, and a patient can no longer be revived. Researchers are discovering the opposite - that cell death occurs once you re-introduce oxygen into the cells.

So, theoretically, one can be 'dead' for much, much longer, and be resuscitated.

Thats sorta creepy. :eek:

And secondly, this makes Arny (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arnold_J_Rimmer#Arnold_Rimmer) smile. :D

Well, cool! But what can they do? They have to get oxygen again eventually...unless they've figured out how to make people live without having to breathe, or turn us into plant-zombies.

Well, cool! But what can they do? They have to get oxygen again eventually...unless they've figured out how to make people live without having to breathe, or turn us into plant-zombies.

Plant zombies are the logical endgame of this, but in the meantime, I imagine they are looking at ways of gradually re-introducing oxygen into the blood. One of the other points in the article was how the cells have an auto-defense feature, that attacks cancer. These cells mistakenly believe that the reintroduction of oxygen is infecting otherwise healthy cells with cancer. If that 'auto-defense' feature could be temporarily shut off, then you could re-introduce the oxygen then.

Well, cool! But what can they do? They have to get oxygen again eventually...unless they've figured out how to make people live without having to breathe, or turn us into plant-zombies.

last 2 paragraphs of the article handle that

This whole discovery lends some credibility to the cryogenics crowd. If one could be certain that the physical status of one's cells could be maintained, then re-introduction of oxygen into your tissues could theoretically happen at any time.

Now I can't help but think of Walt Disney in an episode of Family Guy.

last 2 paragraphs of the article handle that

Oh...I guess I'm lazy.

Damn, medical science is cool. I like the part in the second paragraph from the bottom when they talk about a new treatment with the heart bypass machine. Interesting stuff......

Damn, medical science is cool. I like the part in the second paragraph from the bottom when they talk about a new treatment with the heart bypass machine. Interesting stuff......

Yeah, I thought that was cool. I mean, as long as the brain is still receiving blood, and the heart can be re-started later... why not? And the results are favourable.

I'm not usually into medical science, but sometimes it's really fascinating.

This whole discovery lends some credibility to the cryogenics crowd. If one could be certain that the physical status of one's cells could be maintained, then re-introduction of oxygen into your tissues could theoretically happen at any time.

Now I can't help but think of Walt Disney in an episode of Family Guy.

You know I once had a physcic tell me that I would live far past 100 years. I always thought she was on crack. I guess this may be my ticket.

Now, how would immortality effect the world? :eek:

Well, cool! But what can they do? They have to get oxygen again eventually...unless they've figured out how to make people live without having to breathe, or turn us into plant-zombies.

Yeah, that's what I thought. If cells die after having oxygen reintroduced, how have they learned to treat death?

You know I once had a physcic tell me that I would live far past 100 years. I always thought she was on crack. I guess this may be my ticket.

Now, how would immortality effect the world? :eek:

Actually, this topic was covered in Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy. Although the books dealt primarily with the terraforming of Mars, research into cell death and the possibility of much longer lifespans is brought up, and in those books, becomes an issue of rich vs. poor, developing world vs. developed. The series got a little dry (actually, it was dry all the way through), but it was very interesting.

At any rate, psychic tellings aside, geneticists have been talking about the possibility of greatly expanded lifespans for at least a decade. We really are on the threshold of some very interesting times.

This is the kind of stuff that gets Vetalia all hot and bothered.

Yeah, that's what I thought. If cells die after having oxygen reintroduced, how have they learned to treat death?

They're still working on it. However, these particular scientists believe that common practice is the opposite of what should be done... rather than take a patient dieing of a heart attack and suffuse his heart full of oxygen all at once, oxygen should be introduced slowly and gradually.

The potential though, is amazing.

So, in theory, if you were to keep a dead body in an oxygen free environment and you were capable of gradually reintroducing oxygen so as to prevent or greatly slow cell death, you could revive the person?

And the fact that cooling the body to halt or greatly these reactions has some interesting synegy with cryonics. I wonder, if you were to cool the body in an oxygen-free environment not below freezing but rather to a cool enough level to prevent necrosis, could you revive a dead person who has been dead for a long time?

Fascinating, to say the least. There are a lot of very useful and very potent potential applications of this discovery that will be developed in the future. And, of course, highly beneficial to my own future plans.

So, in theory, if you were to keep a dead body in an oxygen free environment and you were capable of gradually reintroducing oxygen so as to prevent or greatly slow cell death, you could revive the person?

And the fact that cooling the body to halt or greatly these reactions has some interesting synegy with cryonics. I wonder, if you were to cool the body in an oxygen-free environment not below freezing but rather to a cool enough level to prevent necrosis, could you revive a dead person who has been dead for a long time?

Fascinating, to say the least. There are a lot of very useful and very potent potential applications of this discovery that will be developed in the future. And, of course, highly beneficial to my own future plans.

I figured this might be right up your alley. I'm actually reading a similar article here; http://health.msn.com/general/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100158313&GT1=10008

My personal favourite quote from this article;

Brain surgery, as you might expect, is a solemn event. You stare at exposed brain tissue — at the tubes and vessels supplying blood to it — and all of your feelings, your thoughts, and your memories suddenly seem fragile and fleeting. You're reminded, This body is a machine, and this machine always breaks.

And that's precisely what makes Dr. Steinberg's work so compelling. With tools and time, machines can be fixed. Surgeons have plenty of tools. Induced hypothermia gives them time. The implications are huge: Imagine a future in which you're not dead. You're just waiting for repair.

I figured this might be right up your alley. I'm actually reading a similar article here; http://health.msn.com/general/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100158313&GT1=10008

My personal favourite quote from this article;

Wow...just wow. I was thinking things like this would be discovered far later, but a breakthrough like this this soon is extremely heartening.

We could have controlled death, where a person dies for a set amount of time for population control purposes, and then they could be revived if and when they want to do so. In fact, I'd say this is a lot better of an option than true immortality, since death is still retained for its population control benefits but is not permanent.

Death becomes a period of rest rather than permanent...that would be wonderful.

Wow...just wow. I was thinking things like this would be discovered far later, but a breakthrough like this this soon is extremely heartening.

We could have controlled death, where a person dies for a set amount of time for population control purposes, and then they could be revived if and when they want to do so. In fact, I'd say this is a lot better of an option than true immortality, since death is still retained for its population control benefits but is not permanent.

Death becomes a period of rest rather than permanent...that would be wonderful.

Well, there are myriad social problems to debug first, but there are potential technological solutions to many of those as well. I don't think that we will be putting ourselves into cryogenics as a matter of course in our lifetimes, but I don't think it's too far fetched to think that in 20 to 30 years, if you found a family member several hours dead due to a heart attack or something, that the body could be repaired, and gradually brought back to life. It gives our medical practitioners more time to work their magic.

Well, there are myriad social problems to debug first, but there are potential technological solutions to many of those as well. I don't think that we will be putting ourselves into cryogenics as a matter of course in our lifetimes, but I don't think it's too far fetched to think that in 20 to 30 years, if you found a family member several hours dead due to a heart attack or something, that the body could be repaired, and gradually brought back to life. It gives our medical practitioners more time to work their magic.

Yup. Obviously, we're not going to rush in to this overnight (there's tons of stuff to debug in the process itself), but it is very heartening to make this kind of discovery this early. Combined with progress in medicine in general, it bodes well for many of the people alive today.

Given that heart disease is the number one killer in the US (and Europe, I believe), being able to reverse the condition would save many, many lives that would otherwise be lost.

Yup. Obviously, we're not going to rush in to this overnight (there's tons of stuff to debug in the process itself), but it is very heartening to make this kind of discovery this early. Combined with progress in medicine in general, it bodes well for many of the people alive today.

Given that heart disease is the number one killer in the US (and Europe, I believe), being able to reverse the condition would save many, many lives that would otherwise be lost.

This does say much about long-term ramifications of such technology. A laissez-faire approach to resource consumption will probably not be viable in a future where most could decide to continue living much longer lives. Even if we colonize distant planets (and reviving dead cells could be beneficial in the process of traveling the distance between planets), it would consume more resources to get people off-planet than it would to manage our population.

Yes, even if this is very good news, we should overcome the issues of overpopulation before we embark. The world is suppose to have 13 billion people on it by 2100, and earths' resources are strained as it is with 6 billion.

Would this also mean you must work for your whole life? You would be 3,000 years old and still working at KFC, lol!

This does say much about long-term ramifications of such technology. A laissez-faire approach to resource consumption will probably not be viable in a future where most could decide to continue living much longer lives. Even if we colonize distant planets (and reviving dead cells could be beneficial in the process of traveling the distance between planets), it would consume more resources to get people off-planet than it would to manage our population.

I could see us putting deceased people who previously volunteered on ships and sending them off-world to be revived, rejuvenated and used to colonize new worlds...that would be an interesting thing, to say the least and would really accelerate space colonization. Give people the opportunity to build new lives on other worlds.

But overpopulation will become less of a problem as the world develops economically and birthrates fall; a highly developed country is not going to have anywhere near the same challenges that a developing one has at any population level.

So, we've got a while before this will be worked out, but we've got to start somewhere...

I'm overjoyed to hear that we're already making steps like this to fight involuntary death. With luck we'll see some advancements in telomere repair and negligible senescence in the next 15 to 20 years as well.

Yes, even if this is very good news, we should overcome the issues of overpopulation before we embark. The world is suppose to have 13 billion people on it by 2100, and earths' resources are strained as it is with 6 billion.

Would this also mean you must work for your whole life? You would be 3,000 years old and still working at KFC, lol!

I think that realistically speaking, we can't continue to utilize our current economic systems indefinitely... I'm thinking that technology will eventually reach a point where we could sustain the basics of life, and meet eveyone's needs (and to be honest, we're not far off of that from a tech standpoint... it's an issue of political will). We will either need to adopt a techno-communist society, or a techno-statist society that meets basic needs, while keeping a semblance of capitalism that deals primarily with luxuries/entertaintment, etc.

While it's nice to dream of returning to simple agrarian societies, we can't really turn back the clock (although Peak Oil'ers might have you believe that choice is out of our hands, and we will all eventually be hunter-gatherers again anyways.) So, it becomes a matter of determining what is sustainable, and limiting population to levels of sustainablity. Humanity may be capable of living much longer lives, but having children is another inherent right. In a world of population control, the long-lived will need to make room for younger people.

Perhaps, colonization on other worlds for people who have lived for several hundred years, to make room for pop.controlled colonies?


This is all a huge stretch, but interesting to imagine none-the-less.

But overpopulation will become less of a problem as the world develops economically and birthrates fall; a highly developed country is not going to have anywhere near the same challenges that a developing one has at any population level.

...


Very true. Many people do not realise this simple fact. India and China will eventually stop growing and you will see a slide backwards in population for these two giants. I would say a population of 6-8 billion will likely be the norm for the Earth.

I'm overjoyed to hear that we're already making steps like this to fight involuntary death. With luck we'll see some advancements in telomere repair and negligible senescence in the next 15 to 20 years as well.

Ideally. Personally, I think SENS will come after revitalization; if we understand how cells die, it becomes easier to understand how to rejuvenate them and reverse the process of aging. At the same time, I imagine we will also develop artificial replacements and enhancements to the brain specifically so that it can survive or remain in stasis without the body. That's a particularly important field because that's really the most important part of the body to preserve (and enhance); cognitive degeneration is really the worst part of the aging process.

As you know, there's a gigantic convergence of so many fields, from neuroscience to nanotechnology, that is going to make some quantum leaps in our understanding in the next decade or two. This discovery, as well as some others, confirms to me that we will see these things happen in this timeframe, and in fact I am confident they may happen sooner than predicted.

Very true. Many people do not realise this simple fact. India and China will eventually stop growing and you will see a slide backwards in population for these two giants. I would say a population of 6-8 billion will likely be the norm for the Earth.

Well, we've seen the growth rate decline steadily over the past few decades; I believe we'll level off in the 8-9 billion range and possibly decline, especially if people are able to leave Earth. In fact, demographic problems in China are going to make it a given that they will see population decline, at least for a while.

But I think growth will accelerate following off-planet colonization for economic reasons, but if that happens it's not too much of a concern because there will be a significantly larger resource pool to draw from.

Well, we've seen the growth rate decline steadily over the past few decades; I believe we'll level off in the 8-9 billion range and possibly decline, especially if people are able to leave Earth. In fact, demographic problems in China are going to make it a given that they will see population decline, at least for a while.

But I think growth will accelerate following off-planet colonization for economic reasons, but if that happens it's not too much of a concern because there will be a significantly larger resource pool to draw from.

Or there could always be a war, or virus, or disaster that thins the population. You never know.

Or there could always be a war, or virus, or disaster that thins the population. You never know.

That's a possibility, as terrible as it might be.

That's a possibility, as terrible as it might be.

From what some people tell you it is likely. Especially a virus.

From what some people tell you it is likely. Especially a virus.

I'm more afraid of war than a virus. You can find cures or treat diseases, but you can't do a thing to stop human greed and aggression.

Not really all the surprising - at least not to anesthesiologists or anyone who has worked in cell culture. Cells always hold up better to gradual changes than to sudden shocks, and oxidative stress is one of the main initiators of apoptosis.

I'm fairly certain that's what the article meant by "mistaken for cancer cells" - that the cells are initiating apoptosis as they would if severe DNA damage were detected.

I'm more afraid of war than a virus. You can find cures or treat diseases, but you can't do a thing to stop human greed and aggression.

Humans are full of greed and aggression. Its our very nature. There will always be violence, and probably always war. Let me put it this way, if we solve global warming, and our lack of resources, there will be no world war. If we fail, there will be, as nations fight over the last resources.

Humans are full of greed and aggression. Its our very nature. There will always be violence, and probably always war. Let me put it this way, if we solve global warming, and our lack of resources, there will be no world war. If we fail, there will be, as nations fight over the last resources.

I think there will always be war, even if there are no resource problems. People can always find something to fight over.

My only hope is that the majority of us are sane enough to avoid it.

I think there will always be war, even if there are no resource problems. People can always find something to fight over.

My only hope is that the majority of us are sane enough to avoid it.

War isn't and is an insane thing. It all depends what you are fighting for. If your just fighting to fight, then yes. But if your fighting because someone is committing genocide is not insane. War brings out the Worst in humans, but it also can bring out the Best. Study any war deeply and you will see that, I think.

War isn't and is an insane thing. It all depends what you are fighting for. If your just fighting to fight, then yes. But if your fighting because someone is committing genocide is not insane. War brings out the Worst in humans, but it also can bring out the Best. Study any war deeply and you will see that, I think.

The kind of war I'm talking about is the kind done solely for power or aggression, not the kind to liberate or protect innocent people.

A nation that stands by and doesn't fight when something wrong is going on is completely and utterly guilty for the lives lost. We have to fight in order to protect what's right...I don't think anyone doubts that.

The kind of war I'm talking about is the kind done solely for power or aggression, not the kind to liberate or protect innocent people.

A nation that stands by and doesn't fight when something wrong is going on is completely and utterly guilty for the lives lost. We have to fight in order to protect what's right...I don't think anyone doubts that.

Ah, I see, I thought you meant all wars, I apologize for the misunderstanding.

Don't forget volcanic upheaval resulting in sudden and extreme climate change, asteroid out of nowhere obliterating most life on Earth, or the possible existence of our Nemesis star.

Researchers are discovering the opposite - that cell death occurs once you re-introduce oxygen into the cells.

Are discovering? Reperfusion injury has been known about for quite some time now - this is old, old news.

Are discovering? Reperfusion injury has been known about for quite some time now - this is old, old news.

Oh? Not a medical type myself. I found it interesting at any rate. It was a link on MSN's homepage. The article made it sound like no one had ever heard of it before.

Oh? Not a medical type myself. I found it interesting at any rate. It was a link on MSN's homepage. The article made it sound like no one had ever heard of it before.

It's been known for at least two decades. I recall some Lancet articles about it being dated to the early 90s and it was pretty well known even then.