{"id":2677,"date":"2019-11-30T08:43:01","date_gmt":"2019-11-30T13:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/?p=2677"},"modified":"2019-11-30T08:43:03","modified_gmt":"2019-11-30T13:43:03","slug":"are-scientists-on-the-verge-of-putting-human-beings-into-suspended-animation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/2019\/11\/30\/are-scientists-on-the-verge-of-putting-human-beings-into-suspended-animation\/","title":{"rendered":"Are scientists on the verge of putting human beings into Suspended Animation?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Suspended Animation is defined as is an extreme slowing, or even stopping of the physiological processes of a living creature for a period of time and then fully resuscitating that creature back to its normal life. During suspended animation the heartbeat, breathing, even the metabolic processes of individual cells are slowed if not halted entirely. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Suspended Animation as imagined in Science Fiction. (Credit: Outer Places)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Also commonly known as hibernation, in nature suspended animation is used by many creatures to ‘sleep’ their way through periods of scarce resources. The classic example is of course that of bears hibernating through the winter when there is little food for them to eat but there are also creatures who suspend their life processes during times of drought or extreme heat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Female Bears even give birth to their cubs while hibernating. (Credit: Country Life)<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In science fiction suspended animation has played a key role in many SF stories, novels and movies. In those stories suspended animation allows human beings to undertake long space missions without expending the resources, food, water and air that such long voyages would otherwise require. Some of the most famous SF stories employ suspended animation for this purpose including ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’, ‘Alien’, the ‘Space Seed’ episode of the original Star Trek, I could go on and on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here’s the reason why space scientists are interested in Suspended Animation. (Credit: Animalsake)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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In the ‘Space Seed’ episode of ‘Star Trek’ Khan and his companions escaped the 20th Century by using Suspended Animation. (Credit: Paramount) <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And\nmake no mistake NASA is keenly interested in the possibilities that suspended\nanimation could bring to their goal of exploring space. Problem is however,\nunlike bears human beings don’t hibernate, even when we sleep our metabolism\nhardly changes from its normal rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Medical doctors are also very interested in the possible uses of suspended animation in treating patients suffering from traumatic injuries. Surgery is very stressful and surgeons often need to hurry through an operation so that the patient won’t die on the operating table while they are trying to save them. The ability to place the patient into suspended animation would allow surgeons to just take their time and do a more through and careful job.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Surgeons often have to rush through operations if they are to have any chance of saving a patient’s life. Suspended Animation could give them more time in which to do a better job. (Credit Getty Images)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Based upon our knowledge of other mammals that do hibernate the key to suspended animation is hypothermia or a chilling of the body’s temperature. You see our brain cells begin to die after just five minutes without oxygen and even muscle cells will start to die after an hour. If the temperature of the cells can be reduced however their oxygen requirement is also reduced and they can survive much longer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Cooling the body temperature is a key part of suspended animation because it greatly reduces the metabolic rate. (Credit: FutureTimeline.net)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There\nare plenty of examples people who have actually survived cardiac arrest for\nlong periods of time because their bodies were kept cold. Unfortunately none of\nthese occurrences happened under labouratory conditions so they provide only\nanecdotal information. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\norder to obtain actual measurements of how suspended animation works scientists\nhave been forced to do experiments with animals. A 2005 study was conducted at\nthe University of Pittsburgh’s Safar Center for Resuscitation Research. In this\nseries of experiments dogs were placed into suspended animation by draining the\nblood out of their systems and replacing it with a low temperature solution.\nThe animals were clinically dead for a period of three hours but when the blood\nwas returned to their circulatory systems and an electric shock employed to\nrestart their hearts the dogs were revived, most without any evidence of brain\ndamage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\nsimilar experiment was carried out the next year at Massachusetts General\nHospital in Boston. In this study pigs were used as the test animals. In the\nexperiment the pigs were first anaesthetized and then given a severe injury\ncomparable to one that a shooting or car crash victim might receive. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When\nhalf of the animal’s blood was lost it was replaced by a chilled saline\nsolution and the pig’s body kept at a temperature of about 10\u00baC. While the\nanimal was in suspended animation the injuries were repaired after which the\nlost blood was replaced and the pig brought back to life. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\nthe Boston experiment a success rate of 90% was achieved. What the researchers\nfound most important was the way that suspended animation allowed them the time\nthey needed to operate on the test animals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now for the first time this technique is being used on human beings, not chosen test subjects but the actual victims of car crashes or shootings. Emergency room surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore are attempting to employ suspended animation to prolong the life of car crash or shooting victims who have gone into cardiac arrest and whose chance of survival is only 5% due to the severity of their wounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Emergency room patients whose injuries are severe and who have gone into cardiac arrest generally have less than a 5% chance of surviving. (Credit: Wikipedia)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As\nin the earlier animal studies the victim’s blood is replaced with a chilled\nsaline solution and the body’s temperature is brought down to around 10\u00baC. The\nsurgeons then have two hours to repair the victim’s injuries before the blood\nis replaced, their body warmed up and the heart restarted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nplan is for a trial of the technique with 10 people, the results will then be\ncompared to those for 10 people who have been treated with standard emergency\nroom procedures. The final comparison will then be published, hopefully early\nnext year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now\nthe purpose of this study is not to develop suspended animation as a means of\nenabling humans to explore the Solar System. As lead surgeon Samuel Tisherman\nwants everyone to know, “We’re not trying to send people off to Saturn.\nWe’re just trying to buy ourselves more time to save lives.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nevertheless\nyou can bet that NASA is paying attention to the study. If suspended animation\nworks in the operating room there will be further experiments designed to\nincrease the time that a human being can be kept in hibernation. Suspended\nanimation would be a real game changer in human exploration of space, the\nquestion is, how long will it be before we are ready to employ it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suspended Animation is defined as is an extreme slowing, or even stopping of the physiological processes of a living creature for a period of time and then fully resuscitating that creature back to its normal life. During suspended animation the heartbeat, breathing, even the metabolic processes of individual cells are slowed if not halted entirely. … Continue reading “Are scientists on the verge of putting human beings into Suspended Animation?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[924,923,925,922],"class_list":["post-2677","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-science","tag-hibernation","tag-long-duration-space-voyages","tag-medical-emergencies","tag-suspended-animation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2677"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2677\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2685,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2677\/revisions\/2685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceandsf.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}