Space travel barrier removed as docs freeze and revive human for first time
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Space travel barrier removed as docs
freeze and revive human for first time
Process is initially intended to save
lives on Earth, rather than to send astronauts on long haul flights
ByMichael Moran13:20, 20 NOV 2019 UPDATED14:42,
20 NOV 2019
Journeys
to other star systems will forever be out of reach unless a massive
breakthrough in physics makes faster-than-light travel a reality, or a
breakthrough in medicine makes suspended animation possible. Now, at least, one
of those things has happened.
Samuel Tisherman, a professor at
the University of Maryland School of Medicine, is the leader of a team that has
successfully put a human being in suspended animation.
The
technique allows surgeons to 'press pause' on life while they look for a
solution
Describing the
successful operation as “a little surreal,” Professor Tisherman told New
Scientist how he removed the patient’s blood and replaced with ice-cold saline
solution.
The patient, technically dead at
this point, was removed from the cooling system and taken to an operating
theatre for a two-hour surgical procedure before having their blood restored
and being warmed to the normal temperature of 37C.
Prof Tisherman says he will be producing a full account of the
procedure in a scientific paper in the new year.
He says that his focus is on
pausing life long enough to perform emergency surgery rather than sending
astronauts on interstellar journeys.ED
ARTICLES
He tells the story of a young man who was stabbed over a row in
a bowling alley: “He was a healthy young man just minutes before, then suddenly
he was dead. We could have saved him if we’d had enough time.”
His suspended animation technique
is intended as a way of securing that extra time.
“I want to make clear that we’re
not trying to send people off to Saturn,” he says. “We’re trying to buy
ourselves more time to save lives.”
But
inevitably space agencies such as NASA and the ESA – as well as more ambitious
tech entrepreneurs like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos – will be taken a keen
interest in Prof Tisherman’s paper when it is published in 2020.
A journey to Saturn can take up
to seven years, so keeping the crew on ice might be easier than keeping them
healthy and happy for all that time.
While Prof Tisherman has released
this news of one successful trial, there is no word on how many previous
attempts were made with critical patients before this.
The
experiment was given the go-ahead by the US Food and Drug Administration. The
FDA waived the usual requirement for patient consent in this case as the
patient could not be saved by any other means.
At the moment, the biggest
obstacle to reliable animation of a patient who has been super-cooled in this
way is cell damage as they are re-warmed – so-called reperfusion injuries.
Prof Tisherman says that there may be a drug, or cocktail of
drugs, that can help minimise these injuries but, he says: “but we haven’t
identified all the causes of reperfusion injuries yet”.
Once he has, whether or not he
wants to send a refrigerated crew to Saturn, it’s likely that sooner or later
that’s exactly what will happen.
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