Zombie dogs!
Zombie Dogs
By STEPHEN MIHM
Just as dogs preceded humans in making the first risky voyages into
space, a new generation of canines has now made an equally
path-breaking trip - from life to death and back again.
In a series of experiments, doctors at the Safar Center for
Resuscitation Research at the University of Pittsburgh managed to
plunge several dogs into a state of total, clinical death before
bringing them back to the land of the living. The feat, the
researchers say, points the way toward a time when human beings
will make a similar trip, not as a matter of ghoulish curiosity but
as a means of preserving life in the face of otherwise fatal
injuries.
The method for making the trip is simple. The Safar Center team
took the dogs, swiftly flushed their bodies of blood and replaced
it with a relatively cool saline solution (approximately 45 to 50
degrees) laced with oxygen and glucose. The dogs quickly went into
cardiac arrest, and with no demonstrable heartbeat or brain
activity, clinically died.
There the dogs remained in what Patrick Kochanek, the director of
the Safar Center, and his colleagues prefer to call a state of
suspended animation. After three full hours, the team reversed
their steps, withdrawing the saline solution, reintroducing the
blood and thereby warming the dogs back to life. In a flourish
worthy of Mary Shelley, they jump-started their patients' hearts
with a gentle electric shock. While a small minority of the dogs
suffered permanent damage, most did not, awakening in full command
of their faculties.
Of course, the experiments were conducted not to titillate fans of
horror films but to save lives. Imagine a stabbing victim brought
to the emergency room, his aorta ruptured, or a soldier mortally
wounded, his organs ripped apart by shrapnel. Ordinarily, doctors
cannot save such patients: they lose blood far more quickly than it
can be replaced; moreover, the underlying trauma requires hours of
painstaking repair. But imagine doctors buying time with the help
of an infusion of an ice-cold solution, then parking their patients
at death's door while they repair and then revive them.
Link from NYT (requires [free] rego)