TECHNOLOGY: Man's Best Friend: The 'Zombie Dog'
Scientists at Pittsburgh's Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research have created zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death.
The dogs were drained of blood, filled with icy-cold saline fluid (which preserves the internal organs) and declared clinically dead - no heartbeat, no brain activity. Then, three hours later, the blood was replaced, and the dogs were given oxygen and reanimated using electricity.
Amazingly enough, the dogs did not suffer brain damage from the procedure.
We're next on the agenda, of course:
Plans to test the technique on humans should be realised within a year, according to the Safar Centre.
However rather than sending people to sleep for years, then bringing them back to life to benefit from medical advances, the boffins would be happy to keep people in this state for just a few hours,
But even this should be enough to save lives such as battlefield casualties and victims of stabbings or gunshot wounds, who have suffered huge blood loss.
"The results are stunning. I think in 10 years we will be able to prevent death in a certain segment of those using this technology," said one US battlefield doctor.
The dogs were drained of blood, filled with icy-cold saline fluid (which preserves the internal organs) and declared clinically dead - no heartbeat, no brain activity. Then, three hours later, the blood was replaced, and the dogs were given oxygen and reanimated using electricity.
Amazingly enough, the dogs did not suffer brain damage from the procedure.
We're next on the agenda, of course:
Plans to test the technique on humans should be realised within a year, according to the Safar Centre.
However rather than sending people to sleep for years, then bringing them back to life to benefit from medical advances, the boffins would be happy to keep people in this state for just a few hours,
But even this should be enough to save lives such as battlefield casualties and victims of stabbings or gunshot wounds, who have suffered huge blood loss.
"The results are stunning. I think in 10 years we will be able to prevent death in a certain segment of those using this technology," said one US battlefield doctor.