Science: possible to revive the dead hours after their souls enter the afterlife! :D

[Dumpy Dooby]

Doctors Change the Way They Think About Death
The new science of resuscitation is changing the way doctors think about heart attacks—and death itself.
By Jerry Adler
Newsweek



May 7, 2007 issue - Consider someone who has just died of a heart attack. His organs are intact, he hasn't lost blood. All that's happened is his heart has stopped beating—the definition of "clinical death"—and his brain has shut down to conserve oxygen. But what has actually died?


As recently as 1993, when Dr. Sherwin Nuland wrote the best seller "How We Die," the conventional answer was that it was his cells that had died. The patient couldn't be revived because the tissues of his brain and heart had suffered irreversible damage from lack of oxygen. This process was understood to begin after just four or five minutes. If the patient doesn't receive cardiopulmonary resuscitation within that time, and if his heart can't be restarted soon thereafter, he is unlikely to recover. That dogma went unquestioned until researchers actually looked at oxygen-starved heart cells under a microscope. What they saw amazed them, according to Dr. Lance Becker, an authority on emergency medicine at the University of Pennsylvania. "After one hour," he says, "we couldn't see evidence the cells had died. We thought we'd done something wrong." In fact, cells cut off from their blood supply died only hours later.


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.


Biologists are still grappling with the implications of this new view of cell death—not passive extinguishment, like a candle flickering out when you cover it with a glass, but an active biochemical event triggered by "reperfusion," the resumption of oxygen supply. The research takes them deep into the machinery of the cell, to the tiny membrane-enclosed structures known as mitochondria where cellular fuel is oxidized to provide energy. Mitochondria control the process known as apoptosis, the programmed death of abnormal cells that is the body's primary defense against cancer. "It looks to us," says Becker, "as if the cellular surveillance mechanism cannot tell the difference between a cancer cell and a cell being reperfused with oxygen. Something throws the switch that makes the cell die."


With this realization came another: that standard emergency-room procedure has it exactly backward. When someone collapses on the street of cardiac arrest, if he's lucky he will receive immediate CPR, maintaining circulation until he can be revived in the hospital. But the rest will have gone 10 or 15 minutes or more without a heartbeat by the time they reach the emergency department. And then what happens? "We give them oxygen," Becker says. "We jolt the heart with the paddles, we pump in epinephrine to force it to beat, so it's taking up more oxygen." Blood-starved heart muscle is suddenly flooded with oxygen, precisely the situation that leads to cell death. Instead, Becker says, we should aim to reduce oxygen uptake, slow metabolism and adjust the blood chemistry for gradual and safe reperfusion.


Researchers are still working out how best to do this. A study at four hospitals, published last year by the University of California, showed a remarkable rate of success in treating sudden cardiac arrest with an approach that involved, among other things, a "cardioplegic" blood infusion to keep the heart in a state of suspended animation. Patients were put on a heart-lung bypass machine to maintain circulation to the brain until the heart could be safely restarted. The study involved just 34 patients, but 80 percent of them were discharged from the hospital alive. In one study of traditional methods, the figure was about 15 percent.


Becker also endorses hypothermia—lowering body temperature from 37 to 33 degrees Celsius—which appears to slow the chemical reactions touched off by reperfusion. He has developed an injectable slurry of salt and ice to cool the blood quickly that he hopes to make part of the standard emergency-response kit. "In an emergency department, you work like mad for half an hour on someone whose heart stopped, and finally someone says, 'I don't think we're going to get this guy back,' and then you just stop," Becker says. The body on the cart is dead, but its trillions of cells are all still alive. Becker wants to resolve that paradox in favor of life.

source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18368186/site/newsweek/?liveforeveryay [link]

This seems pretty neat. It's interesting that he points out traditional methods are backwards. They touched a little bit on cancer cells in that article. I'm wondering if this research will wind up giving science some insight regarding cancer.


And Ballz, have you heard anything about this at your work?

[nbiggershaft]

wow, great find

[JaJae]

Yes very good read. Thank you!

[Nonphixion]

Awesome, awsome.

[Diesel66]

Horrible title. Doctors claim a certain moment = death. Later they find out they can keep people alive after that moment. OMG we are bringing people back from the dead



very interesting article though.

[Dumpy Dooby]

Originally Posted by Diesel66

Horrible title. Doctors claim a certain moment = death. Later they find out they can keep people alive after that moment. OMG we are bringing people back from the dead

The title is sarcastic, champ.

[JaJae]

He is the Life From Liberty mod... I think there's subliminal messaging in this thread to get us to use the less active forums

[Dumpy Dooby]

I always have sarcastic titles. Anyone remember my thread, "Religion of Peace declares attacking Religion of Peace is a threat to world peace"? C'mon now, this is nothing new for doobsta.

[SpicyMcVoodoo]

Wouldn't that be nifty if this development were as significant as the discovery of germs? And we look back at the time when we killed people with reperfusion in the same way we used to kill people with dirty instruments?

[Diesel66]

Originally Posted by Dumpy Dooby

I always have sarcastic titles. Anyone remember my thread, "Religion of Peace declares attacking Religion of Peace is a threat to world peace"? C'mon now, this is nothing new for doobsta.

nobody reads your posts

[kinggovernor]

so what should they do if they don't want to give them oxygen?

[AVengeance]

great find! Will we eventually find that Lazarus could have been somehow "preserved" (with a drug or something) and that the miracle could be explained scientifically?

I don't think there's any religious dogma that goes so far as to say exactly when the spirit leaves the body, although I suppose you could interpret that when breating stops, they're dead according to the Bible? Only science has tried to create such solid definitions of "life" and "death".

[redwards]

Originally Posted by AVengeance

great find! Will we eventually find that Lazarus could have been somehow "preserved" (with a drug or something) and that the miracle could be explained scientifically?

It wouldn't be a miracle then, would it? No god required.

This dives right into our questioning in another thread as to why the religious attempt to concoct elaborate plausibilities to encompass their miracle myths. Doesn't it work better for religion if it's just a miracle?

I don't think there's any religious dogma that goes so far as to say exactly when the spirit leaves the body, although I suppose you could interpret that when breating stops, they're dead according to the Bible? Only science has tried to create such solid definitions of "life" and "death".

That's no surprise, religion is too ignorant of physiology to make such proclamations.


Awesome article, DD.

[AVengeance]

Originally Posted by redwards

It wouldn't be a miracle then, would it? No god required.

well, that would depend on your view of the universe, and how "actively" God plays with the giant Nintendo in the sky, and how much, perhaps, He has simply laid forth the foundation for which things can occur within His laws.

This dives right into our questioning in another thread as to why the religious attempt to concoct elaborate plausibilities to encompass their miracle myths. Doesn't it work better for religion if it's just a miracle?

Perhaps. But there are many things described in the Bible that must surely have seemed out of place in the past, but that we have been able to understand scientifically now.

That's no surprise, religion is too ignorant of physiology to make such proclamations.

Awesome article, DD.

You say "religion is" as if "religion" has some kind of consciousness to it. You're personalizing a term far too much. Perhaps you mean "religious people"? Of course, one would have to be pretty ignorant of history to be able to dismiss those with a belief in a god as incapable of scientific thought.

[redwards]

Originally Posted by AVengeance

well, that would depend on your view of the universe, and how "actively" God plays with the giant Nintendo in the sky, and how much, perhaps, He has simply laid forth the foundation for which things can occur within His laws.

If he didn't intervene, then it's not a 'miracle', no?

Perhaps. But there are many things described in the Bible that must surely have seemed out of place in the past, but that we have been able to understand scientifically now.

Elaborate. Are you simply referencing the fact that we didn't understand a lot in those days or are you claiming that science has validated some biblical claims?

You say "religion is" as if "religion" has some kind of consciousness to it. You're personalizing a term far too much. Perhaps you mean "religious people"? Of course, one would have to be pretty ignorant of history to be able to dismiss those with a belief in a god as incapable of scientific thought.

No, I mean religion. Religious people can understand physiology, but they do so through science. Religion itself cannot impart objective knowledge.

[AVengeance]

Originally Posted by redwards

If he didn't intervene, then it's not a 'miracle', no?

That depends on interpretation. Now people are going to start offing themselves Flatliners style to see if there's an afterlife

Elaborate. Are you simply referencing the fact that we didn't understand a lot in those days or are you claiming that science has validated some biblical claims?

Both, actually. Science has validated numerous items known to be true by those who believed what was in the Bible.

No, I mean religion. Religious people can understand physiology, but they do so through science. Religion itself cannot impart objective knowledge.

Subjective = a truth as seen from my own point of view
Objective = a truth as seen from a fixed point of view outside myself

Religion isn't any less objective than science. They sometimes help us understand the same things, but most of the time help us understand very different things.

Both scientific facts and Bible scripture can be "interpreted" (to put it nicely) to fit a specific agenda. From the Crusades to Eugenics, both have been absued.

If anything, I think this bringing someone back to life after a time of being dead is going to teach us a lot about how the brain stores and retrieves information. It has very little implication to religious folk.

[redwards]

Originally Posted by AVengeance

That depends on interpretation. Now people are going to start offing themselves Flatliners style to see if there's an afterlife

Yay for semantics! I didn't realize you guys allowed for passive miracles.

Both, actually. Science has validated numerous items known to be true by those who believed what was in the Bible.

Such as?

Religion isn't any less objective than science.

[Kytro]

From Wiktionary:

Adjective

objective (comparative more objective, superlative most objective)

Positive
objective


Comparative
more objective


Superlative
most objective

1. Of or relating to a material object, actual existence or reality.
2. Not influenced by the emotions or prejudices.
3. Based on observed facts.
4. (grammar) Of, or relating to a noun or pronoun used as the object of a verb.

1 - Religion is based primarily on the non-tangible.
2 - It obviously influenced by emotion
3 - It isn't based on "observed facts"