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Suspended animation achieved via rotten eggs
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 26th March 2008
The research carried out by the MGH may open the possibility of stellar colonisation...for mice.
A study published by the Massachusetts General Hospital in Anaesthesiology – a journal aimed at knock-out artists – reports on its attempts to use hydrogen sulphide to suspend the metabolism of the ever-useful lab rat. As anyone with a chemistry degree will recognise, hydrogen sulphide is more commonly known as “the stuff wot makes old eggs stink.”
Warren Zapol, chief of Anaesthesia and Critical Care at the hospital, describes the breakthrough as "as close to instant suspended animation as you can get, and the preservation of cardiac contraction, blood pressure and organ perfusion is remarkable."
Prior studies into the effects of the substance on mice had proven that it causes metabolic slowdown, but these latest tests show that the effect was due purely to the hydrogen sulphide and not due to attendant hypothermia.
Previous attempts at suspended animation have involved pumping freshly-dead individuals full of antifreeze and dunking them in liquid nitrogen – sure, it's cool (no pun intended) but there's that ever-so-irritating problem with cells expanding and bursting their walls at low temperatures. I don't know about you, but I want to be awoken in the year 3000 with all appendages intact and fully functional.
Obviously, it's going to take a while to get from “mouse gets knocked out for five minutes” to “waking up in the year 3000”, but it's a promising start. If the technology can be adapted to drastically slow – or even halt – the human body's metabolism without the side effects caused by freezing then a wide range of possibilities for the future are opened up, from preventing organ damage during prolonged surgery to realistic stellar colonisation.
Plus it'd really cut down on your perceived waiting time for Duke Nukem Forever.
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Comments (10)
All Futurama humor aside, this is very interesting indeed. One must wonder what its like to be knocked out into the future of 5 minutes, dang lucky mice.
***blink Blink***
Sorry, I was channeling my local alien for a minute there. so this suspends all life processes for 5 minutes it would be interesting to see if the mouse later developed any adnormalities that may have caused death or injury after all who wants to be woken up in the year 3000 to live for a week just to discover that the process has screwed up your lungs, liver etc and that you now can never leave your hospital bed.
would also be interesting to see this done whilst the mouse is having an MRI or cat scan (I always get the two confused) to see what brain activity there is during the suspension.
This reminds me of a very good short by Larry Niven of a man awoken after 500 years... can't remember the name though.
I't's a short story, the man wakes up in some criminal's body, and is instructed and drilled to pay off his 'bedt' to his awakeners. Great story.
isn't sulphur dioxide the bad egg gas? my chemistry is rusted.
oh, wikipedia says otherwise. it's a preservative and smells a little like it, but hydrogen sulphide is the stuff that is actually given off by rotten eggs.
1) Walk into your nearest pub, or bar.
2) Proceed to urinate in someone's pint.
3) ...
4) Hey, hey future!
4a) OW.
I'll have a SteelSeries 7G please.
Oh and the NewScientist article has a few more details.
Says they managed to send the mice into supsended animation (more like a deep hibernation really) for upto 6 hours.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/sciencenow/3209/05.html