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[happyfunball]

People wounded on the battlefield could lose significant amounts of blood and be infused 'in the field' with this saline solution and essentially be left for a medical crew to come and pick them up. The hydrogen sulfide process is a tad more involved than just hooking up a wounded mate to an IV

Well the problem that I believed would be an issue is the temperature at which the saline solution and the body need to be kept at. The saline solution has to be kept just above freezing and the body kept cool. I can imagine that not being the easiest of tasks in the heat of Iraq.

 

[Rocket9]

Damn scientists. I bet they'll found the secret to immortality the day following my death

 

[ParkPace]

Damn scientists. I bet they'll found the secret to immortality the day following my death

Actually I hope they find the secret to immortality the day before you die, and it's given to your 85-year-old, stick-thin, hunched-over, on-the-cusp-of-death, body. This way, you'll have to live in that body for eternity, and in 5 billion years when the Sun expands and engulfs the Earth all you can do is sit in an air of flames until the Sun shrinks down and dies out, leaving you in darkness forever.

Have fun, immortal. Here's hoping you spend some of that 'immortal' time trying to find a way out of our f'n solar system. Of course, by the time your eternal 85-year-old ass makes it to another star that one will probably be dead too.

 

[Crow]

Sorry guys, but the article says nothing about this stopping the aging process. I don't think this is the answer to sending humans 200 light years away.

 

[Raistlin]

A guy I know from work was killed in a motorcycle accident this weekend ... he was only 27.

From the little I've heard so far describing the accident, its possible this could have saved him

 

[Raistlin]

Sorry guys, but the article says nothing about this stopping the aging process. I don't think this is the answer to sending humans 200 light years away.

I would think it could at least slow it down. Would mitosis occur at a normal rate in those conditions?

 

[happyfunball]

I would think it could at least slow it down. Would mitosis occur at a normal rate in those conditions?

Actually this process would allow for long space trips. By cooling down the body substantially, you would lower metabolism and put the body in a state of mostly suspended animation. Mitosis shouldn't really be happening much in an adult anyway so that is irrelevant for aging past the teen years. The most important thing would be oxidation capacity which would lower substantially at lower temperatures.

 

[Phoenix]

Well the problem that I believed would be an issue is the temperature at which the saline solution and the body need to be kept at. The saline solution has to be kept just above freezing and the body kept cool. I can imagine that not being the easiest of tasks in the heat of Iraq.

Neither of which are a problem, even in the heat of Iraq. Most medical products are transported via medical Striker vehicle which tends to not be far from front line fighting units. A striker will be able to drive in, keep a guy alive and cart his ass back or have him airlifted out.

If you are stranded in the desert then you're shit out of luck anyways, but this has good implications for the average grunt who is advancing bounding overwatch ahead of armor - clearing out a location.

 

[Gorgie]

Can the bacteria responsible for decaying really hibernate, or would it just slow them down, like putting steak in a fridge for a long time. Still, this is interesting news, a real life Frankenweenie.

 

[Hitokage]

SciAm had a far more informative article on this in the June edition. Basically this is about inducing a state of hibernation in animals that don't normally hibernate. Apparently the trick is to reduce levels of oxygen in the cells to near zero, and the reason this doesn't asphyxiate the organism is that the cell doesn't attempt to continue metabolism in a self destructive manner as it would if the oxygen levels were somewhat higher. The reason the blood is drained in the dog experiment is that there's enough oxygen left around in the blood to convince the body to attempt to run as normal even if breathable air is no longer present.

While this is clearly too drastic a measure to regularly perform on humans, what it CAN be extremely useful for is donor organ preservation... expanding required transit times from a few precious hours to days or weeks.

Mitosis shouldn't really be happening much in an adult anyway so that is irrelevant for aging past the teen years.

Mitosis occurs throughout your body until you die. Doesn't matter if you're growing or not.