To Treat the Dead

The age-old debate: should we use the technology just because we can. Quality of life issues are seldom addressed adequately. "Let's save everybody all the time" has led us to an ethical, moral and (dare I say it) financial crisis in medicine. Primum non nocere....first do no harm.

This article only addresses reperfusion of the heart, but what about the brain? Brain cells do die quickly and the brain is the organ which makes the heart function, independent of life support.

Comment: What bothers me is how slow the medical field is in implementing new ideas such as this. Not only could it save people who have had heart attacks, but it could save thousands of children who drown every year in backyard pools. What parent would refuse to implement this life saving method of restoring life even after as long as an hour. If they can use a heart for a transplant hours later then the heart is not dead in five minutes

This is absolutely solid science. Reperfusion injury is what damages ischemic tissue - that's true for organs as well as for the body as a whole. Hypothermic theory is currently being applied to reduce damage immediately after spinal cord injuries. If you reduce the metabolic demands of the body at its most vulnerable times, minimize energy requirements as well as secondary injury, you may just be able to reestablish equilibrium and life.

When you cut down a tree, it dies, even though it takes time for each individual cell to die. The integrity of the whole is irreversibly compromised. Why can't we see that the same is true for the human body? What are the myriad unknowns that will follow a person brought back from the dead in this manner?

Gee, I hope my doctor reads Newsweek!

So this is what Miracle Max would call "mostly dead?"

One point where the writer cheats a little: using the term "clinical death" in a way that will lead most people to misunderstand it. To doctors, "clinical death" does not mean "dead," but merely "apparently dead." The writer's purpose in abusing this term was to imply that doctors don't really understand the difference between "clinical death" and the true irreversible end of life, thus dramatizing the story. But medical science figured out this difference decades ago.

The research described here is new and amazing, but it's part of the steady progress of medical science... and it won't change the definition of "clinical death."

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Really fascinating. Still, it makes so much sense. As a survivor of a major surgery I feel that this knowledge can contribute immensely to the approach to open heart operations.

Paul

This is unbelievable! Now it's just a matter of weeks before the class-action lawsuits begin: "every death in a hospital for the past 100 years was caused by reperfusion, the plaintiffs claim."

Well, the body isn't dead if the cells are still alive- It's asleep. So what exactly is death? Beyond clinical definitions, what is death? Why do cells behave the same way in response to cancer as they do in response to reperfusion?