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To Treat the Dead
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.
© 2007
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Member Comments
Posted By: Sheepster411 @ 01/19/2008 10:08:03 PM
Comment: Gee, I hope my doctor reads Newsweek!
Posted By: mellowoutmon @ 12/24/2007 2:25:59 PM
Comment: So this is what Miracle Max would call "mostly dead?"
Posted By: pglaskowsky @ 12/24/2007 12:56:25 AM
Comment: 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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