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.
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To Treat the Dead
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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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