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[Bruce Klein]

The Doctor Will Freeze You Now
How low-temperature surgery could kick-start the cryo game.
By Wil McCarthy -- Issue 12.05 - May 2004

"I should prefer to an ordinary death, being immersed with a few friends in a cask of Madeira, until that time, then to be recalled to life by the solar warmth of my dear country! But in all probability, we live in a century too little advanced, and too near the infancy of science, to see such an art brought in our time to its perfection."

Benjamin Franklin wrote these words in 1773. And what if the old guy was onto something? What if life had a Skip button, like the one on your TiVo? Then you could go offline until next year, when your medication will be approved, or next decade, when your bonds will have matured, or even next century, when life is scheduled (finally!) to become perfect.

A company called BioTime shares the dream. BioTime deals in ultra-profound hypothermia, the body's last stop before freezing. Suspended animation isn't in the prospectus - yet. For the moment, this 10-person outfit is helping doctors chill their patients during heart, brain, and vascular surgery, where lower temperature translates into more available time on the operating table, less potential for blood loss, and fewer post-op complications.

Major surgery can be hell on a patient, and procedures that require interrupting blood flow can be the worst because they starve the body of oxygen. To prepare for stopping the heart, for instance, doctors divert the bloodstream through a heart-lung machine that circulates the entire blood volume 30 to 60 times an hour. The machine can release air bubbles into the bloodstream, bringing on cognitive loss and personality change. It also ruptures red blood cells, spilling free hemoglobin into bodily organs, where it's toxic. Meanwhile, white blood cells, finding themselves surrounded by plastic tubing, go into a sort of immunological panic mode. The resulting inflammation can cause capillaries to leak, especially in the brain.

more: http://www.wired.com...tw=wn_tophead_5

[bgwowk]

While BioTime is making moves toward making a cold asanguineous (bloodless) perfusion solution commercially available to surgeons, it should be noted that these kind of experiments have a long history. 20 years ago Alcor (with Jerry Leaf's company Cryovita) developed solutions permitting dogs to be maintained for 4 hours a few degrees above 0 degC without harm

http://www.alcor.org...y/html/tbw.html

The earliest experiments of this sort actually go back 40 years, as explained at

page 4 of

http://www.alcor.org...ryonics8705.txt

In the 1990s other institutions also published papers showing recovery of dogs after hours of cold storage near 0 degC, including storage with complete circulatory arrest. Since Biotime rarely acknowledges this work, I just want to set the historical record straight. As far as I can see, there is no new basic science or breakthrough discussed in the Wired story.

---BrianW