realitycorrodes
7th April 2013, 06:02
http://www.monroeinstitute.org/thehub/back-from-the-dead
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/back_from_the_dead_kghyCkyk8MEEGjSSVmwAhM
Back from the Dead
April 05, 2013
“New York researchers are bringing people back to life hours after they pass. And it could change our definition of what ‘dying’ really is.”
From The New York Post. By Maureen Callahan
Early one afternoon in August 2009, Joe Tiralosi, a 57-year-old professional driver in excellent health, began sweating profusely. He wasn’t alarmed, though — it was, after all, summer in New York City. Tiralosi had just pulled out of a car wash and was heading home to Brooklyn, so he cranked up the air conditioning and figured he’d be fine.
One hour later, Tiralosi was so weak that he felt incapable of driving the car one more block. A colleague found Tiralosi slumped in his car at Second Avenue and 80th Street and rushed him to New York-Presbyterian, where Tiralosi collapsed and died. He’d suffered cardiac arrest.
CPR was performed, but after 10 minutes, doctors still couldn’t get a pulse — and 10 minutes has, for decades, been the metric in medicine. A patient who cannot be revived in that time frame has the potential to suffer massive brain damage, but in Tiralosi’s case, doctors kept at it.
After 20 minutes, they still couldn’t get a pulse. At this point, it’s up to the individual doctor whether to keep going. Tiralosi’s did, even after half an hour had passed, after his heart had been shocked six times. In fact, they kept going after 40 minutes — way past what modern medicine considers viable.
______________________________________________________________________________________
“Death itself we can reverse,” says Dr. Sam Parnia, director of resuscitation research at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “We have the scientific means.”
______________________________________________________________________________________
Less than three weeks later, Joe Tiralosi walked out of the hospital and back to his old life in Brooklyn, to his wife and his job, not a thing wrong with him physically or cognitively. And he is just one of thousands who, in recent years, have been dead for unprecedented lengths of time — two, three, five hours — and brought back to life, healthy and whole.
“Death itself we can reverse,” says Dr. Sam Parnia, director of resuscitation research at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “We have the scientific means.”
With Josh Young, Parnia has just published an astonishing new book called Erasing Death: The Science That is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death (HarperOne).
The implications are as revolutionary as the discovery of fire and electricity, the invention of aviation and manned space flight, the A-bomb and the Internet.
“For millennia, we couldn’t do anything when someone stopped breathing,” he says. “Now, we’re almost having to redefine the way we think about death.”
The science is still in its infancy, and successful resuscitation requires two non-negotiables: a treatable underlying cause of death, such as a clogged artery or fluid in the lungs, and a body that has been cooled, either naturally or artificially. It’s the cooling that retards cell death in the body and the brain, protecting against cognitive impairment.
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/back_from_the_dead_kghyCkyk8MEEGjSSVmwAhM
Back from the Dead
April 05, 2013
“New York researchers are bringing people back to life hours after they pass. And it could change our definition of what ‘dying’ really is.”
From The New York Post. By Maureen Callahan
Early one afternoon in August 2009, Joe Tiralosi, a 57-year-old professional driver in excellent health, began sweating profusely. He wasn’t alarmed, though — it was, after all, summer in New York City. Tiralosi had just pulled out of a car wash and was heading home to Brooklyn, so he cranked up the air conditioning and figured he’d be fine.
One hour later, Tiralosi was so weak that he felt incapable of driving the car one more block. A colleague found Tiralosi slumped in his car at Second Avenue and 80th Street and rushed him to New York-Presbyterian, where Tiralosi collapsed and died. He’d suffered cardiac arrest.
CPR was performed, but after 10 minutes, doctors still couldn’t get a pulse — and 10 minutes has, for decades, been the metric in medicine. A patient who cannot be revived in that time frame has the potential to suffer massive brain damage, but in Tiralosi’s case, doctors kept at it.
After 20 minutes, they still couldn’t get a pulse. At this point, it’s up to the individual doctor whether to keep going. Tiralosi’s did, even after half an hour had passed, after his heart had been shocked six times. In fact, they kept going after 40 minutes — way past what modern medicine considers viable.
______________________________________________________________________________________
“Death itself we can reverse,” says Dr. Sam Parnia, director of resuscitation research at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “We have the scientific means.”
______________________________________________________________________________________
Less than three weeks later, Joe Tiralosi walked out of the hospital and back to his old life in Brooklyn, to his wife and his job, not a thing wrong with him physically or cognitively. And he is just one of thousands who, in recent years, have been dead for unprecedented lengths of time — two, three, five hours — and brought back to life, healthy and whole.
“Death itself we can reverse,” says Dr. Sam Parnia, director of resuscitation research at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. “We have the scientific means.”
With Josh Young, Parnia has just published an astonishing new book called Erasing Death: The Science That is Rewriting the Boundaries Between Life and Death (HarperOne).
The implications are as revolutionary as the discovery of fire and electricity, the invention of aviation and manned space flight, the A-bomb and the Internet.
“For millennia, we couldn’t do anything when someone stopped breathing,” he says. “Now, we’re almost having to redefine the way we think about death.”
The science is still in its infancy, and successful resuscitation requires two non-negotiables: a treatable underlying cause of death, such as a clogged artery or fluid in the lungs, and a body that has been cooled, either naturally or artificially. It’s the cooling that retards cell death in the body and the brain, protecting against cognitive impairment.