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Human brain can survive very short period of time without oxygen, and survivals of prolonged deprivation of breathing generally result in permanent brain damages, which makes cryopreservation taking many minutes to refrigerate and freeze a human body unlikely to be successful.
Imagine a device, which
anyone could have at home. The device would contain a scalpels necessary to cut through the neck to reach the arteries and veins passing from the body to the brain. Next, to avoid human errors of cuting the veins and arteries manually, there would be prepared clips engineered so that once you place a clip, it cuts through the vessel and creates a bypass via the machine's internal tubes. The machine would contain a handy pump that works to suck out the blood from the body into a container with specialized walls of very high surface area to let the oxygen in carbon dioxide out, and circulate the 5 liters of human's own blood dedicatedly through the brain. The sack would contain slowly diluting vitamins and sources of energy, and extra supplies that can be activated by squeezing extra little sacks full of nutrients attached to the container.
According to BiodigitalHuman.com, there are 4 main vessels:
- 2 Common Carotid Arteries: "In human anatomy, the left and right common carotid arteries are arteries that supply the head and neck with oxygenated blood."
- 2 Internal Jugular Veins: "The two internal jugular veins collect the blood from the brain, the superficial parts of the face and the neck."
This would hopefully let the brain survive until the arrival of the emergency, where the specialized life support for the head would be provided.
Ibn al-Nadim, ”The Head”
http://books.google...v=onepage&q&f=false
A solution of oil and borax [pocmloc, Oct 01 2012]
Not for the squeamish.
http://www.ebaumswo.../video/watch/29025/
[2 fries shy of a happy meal, Oct 02 2012]
U.S. patent #4,666,425
http://patft.uspto....66425&RS=PN/4666425
Device for perfusing an animal head [4and20, Oct 08 2012]
gizmag.com
http://www.gizmag.c...itute-haem02/32465/
Artificial human blood substitute could help meet donor blood shortfall [Inyuki, Jun 12 2014]
[link]
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Brain tissue is definitely the most vulnerable to oxygen deprivation, but if the heart, lungs, and digestive tract aren't kept alive, the brain won't live long. |
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Is there something like artificial blood, or ways to replenish blood indefinitely? All what head needs to survive is blood, isn't it? |
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// Is there something like artificial blood, // |
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// or ways to replenish blood indefinitely? // |
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No. Technically, yes, but not WKTE. |
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// All what head needs to survive is blood, isn't it? // |
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Sort of. Somebody with a formal medical background can
undoubtedly explain it better than I can, but without the
neuro-feedback of the body, the brain suffers in a variety
of ways. It's all evolved to work as a complete system.
Removing a component disables the whole thing, not just
the function for which that component is responsible. |
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I have thought about this and i think it's possible,
but i don't know where you go from there. You
might preserve a conscious brain but you need to do
something about a body quite quickly and i'm not
sure that what really counts as a person, by which i
mean their actual consciousness, is really only
dependent on the brain. |
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// i think it's possible, but i don't know where you go from there // |
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The nerve endings could be assembled into a matrix, and be open to all kinds of stimulation-response experiments with computers. |
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//without the neuro-feedback of the body, the
brain suffers in a variety of ways// |
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What about high-level paraplegics? Do they have
any input/output below the neck? Also, people
with "locked in" syndrome seem to survive
though, again, I don't know what level of inputs
they have from their body. Also Stephen Hawking
seems to manage OK (but again - does he have
sensory loss or only motor?). |
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The thing is, though, under what circumstances
would you use this? It might be viable in the
event of a traumatic body injury that spared the
head. Or in the case of a heart attack; but in the
latter case, it would be simpler to maintain
circulation (perhaps by suitable pressure-pulsing-
pants) and ventilate the lungs. |
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As I said, my recall understanding of brain/body
interdependence is limited to the statements I've already
made; to illuminate further, I'd have to spend all day
digging through unlabeled boxes in search of two or three
dry, boring books that I haven't seen, much less read, in
several years (thus the invitation for better-informed
others to pick up the thread). It's one of those cases
wherein [The Alterother] read something a long time ago
and only absorbed the basic gist of it, and is now spouting
off like an expert. I don't exactly know what I'm talking
about, but I do know that I'm not making it up. |
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Thinking a little further on the idea, it's probably better to make the device pump powerful enough to push blood through the entire body. Then it just installs into a single artery (ideally the aortic arch, but you could probably use carotoid or femoral) and pulls the blood out, oxygenates it, and returns it. This keeps at least partially oxygenated blood flowing through the entire system. |
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As a practical matter, it's probably not that simple, but they do something very similar when you donate red blood cells or platelets. |
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This one creeps me out a little. What if the rest of my organs die while my brain is still alive? Now I still die, except in a much more painful/drawn out way. If CPR won't work and someone needs this device they are probably going to die anyway. |
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For the creepy, creepy record this can be done BTW. The Russians used to preserve living dog heads. IT got made into an X-Files movie. |
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It's widely baked-in-fiction. The first example that came to
mind was a character in a John Varley novel, but then I
remembered the X-Files movie as well. I didn't know the
Russians had actually done it, though it hardly surprises
me. |
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//it's probably better to make the device pump
powerful enough to push blood through the entire
body.// D'oh - if only I'd thought of that. |
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//high-level paraplegics ... people with "locked in" syndrome// |
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You're probably thinking here of people who've had the neural connections between body and brain severed ... but there's stuff that happens through the bloodstream, too. |
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//a handy pump that works to suck out the blood from the body into a container with specialized walls of very high surface area to let the oxygen in carbon dioxide out, and circulate the 5 liters of human's own blood dedicatedly through the brain// |
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By the same token, you're focusing on the blood, and ignoring the nerves. |
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//It's all evolved to work as a complete system.// |
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We should try to find out if Mike The Headless
Chicken's head lived as long and satisfying a life as
Mike The Headless Chicken did. |
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[MaxwellBuchanan], I agree entirely that living without one's body is not what most of us want, but I don't think it's a good excuse for a suicide. |
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The head alone would lack: An immune system, a
way to replenish blood (both due to no/minimal
bone marrow), 4-5 of 7 parts of the endocrine
system (thymus, pancreas, adrenal glands,
genitals, and possibly thyroid depending), and I'm
sure many others I'm missing. |
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While it is probably possible, in theory, to balance
all of those through external systems, as well as
to provide required nerve impulses, we don't have
the technology yet. |
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//we don't have the technology yet// |
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And even if we did, it would cost considerably more than 6 Million Dollars. |
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//The Russians used to preserve living dog heads.// |
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So, the head swap works.
All we'd need is the precious liquid.
I guess that's an easier probelm, and the results would be seen immediately, as compared to cryonics. |
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I think in summary - all the head needs to survive is blood - but getting blood right is problematic. |
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After all, if there existed even a half-decent synthetic blood substitute there would be very little need for blood donation. |
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In the short term perhaps yes the patient's own blood can be recycled. But unless the plan is to cryopreserve the head ASAP there's not really much of a future for it[1].
And if the plan *is* to cryopreserve the head - well, it would probably be easier to have a machine to do that straight away instead. |
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I don't think any such head transfer is an obvious target for comoditisation. If a team of humans plus unrestricted equipment in hospital wouldn't take it on. |
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[1] Some may suspect - not even then. |
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Robo-GROG... I like it. Sign me up. [+] |
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If you had your clone, you could agree upon the blood supply to each
other, in case one of you has a failing organism.
Also, I wonder, how long can one's own blood be stored, and how
much of it could one accumulate. |
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//under what circumstances would you use this?// |
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The marketing department suggests the tricoteuse demographic. |
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I almost want to say [MFD] <magic>, because the idea
doesn't offer much explanation about how this is
done. I didn't watch the dog video, but I have
watched other videos of surgeries on major blood
vessels and it's not as simple as "cut the artery and
attach a tube to it." Just finding an artery, even a
major one such as the carotid, would be a chance in
a million for an unskilled person. I think the
likelihood
of a device being able to find and fix arteries on the
fly, outside of an operating room, is approximately
zero. |
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Besides that, we have the issue mentioned by
everyone else that if the body is too badly damaged
even for CPR to help then what is left to save?
Nobody wants to live as just a brain. Not to mention,
think of the resources that will be spent trying to
save someone who is clearly a lost cause. I think we
do enough of that as it is. |
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//Nobody wants to live as just a brain.// |
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//clearly a lost cause.// |
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There's a Roald Dahl story about this. |
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