

New Research Can Preserve Organs for 10 Days - kkleiner
http://singularityhub.com/2010/05/05/harvard-can-preserve-organs-for-10-days-restarts-heart-outside-body-video/

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DanielBMarkham
Best science story I have seen in months.

I bet this is keying off the exsanguination and Hydrogen Sulfide work we've
read about before in places like Scientific American -- where cell damage
happens in the transition to a low oxygen environment, not necessarily being
in one.

Aside from the far-out dream of cryogenics, of which I'm a big fan, this has
_huge_ implications for surgery. If you can take a person into hibernation for
a day, working at your leisure, you can do all sorts of things that we
couldn't do before.

Huge, huge story.

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yan
Do you follow a specific set of blogs/publications to keep up with biohacking
news or do you just consume what you come across?

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DanielBMarkham
I'm specifically interesting in hibernation, cryogenics, suspended animation,
etc.

I just scan several science sites and look for those terms.

(When my browser comes up, I have 43 tabs for my home page)

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yan
Would you care to share what they are? (As many feeds as I subscribe to, I'm
always interested in new sources)

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fendrak
The part of the article I want to know more about is the post mortem organ
harvest. How long after death did they wait before harvesting the heart?

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steve19
This is sure to create a global blackmarket for organs.

Chinese execution harvesters will now be able to export their wares globally.

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geuis
They didn't actually store and revive a heart after ten days. They
extrapolated the estimate based on tissue samples taken over the coure of a
few hours.

To better understand if and how Somah preserved a heart, Thatte and his group
harvested two female pig hearts and placed them in two different containers.
One was filled with Somah, the other with Celsior from Genzyme – the standard
chemical bath which preserves organs in hospitals today. As described in the
journal Circulation, the team took tissue samples every four hours from each
heart. They found that the Somah heart had a much lower rate of cell decay,
including important cardiomyocyte and endothelial cells which are necessary
for the heart to work in a new host. Based on this research they concluded
that hearts preserved in Somah should be viable for up to 10 days. Celsior can
store the organ for 4 hours. That’s an epic difference.

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jws
Plenty of time for an eBay auction!

Seriously though, this probably complicates organ allocation tremendously.
Right now they only have to consider the relatively small pool of recipients
that are compatible _and_ close enough to hit the window. There may be scaling
issues.

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a-priori
Having "scaling issues" would be a nice problem to have. That would be a hell
of a lot better than the perpetual organ shortages we have now.

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jacquesm
That video is disturbing.

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yanw
It's as impressive as it is creepy.

