
A Feasible Approach to Human Stasis for Long-Duration Deep Space Missions - kawera
http://spaceworkseng.com/a-feasible-near-term-approach-to-human-stasis-for-long-duration-deep-space-missions/
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neotrope
From the linked research:

> More recently in the news was the miraculous survival of a 16-year-old boy
> who stowed away in the wheel hub of a Boeing 747 travelling to Hawaii. He
> survived freezing temperatures and very low oxygen levels occurring at the
> 38,000 ft flight altitude for several hours and recovered with no medical
> complications. Doctors speculate that his body quickly entered a hibernative
> state due to the rapid temperature drop thus permitting him to survive at
> the minimal oxygen levels.

This example where something unique occurs but our ethics prevent us from
anything beyond speculation, makes me wonder how much faster we could expand
our understanding of medical science by instituting a voluntary and humane
program for human experimentation.

Is such a concept inherently contradictory or can it be done?

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URSpider94
It’s very hard to structure such a program. Just some concerns: \- even if
it’s voluntary, how do we ensure that volunteers are not coerced? \- how do we
validate that volunteers truly comprehend the risks? \- how do we ensure that
volunteers are of sound mind and not suicidal? \- if someone is gravely
injured or disabled in the experiment, is the institution prepared to care for
them for the rest of their life? \- if we offer compensation, how do we
account for the fact that people of lower socio-economic status will be more
likely to take that compensation for the same risk?

Keep in mind that we are also only 70 years away from some striking cases of
the Medical-government complex in multiple countries performing some horrid
experiments on human subjects without their consent.

~~~
darawk
> how do we ensure that volunteers are not coerced?

Speak to them privately, away from any outside influences. This seems like a
pretty reasonable way to ensure someone isn't coerced. I suppose there are
complex situations (e.g. someone is holding your children hostage) where this
may not be sufficient, but it's unclear why someone would go to that trouble
to coerce someone to lend themselves to such an experiment. This seems like
mostly a non-issue.

> how do we validate that volunteers truly comprehend the risks?

Have a psychiatrist/psychologist interview them. Give them a long cooling off
period, so that it's not a spur of the moment decision. Require the sign-off
of the psychiatrist/psychologist, or panel thereof before approval.

> how do we ensure that volunteers are of sound mind and not suicidal?

Why do you need to do that? If someone wants to kill themselves, we might as
well let them contribute to humanity in so doing.

> if someone is gravely injured or disabled in the experiment, is the
> institution prepared to care for them for the rest of their life?

We could decide that they must be, if we felt that was necessary.

> if we offer compensation, how do we account for the fact that people of
> lower socio-economic status will be more likely to take that compensation
> for the same risk?

Why is that a problem? People often point this out, but I don't really get it.
Let's phrase it another way: Why shouldn't we give poor people agency over
themselves and their situation? The fact that poorer people are more _get_ the
option to do this thing that could improve their situation seems like only a
great thing to me. This only gives them a new choice that they didn't
previously have - it's hard for me to see how that could be a bad thing.

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andrepd
>> if we offer compensation, how do we account for the fact that people of
lower socio-economic status will be more likely to take that compensation for
the same risk?

>Why is that a problem?

You don't understand why this is a problem because, I'd wager, you're not in
this situation yourself.

It's absolutely perverse that, instead of striving for a more egalitarian
society, we would effectively force the most vulnerable among to sell
themselves to scientific experiments to survive (incidentally, the premise of
"Every sperm is sacred", comedy song from Monty Python).

~~~
darawk
> It's absolutely perverse that, instead of striving for a more egalitarian
> society, we would effectively force the most vulnerable among to sell
> themselves to scientific experiments to survive

So, you think the situation they're in now, where they don't have this option,
is preferable to the one where they do have this option? Nobody said anything
about 'instead of', either.

The point is: unless you have a perfectly egalitarian society, some people
will have more stuff and other people will have less. Jobs offering stuff are,
inherently, more attractive to those who currently have less stuff. There is
nothing wrong about that, in fact, that's the mechanism by which people with
less stuff acquire more stuff. Why, exactly, do you believe they shouldn't be
able to make that choice for themselves?

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simonh
It is unethical to perform such experiments on people regardless of what they
say or why. It’s like I tell my children. We strive to be polite to other
people because of who we are, not because of who they are. That’s what ethics
is about.

To approach it another way, as long as one group of people has an economic
benefit from abusing another group, there’s a problem. There’s no way you can
ever be certain enough that such a system is being administered fairly and
competently. The bureaucratic and ethical abuses and mistakes we get already
are bad enough.

Finally, I f anyone is in such a desperate situation that this looks like a
good option, then surely there must be other ethical options available for
society to intervene?

~~~
darawk
> It is unethical to perform such experiments on people regardless of what
> they say or why.

Why? Why shouldn't these people be free to make that choice for themselves?

> To approach it another way, as long as one group of people has an economic
> benefit from abusing another group, there’s a problem.

How, exactly, are you defining 'abuse'? Is it abuse to offer someone money to
do something? It's hard to see how it could be abusive to give someone an
option that they didn't previously have.

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cecilpl2
There is a large group of people who are at the mercy of the system. They do
not have the ability to be self-sufficient and are reliant on social
assistance.

There is now an incentive for the people who control the system to reduce the
level of social assistance, because in so doing they increase the number of
people who "voluntarily" submit to risky experimentation.

This proposal seems like adding a new option on an individual level, but on a
social level it paradoxically leads to a situation where that group has less
choice.

It's like playing the game of chicken on a road where the first person to
swerve from a head-on collision loses. Paradoxically the winning move is to
visibly remove your own choice by throwing your steering wheel out the window.

More choice is not always better.

~~~
darawk
> There is now an incentive for the people who control the system to reduce
> the level of social assistance, because in so doing they increase the number
> of people who "voluntarily" submit to risky experimentation.

That's quite the logical leap there. And is one that could be made about
literally _any_ effort to help the poor, so, i'm not quite sure you've made
your point.

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mattkrause
DARPA just announced a somewhat related program, called Biostasis. The
emphasis is a little different—-they are interested in battlefield
medicine—but there’s bound to be some overlap.

[https://www.darpa.mil/news-events/2018-03-01](https://www.darpa.mil/news-
events/2018-03-01)

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dps
Does the combination of hypothermic state and medically induced coma
(“hibernation”) have a prolonging impact on life expectancy? The lower
metabolic rate would intuitively suggest that’s a possibility. It’s
interesting to think about how this technology, even ahead of use in travel to
deep space could be used as a forward only time machine.

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truculation
If the sci-fi I've been reading lately is any guide, one of the greatest
threats to humans in stasis will be sabotage by ideological fanatics.

~~~
salutonmundo
Or, if you want to go the classic route, ship's A.I.s with personality
complexes.

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mozumder
Minimized ischemic injury isn't zero ischemic injury. Until it'z zero, it
can't really be used for long-term (years).

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tomtoise
This was an absolutely fascinating read, the paper isn't too dense for a
layman to read and understand. Finished reading the paper and it definitely
makes space travel seem more within our grasp.

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dpeckett
Hypothetical question, if gene editing in humans became an accepted thing. I
wonder how preserved our metabolic pathways and genes for long term
hibernation are.

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35bge57dtjku
Why not go to a lower temp?

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cbhl
Ice destroys the cell walls and thawing turns you to mush.

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tytytytytytytyt
> TH is a medical treatment in which an injured patient’s body temperature is
> lowered to 32-34°C (89-93°F) in order to slow the body’s metabolism and
> minimize ischemic injury.

It looks like they aren't even trying to get close to freezing.

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cbhl
Indeed, although all the anecdotes in section 3.5 refer to instances where the
temperature outside of the body would have been below freezing.

