Suspended Animation?

A scientist named Mark Roth, thinks he has come up with a way to suspend life without killing it.

Mr. Roth has been researching ways to suspend the life process, with the intention of using it to save lives. He has surmised that the lack of oxygen is not what kills, it is the process caused by the low oxygen level which does the damage. He has developed a method where he uses Hydrogen Sulfide in controlled doses to suspend the life process. He then introduces oxygen to revive the subject at a later time. Initially, he started out with small creatures, like flies, and has progressed to re-animating rats. He says the possibility of using this method on humans is likely, but he is not ready for human testing yet.

He developed this method of suspending life as a result of losing his daughter to medical problems. It became a sort of quest for him, and he ended up being funded by DARPA to develop it into a way to suspend the life of a wounded soldier on the way to a battlefield aid station. It is likely to be useful for other things too. Once this technology is perfected, it is not a far stretch to imagine it being used for space travel, or other issues where time could be a limiting factor. We may also see banks of humans placed in stasis awaiting medical procedures that currently cannot be performed, for all intents and purposes dead, but able to be revived with the introduction of the proper mix of oxygen.

See his laboratory website here...

Soylent Moo?

With the global rise in population and the possibilities of food shortages, we are starting to see some interesting tidbits from the bioengineering world. Interesting is probably not the word, scary is probably better. A research group recently announced that artificially grown beef will be readily available within ten years. This beef will be grown from cloned cells, in a vat. Yum! Growing this meat has meat has already been accomplished, it is just a matter of economics to bring the costs down to a marketable level.

We are already consuming cloned cattle. Is just another step in the process of removing mankind from the natural world, or will it provide a benefit for bleak future where food is scarce?

You can find out more about this mystery meat here...