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Bringing The (Clinically) Dead Back To Life (ReAnima Project)

rynner2

Gone But Not Forgotten
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Mad scientists, or what..?
Dead could be brought 'back to life' in groundbreaking project
Sarah Knapton, Science Editor
3 May 2016 12:15pm

A groundbreaking trial to see if it is possible to regenerate the brains of dead people, has won approval from health watchdogs.
A biotech company in the US has been granted ethical permission to recruit 20 patients who have been declared clinically dead from a traumatic brain injury, to test whether parts of their central nervous system can be brought back to life.

Scientists will use a combination of therapies, which include injecting the brain with stem cells and a cocktail of peptides, as well as deploying lasers and nerve stimulation techniques which have been shown to bring patients out of comas.

The trial participants will have been certified dead and only kept alive through life support. They will be monitored for several months using brain imaging equipment to look for signs of regeneration, particularly in the upper spinal cord - the lowest region of the brain stem which controls independent breathing and heartbeat.

The team believes that the brain stem cells may be able to erase their history and re-start life again, based on their surrounding tissue – a process seen in the animal kingdom in creatures like salamanders who can regrow entire limbs.

Dr Ira Pastor, the CEO of Bioquark Inc. said: “This represents the first trial of its kind and another step towards the eventual reversal of death in our lifetime.
“We just received approval for our first 20 subjects and we hope to start recruiting patients immediately from this first site – we are working with the hospital now to identify families where there may be a religious or medical barrier to organ donation.

"To undertake such a complex initiative, we are combining biologic regenerative medicine tools with other existing medical devices typically used for stimulation of the central nervous system, in patients with other severe disorders of consciousness.
“We hope to see results within the first two to three months."

The ReAnima Project has just received approach from an Institutional Review Board at the National Institutes of Health in the US and in India, and the team plans to start recruiting patients immediately.
The first stage, named 'First In Human Neuro-Regeneration & Neuro-Reanimation' will be a non-randomised, single group 'proof of concept' and will take place at Anupam Hospital in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand India.

The peptides will be administered into the spinal cord daily via a pump, with the stem cells given bi-weekly, over the course of a 6 week period.
Dr Pastor added: "It is a long term vision of ours that a full recovery in such patients is a possibility, although that is not the focus of this first study – but it is a bridge to that eventuality."

etc...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/...ought-back-to-life-in-groundbreaking-project/
 
Cure for death found? :eek:
 
Blimey, that's proper nightmare fuel - just imagine being one of the first poor sods they trial this on, assuming it's not a complete failure. When it's a mature technology, then maybe, but I've no desire to try being an early adopter :eek: (and not just because I'm quite happy with my current position on the mortality continuum).
 
What possibilities does this hold for the cryonics business, I wonder? Creator Robert Ettinger said it would be a trillion dollar industry eventually, could this finally prove him right?
 
Dead-on.

We'll find-out damn soon, if there's merit, money or madness in flogging the flogging of dead horses.

To apply a crude technolological analogy: memory can take many forms. At a non-adaptive, primal, sequential level, mere biological BIOS evokes predictable jerks and jumps, and the most-primordal interactability with the outerworld. Phenomonological non-sentient somethingness. A corpse can kick.

Neurological pathways, once well-trod (and fundamentally-formative) exist. Tracks, sectors, non-volatile but now unindexed. Not so much the 'what', more the well-worn 'who' and 'how', more the recollection of style/manner/persona. But now, post vivo fragmenta. The undulating folds of mid-brain are no longer spinning, the shattered shards of self tantalisingly-glitter like a broken mirror. Remake, repair, but how: a broken 4D jigsaw which has no rebuild reference...

And the spirito sancti ....vital volatility, Randomly Accessible Memories that represent the existential continuity of person, the relay race that is life (punctuated by sleep, concussion, drink, drugs, dementia and dreary death)....the most flighty fitful fancy of all. Where would that be, when this rude reawakening was applied to a cadaver?

I think we all know, don't we, dear reader?

Or, more truthfully: we know wherein it resideth not.
 
It's quite scary. What with 68 billion odd neurons and 10 connection apiece, there's simply no way to know how to go about this or even to be certain that some half-human gibbering loon won't be brought to consciousness in unspeakable agony and torment. Horrible idea.
 
It's quite scary. What with 68 billion odd neurons and 10 connection apiece, there's simply no way to know how to go about this or even to be certain that some half-human gibbering loon won't be brought to consciousness in unspeakable agony and torment. Horrible idea.
My thoughts exactly.
Even in the best outcome, I suspect there will be huge gaps in a patient's memories - so they'd have to do a LOT of re-learning.
 
First thing I thought when I read the article - "They could end up creating real zombies."

The team say,
"It is a long term vision of ours that a full recovery in such patients is a possibility, although that is not the focus of this first study – but it is a bridge to that eventuality."

I fear for the subjects of this first study - and maybe subsequent 'studies' also.
 
First thing I thought when I read the article - "They could end up creating real zombies."

The team say,
"It is a long term vision of ours that a full recovery in such patients is a possibility, although that is not the focus of this first study – but it is a bridge to that eventuality."

I fear for the subjects of this first study - and maybe subsequent 'studies' also.
Maybe that's what they're after? Cheaper than robots.
NWO/Illuminati army of the future.
 
Experiment to raise the dead blocked in India
By Priyanka PullaNov. 14, 2016 , 2:30 PM

BENGALURU, INDIA—The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has derailed a controversial experiment that would seek to revive brain-dead accident victims. On 11 November, ICMR’s National Institute of Medical Statistics removed the “ReAnima” trial from India’s clinical trial registry.

In May, Himanshu Bansal, an orthopedic surgeon at Anupam Hospital in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand, announced plans to give around 20 brain-dead people a mix of interventions including injections of mesenchymal stem cells and peptides, and transcranial laser stimulation and median nerve stimulation. Transcranial laser stimulation involves shining pulses of near-infrared light into the brain; median nerve stimulation is the electrical stimulation of a major nerve that runs from the neck to the arm. Both techniques have been shown to improve cognition in patients with traumatic brain injury. Bioquark, a biotech firm based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had agreed to supply the trial with peptides that are said to help regenerate brain cells.

In interviews with Indian media in the spring, Bansal described his aim as bringing brain-dead individuals back to a “minimally conscious state” in which patients show flickers of consciousness, such as moving their eyes to track objects. Although there is scant evidence that brain-dead people can recover such function, Bansal says the medical literature describes a significant number of cases of people who have recovered full consciousness from a minimally conscious state.

Other researchers point out that it is improbable that the ReAnima trial—which hasn’t yet begun—would achieve its goals. “While there have been numerous demonstrations in recent years that the human brain and nervous system may not be as fixed and irreparable as is typically assumed, the idea that brain death could be easily reversed seems very far-fetched,” Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist at the United Kingdom’s Cardiff University, told The Telegraph. Medical journals have on occasion carried reports of brain-dead individuals on life support returning to a fully functional state, but researchers have argued that such cases are hard to interpret and often lack evidence of brain death such as the apnea test, a measure of whether the person’s brain stem is making an effort to breathe.

Scientists and physicians are also raising concerns about whether the ReAnima trial is ethically justified. One concern is that the mix of interventions has not been tested in animal models. On their own, the treatments the ReAnima trial would use have shown promise in people with traumatic brain injury, says Amar Jesani, editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics in Mumbai. “But once brain stem death has taken place, and there is no cognition or consciousness, one cannot rely on a few disconnected studies. Why couldn’t they combine these interventions and do proper animal studies?” And even if the experiment were to succeed, he asserts, bringing a brain-dead person back to a minimally conscious state would traumatize family members. ...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/experiment-raise-dead-blocked-india

What do you think?

Should these type of experiments be allowed, even encouraged?
 
Experiment to raise the dead blocked in India
By Priyanka PullaNov. 14, 2016 , 2:30 PM

BENGALURU, INDIA—The Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) has derailed a controversial experiment that would seek to revive brain-dead accident victims. On 11 November, ICMR’s National Institute of Medical Statistics removed the “ReAnima” trial from India’s clinical trial registry.

In May, Himanshu Bansal, an orthopedic surgeon at Anupam Hospital in the north Indian state of Uttarakhand, announced plans to give around 20 brain-dead people a mix of interventions including injections of mesenchymal stem cells and peptides, and transcranial laser stimulation and median nerve stimulation. Transcranial laser stimulation involves shining pulses of near-infrared light into the brain; median nerve stimulation is the electrical stimulation of a major nerve that runs from the neck to the arm. Both techniques have been shown to improve cognition in patients with traumatic brain injury. Bioquark, a biotech firm based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, had agreed to supply the trial with peptides that are said to help regenerate brain cells.

In interviews with Indian media in the spring, Bansal described his aim as bringing brain-dead individuals back to a “minimally conscious state” in which patients show flickers of consciousness, such as moving their eyes to track objects. Although there is scant evidence that brain-dead people can recover such function, Bansal says the medical literature describes a significant number of cases of people who have recovered full consciousness from a minimally conscious state.

Other researchers point out that it is improbable that the ReAnima trial—which hasn’t yet begun—would achieve its goals. “While there have been numerous demonstrations in recent years that the human brain and nervous system may not be as fixed and irreparable as is typically assumed, the idea that brain death could be easily reversed seems very far-fetched,” Dean Burnett, a neuroscientist at the United Kingdom’s Cardiff University, told The Telegraph. Medical journals have on occasion carried reports of brain-dead individuals on life support returning to a fully functional state, but researchers have argued that such cases are hard to interpret and often lack evidence of brain death such as the apnea test, a measure of whether the person’s brain stem is making an effort to breathe.

Scientists and physicians are also raising concerns about whether the ReAnima trial is ethically justified. One concern is that the mix of interventions has not been tested in animal models. On their own, the treatments the ReAnima trial would use have shown promise in people with traumatic brain injury, says Amar Jesani, editor of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics in Mumbai. “But once brain stem death has taken place, and there is no cognition or consciousness, one cannot rely on a few disconnected studies. Why couldn’t they combine these interventions and do proper animal studies?” And even if the experiment were to succeed, he asserts, bringing a brain-dead person back to a minimally conscious state would traumatize family members. ...

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/experiment-raise-dead-blocked-india

What do you think?

Should these type of experiments be allowed, even encouraged?

I read about this before, AND more recently an article which looked at living/beating heart cadavers. Despite brain death, these bodies still function. There were also a couple of cases of people who have been declared brain dead and they have reanimated just as their organs were about to be harvested. I just wish I could remember where I read about this.
 
Here's an update - a July 2019 article about BioQuark and the ReAnima Project ...
Philly-Based Bioquark Wants a Shot at Bringing the Dead Back to Life

Ira Pastor, the company’s CEO, wants to help humans tap into their regeneration superpowers. But is reviving the brain dead ethical or even possible?

Did you know a salamander can regrow its limbs and organs?

It’s one of those lesser-known facts that you might share at a dinner party to impress your friends. For researcher and businessman Ira Pastor, the salamander’s extraordinary capabilities inspired the creation of a company that wants to prove humans can regrow limbs, and brains, too.

“We are a company that is very interested in regenerative biology, specifically all of the organisms that are good at regenerating parts of their bodies,” said Pastor, who is chief executive officer of the Center City, Philadelphia life sciences company Bioquark. ...

The company has multiple clinical studies underway to further explore these topics. But it is Bioquark’s ReAnima Project that has drawn both harsh criticism and curiosity from experts across the medical community. The proof of concept study proposes a combination therapy that includes injecting stem cells into the spinal cords of patients who have been declared brain dead due to traumatic brain injury, with hopes of reversing brain death. In other words, bringing the patient back to life. Critics say it simply can’t be done — the human brain is not and will never be capable of revival. Others believe we won’t know until we try.

Pastor has tried and tried again.

Over the past three years, Bioquark has launched various iterations of the Phase I trial but has yet to publish results due to reported challenges obtaining regulatory approvals abroad and a failure to enroll enough participants. ...
FULL STORY: https://www.phillymag.com/healthcare-news/2019/07/25/bioquark-brain-dead-reanima-project-ira-pastor/
 
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