The words from "The Ballad of Departure to Paradise" by Vladimir Vysotsky are remembered by many: "… How we all want not to die, but to fall asleep." They are the best suited to the movie "The Flight of Mr. McKinley", where they sounded for the first time: the main character dreamed of falling asleep for many years and waking up in a wonderful future. Is it possible? The 21st century has shown that science fiction is gradually becoming a reality.
SO DEEP SLEEP
Scientifically, the state of the organism, in which all processes in it are so slowed down that all visible manifestations of vital activity are absent, is called suspended animation ("ana" - no, "bios" - life). The path to the recognition of this phenomenon in the scientific world was not easy.
As often happens, it all started with mysticism. In medieval Europe, it was believed that witches, leaving their visible flesh, in fact, go to the Sabbath on a pre-chosen mountain. In the Caucasus, it is the two-headed mountain Ushba (it is translated from Georgian as "Sabbat of witches"), among the Swedes - Blokul, among the Germans - the Black Forest, among our ancestors - Bald Mountain, etc.
It is clear that science, with such widespread superstitions, did not take seriously the very possibility of suspended animation. Although even ancient people observed the process of "deep sleep" in plants: the seeds of some of them could be stored in cool places for years, and after planting in the soil, give quite viable shoots.
Apparently, this observation prompted the Dutch scientist Anthony van Leeuwenhoek in 1701 to begin a deeper study of the phenomenon itself, but not on plants, but at a higher evolutionary level - in invertebrates: mollusks, insects, worms, etc. Fortunately, by that time he had already invented microscope. In particular, experimentally, the scientist came to the conclusion that when the invertebrates lost 50-75% of the liquid, they fell asleep, and then they could stay awake again.
True, the term "suspended animation" itself appeared only a century and a half after the death of Levenguk: in 1873 it was introduced into scientific use by the German scientist Wilhelm Preyer.
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Russia also became interested in this unusual phenomenon. Professor of biophysics Porfiry Bakhmetyev at the end of the 19th century first studied suspended animation on insects. The butterfly frozen by it to minus 10⁰С came to life after the temperature increased to room temperature. Moreover, she had enough vital energy to endure several such "contrasting" experiments.
Then Bakhmetyev was the first in the world to decide on a similar experiment with mammals, taking bats for the experiment. They also came to their senses after sleeping at a low temperature.
"FROZEN" SEASON
It was already impossible to dismiss suspended animation as such, and at the beginning of the twentieth century, it began to be studied in several countries at once. Scientists have expressed a unanimous opinion: such a "hibernation" of living organisms is possible in two cases - when the body loses moisture and when it freezes. With regard to the first, the researchers simply developed what Levenguk had noticed. It turned out that when the amount of fluid in the body decreases from the usual average value of 80% of the total weight to 6%, a state of suspended animation occurs.
In turn, freezing only at first glance seems to be a simpler case. Indeed, the speed of all processes in living organisms decreases even with a slight decrease in temperature. If the state of suspended animation is maintained at very low temperatures, then it can continue for centuries and even millennia. For example, in Antarctica, using super-deep drilling (over 3 thousand meters), microorganisms were extracted from the ice mass, which froze about a million years ago. It may seem incredible, but in a comfortable temperature, they were brought back to life!
An important technological point: a living organism can be brought out of the state of suspended animation only if it is immersed in it instantly. This, in particular, was confirmed by an experiment when the spermatozoa of a rabbit were cooled to minus 78-183 ° C, and insects and small animals to minus 90-160 ° C. Only in this case the cells in the body retain their properties, since the structure of the water itself is not destroyed either - it acquires a glassy amorphous form. This is explained by the fact that with instant cooling, ice crystals do not have time to form, destroying the cell membranes.
COOL BEFORE OPERATION
Of course, scientists have been and are conducting research in pursuit of the main goal - to put suspended animation at the service of man. With the storage of seeds and products at low temperatures, everything is clear, and these technologies have been used for decades. Now it's the turn of medicine.
The case of 59-year-old American Velma Thomas became a textbook case. After her death, her relatives had already said goodbye to her, and then the pathologist got down to business. And then the woman … came to life. They began to scrupulously study the history of the disease, to interview specialist doctors. It turned out that the resuscitator Kevin Eagleston during the operation lowered the patient's head temperature - he used hypothermia. Then there was a natural rise in the ambient air, and the awakened brain gave the command "Get up!" the whole body.
Doctors have known for a long time: in case of craniocerebral trauma, strokes, injuries, it would be very desirable to euthanize the victim before being delivered to the operating table. After all, irreversible consequences occur when the body does not receive a sufficient amount of oxygen, and during anabiosis, the need for it and other substances decreases sharply. In 2015, an important step was taken in Australia - they invented a drug that puts seriously wounded people to sleep and lowers their body temperature, which makes it much more successful to evacuate them from the battlefield. That is, doctors have additional time to deliver the patient to the hospital and, accordingly, the risk of complications decreases. While this achievement of pharmacists is being checked by military doctors, and then, as is often the case, it will come to civilian health care.
At Arizona State University and the University of Maryland (USA), a project on artificial suspended animation is progressing quite successfully. So far, on sick animals: almost all the blood is removed from their body and cooled by more than 20 ° C. After the operation, the blood is reintroduced into the body and it is slowly heated to the usual temperature. Now preparations are underway for such an experiment during operations on humans.
SEE YOU IN THE XXII CENTURY
The cryopreservation procedure caused a lot of controversy. The idea itself was expressed back in 1962 by the famous American physicist Robert Ettinger. The bottom line is to freeze a deceased person in liquid nitrogen at a temperature of minus 196⁰С, having previously replaced his blood with a special solution (during this procedure, life is supported by artificial respiration and blood circulation devices). A year later, such an experiment was carried out - the first patient was Professor James Bedford, who died of cancer. His body is still in the cryogenic chamber of the American Cryonics Society's laboratory.
The ultimate goal is clear: in a state of suspended animation, a person can wait until medicine learns to cope with fatal diseases, and then he will get a real chance to resurrect. Actually, so far the technology of “defrosting” people does not exist - this is also a matter of the future. Although the dates of the revival of the first person are called different: from 2050 to 2100.
More than 200 people have been cryopreserved in the United States, almost 2,000 more have signed an agreement and are waiting in the wings. Relatively little? But the pleasure is not cheap either - up to $ 250 thousand. There are two large firms in the country specializing in this service. The legal side has been worked out to the smallest detail: the corresponding will, the official death registration, etc.
There is also cryopreservation in Russia - 35 "frozen" ones are located in a specialized storage facility in the Moscow region. By the way, last year they were joined by American Jane Heiko, who was brought from California. It is possible that the economic factor played a role - in our country the service is several times cheaper.
… In the film mentioned at the very beginning of the film, employees of the SBS company, fulfilling an order, wake up Mr. McKinley after 250 years. Only now he is met not by the world he dreamed about, but by the desert scorched by wars - life on Earth has become much worse. A pessimistic scenario? Maybe. But, as in fairy tales, there is a hint: is it worth trying to gain immortality with the help of suspended animation, if there is complete uncertainty ahead with a dubious outcome?
Oleg NIKOLAEV