BioQuark's scandalous experiment to revive a person in a state of near-death was officially banned by the Indian authorities, the Science magazine news service reports.
In the spring of this year, the US regulatory authorities issued BioQuark the first authorization in the history of medicine for experiments in which employees of this company will try to restore some of the brain functions using a synthetic protein codenamed BQ-A, special stem cells, laser brain stimulation and electrical stimulation of the median nerve. …
The experiments themselves, as originally planned by BioQuark specialists, were to be carried out not in the United States, but in India, in a hospital in the city of Rudrapur, where scientists planned to recruit a group of 20 "volunteers" in a state of clinical death, whose relatives agreed to donate the bodies of the deceased for scientific experiments.
Strokes and various head injuries often lead a person into a condition that doctors call "brain death." In such cases, the patient's body is still alive if it is supported by artificial respiration and waste removal, but the brain is no longer functioning. In fact, a person in such a state can already be considered dead, since he cannot live independently.
The reason for the onset of "brain death", as scientists from BioQuark explain, is that the lower parts of the brain stem, which are located at the base of the neck and are critical for human life, die as a result of injury or chronic lack of oxygen. Their death, as a rule, is fatal for a person, since without them our body is not even able to breathe on its own and control the work of the heart.
Using BQ-A injections, stem cells and laser pulses, the scientists hoped to "restart" the brains of deceased Indians, but this will likely never happen again - this week, the Indian Medical Research Council (ICMR) removed the experiments, codenamed ReAnima from the list of experiments to be conducted in India this year.
According to ICMR representatives, this decision was made for formal reasons - BioQuark and its Indian partners did not receive permission to conduct such experiments from the Chief Pharmacist of India, who must approve the use of BQ-A and other drugs that scientists planned to use.
The story could have ended there, but the very decision to terminate the experiment is the prerogative of the Chief Pharmacist, who has not yet commented on the ICMR's decision and has not talked about a possible ban or permission of the experiments.
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The representatives of BioQuark themselves, as Science reports, do not consider such a ban to be a problem, since in this case they will simply transfer the experiment to more friendly countries. The successful completion of these experiments, scientists hope, will pave the way for more ambitious projects to save the brain from dying from coma, vegetative state, and various degenerative brain diseases.
