Hibernation Raises Medical Hopes

When heart surgery require doctors to stop a person's circulatory system, they reduce the patient's body temperature to 64 degrees Fahrenheit.

Eight years ago, a Swedish woman fell into a frozen river and remained there for over an hour, her body temperature dropping to 57 degrees fahrenheit. She was flown to a hospital, warmed up and revived.

Hypothermia is a form of hibernation -- or, in more glamorous argot, suspended animation -- and these procedures and anecdotes hint at the medically protective benefits of a full-body slowdown.

Some scientists hope the ability to hibernate is latent in humans, left over from some distant trunk of the evolutionary tree, and that hibernation may eventually be harnessed to treat injury and disease:

"Seventy or 80 years ago, if someone said 'suspended animation,' it would sound like science fiction. But with the research that's developed recently, it's beginning to seem more realistic," said Lisa Leon, a U.S. Army research physiologist who co-chaired the suspended animation symposium.

The Army is interested in being able to slow a soldier's metabolism to curb the effects of heatstroke, among other injuries, Leon said.

The heart rates of groundhogs and ground squirrels drop from 150 beats per minute to about seven - and their respiration slows to a point where they only draw breath once every three to four minutes, experts say. Fattened up for the winter, they also fast for up to seven months, but somehow avoid getting sick.

If humans could do that on cue, they would have more time to survive injuries that cause blood loss and damaged organs, experts say.

Suspended disbelief in suspended animation [Baltimore Sun]
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Image: Jökull Auðunsson*