Article: How Science Could Be Reversing Death

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Groundbreaking science has recently opened the door to restoring life to human eyes up to five hours postmortem. The cessation of respiration, heartbeat, or brain activity equals death from a medical perspective, and until recently, such death appeared irreversible--a true one-way street. As long as people have lived, reanimating the dead has filled their desires and imaginations. The loss of a loved one or beloved pet to accident or illness evokes grievous longing to bring them back somehow.

One example of an untimely demise is a swimming accident which robs the brain of oxygen can cause irreversible brain damage, leaving victims in a vegetative state. Nerve cells in the brain and the eye require oxygen and the proper level of acidity to function and survive. Even short-term loss of oxygen on the order of seconds in a nerve cell will cause it to become more acidic due to the accumulation of acids in anaerobic metabolism. The same holds for muscle cells. When a person runs or works out vigorously, and their muscles cannot get enough oxygen, they use an anaerobic or low-oxygen type of energy production that makes lactic acid. Lactic acid accumulation in the muscle makes them sore after heavy exercise. Nerves inside should have neutral acidity, and just the slightest acidity will cause them to stop working and die.

Given the sensitivity and fragility of nerves in the brain and eye to proper oxygen and acid levels, scientists and doctors have always believed nerve death to be irreversible until researchers from the University of Utah, The Salk Institute, and Scripps Research Institute published their work in Nature on May 11, 2022. In an article titled "Revival of light signalling in the postmortem mouse and human retina," Dr. Fatima Abbas and others describe their research that restored life to dead nerves from the eyes of deceased people and mice. (nature.com) The eye's retina contains a complex set of nerve cells that detect light and convert those detections into signals that go to the brain. Researchers using sensitive electrical equipment and flashing lights can measure neural activity in the retina. They see a rapid decline in activity one to two minutes after blood flow to the retina has ceased. However, in a stunning discovery, Dr. Abbas and others developed a physiological solution containing nutrition and oxygen that could revive dead retina nerves up to 5 hours after death! They showed that the nerves not only came back, but the nerves also communicated with each other, indicating a return of function to the retina.

From a physiological point of view, death refers to the loss of respiration, heartbeat, or brain activity. Everyone has experienced the loss from death and felt the pain of its finality. Throughout history, people have told cautionary taless of the dead coming back to life, and the death of nerve cells has been declared irreversible from a scientific point of view. Remarkably, research scientists a few weeks ago revealed to the world that they could revive dead nerves in retinas from dead humans and mice using an oxygenated solution up to 5 hours after death. In one fell swoop, the irreversible death of nerves has been disproven. Such a finding has opened the door to new research and hopes for new procedures to revive nervous function and take us one step closer to making whole eye transplants a reality.

Dr. Smith’s career in scientific and information research spans the areas of bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, toxicology, and chemistry. He has published a number of peer-reviewed scientific papers. He has worked over the past seventeen years developing advanced analytics, machine learning, and knowledge management tools to enable research and support high-level decision making. Tim completed his Ph.D. in Toxicology at Cornell University and a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Washington.

You can buy his book on Amazon in paperback and in kindle format here.