A Chilling Medical Trial
Trauma patients arriving at an emergency room here following a gunshot or knife wound may find themselves enrolled in a startling medical experiment.
Surgeons will drain their blood and replace it with freezing salt water. Without heartbeat and brain activity, the patients will be clinically dead.
And then the surgeons will try to save their lives.
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center have begun a clinical trial that pushes the boundaries of conventional surgery and, some say, medical ethics.
By inducing hypothermia and slowing metabolism in dying patients, doctors hope to buy valuable time in which to mend the victims wounds.
But scientists have never tried anything like this in humans, and the unconscious patients will not be able to consent to the procedure. Indeed, the medical center has been providing free bracelets to be worn by skittish citizens here who do not want to participate should they somehow wind up in the E.R.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/10/health/a-chilling-medical-trial.html?hp