For centuries, humans have tried to bring people back from the dead and, as far as we know, every attempt has failed. In modern times, those looking to cheat the Grim Reaper have resorted to cryogenics. This low-temperature preservation of the human body gives people hope that one day, when science evolves, they can be brought back to life with future technology. But now, scientists are working on new experiments that may lead to the eventual reanimation of the dead.
Indian specialist Dr Himanshu Bansal and biotech companies Bioquark Inc and Revita Life Sciences have been granted ethical permission by an Institutional Review Board to attempt to bring brain dead patients back to life by regrowing their brain tissue. “This represents the first trial of its kind and another step towards the eventual reversal of death in our lifetime,” Dr. Ira Pastor, the CEO of Bioquark Inc. said. “We just received approval for our first 20 subjects and we hope to start recruiting patients immediately from this first site – we are working with the hospital now to identify families where there may be a religious or medical barrier to organ donation.”
The doctors have received permission to experiment on twenty medically-certified brain-dead patients who are currently on life-support to prevent the decomposition of their bodies. Because the central nervous system does not have the ability to heal, these patients have no hope of regenerating any dead brain tissue. Their only hope is that the brain’s natural plasticity will allow its healthy areas to compensate for those that have been damaged. “With amphibians, you can blow their brains apart, in some case remove them entirely, and the brain grows back,” Pastor says. “We’re focusing on developing proteins and other biomolecules to recapitulate these dynamics in humans.”
According to Pastor, the group of researchers plans to bring the patients back from brain death by “combining biologic regenerative medicine tools with other existing medical devices typically used for stimulation of the central nervous system, in patients with other severe disorders of consciousness.” They will first give the patients’ brains injections of stem cells while their spinal cords will receive infusions of beneficial chemicals. Then they will undergo the same type of nerve stimulation that has been effective in bringing people back from comas.
The team of researchers is set to begin their work at Anupam Hospital in Rudrapur, Uttarakhand in India. After their initial treatments, the patients will be monitored in the following months by brain imaging technology that will search for any signs of regeneration. If the researchers fail at generating any healthy brain tissue, its work may still prove beneficial in other areas of neuroscience. “Through our study, we will gain unique insights into the state of human brain death,” Dr. Sergei Paylian said. “Which will have important connections to future therapeutic development for other severe disorders of consciousness, such as coma, and the vegetative and minimally conscious states, as well as a range of degenerative CNS conditions, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.”
https://youtu.be/cqMnPeFwzOc