It’s one of those stories you hear about sometimes: a person or an animal gets frozen to death (or locked in the freezer for 19 hours) yet somehow, after reviving them and heating them back up, they wake up alive, rather than simply becoming a slice of room temperature pork. Researcher Mark B. Roth and others from Seattle’s Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have been doing tests on nematodes and yeast, and one common factor emerged: reduced oxygen consumption.
“There are many examples in the scientific literature of humans who appear frozen to death. They have no heartbeat and are clinically dead. But they can be reanimated,” Roth said. “Similarly, the organisms in my lab can be put into a state of reversible suspended animation through oxygen deprivation and other means. They appear dead but are not.” They key, Roth says, is that in all cases the organism or person somehow reduced their oxygen consumption as their body froze, allowing them to simply enter into a state of suspended animation.
Of course, the hard part is finding someone willing to let you test this theory on them. The cases mentioned by Roth have all been accidental freezings/rethaws; it’s time to field test this suspended animation plan!
Image: State Library of New South Wales
Tags: weird science, unusual health news, weird health news, the human body, hypothermia, surviving hypothermia, freezing to death, suspended animation, oxygen deprivation and freezing to death, Mark B. Roth, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center
