Mike Darwin

You are browsing the archives of Mike Darwin.

CPR: A pair of hands aren’t enough

CPR: A pair of hands aren’t enough

CPR: A Pair of Hands Aren’t Enough: You Also Need a Heart and a Brain
“Anyone, anywhere, can now initiate cardiac resuscitation procedures. All that is needed are two hands.” [Kouwenhoven WB, Jude J, Knickerbocker G. Closed chest cardiac massage. JAMA 1960;173:1064–7.
Sudden Cardiac Arrest

Figure 1: Mortality from sudden cardiac arrest (SCA) in 2004 as a result [...]

CPR and the breath of death?

CPR and the breath of death?

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul. Genesis 2:7
For breath is life, and if you breathe well you will live long on earth.  – Sanskrit Proverb

In the Beginning…
Since the beginning of modern resuscitation over [...]

CPR: new standards; new needs

CPR: new standards; new needs

In 2005 the American heart association revised its standards for CPR increasing the number of compressions from 80 cpm to 100 cpm, eliminating pauses for ventilation, and urging that focus be shifted to compressions (perfusion) rather than ventilation. This latter change is more profound than it might seem at [...]

ACD-CPR & the rise of the machine?

ACD-CPR & the rise of the machine?

If conventional cardiopulmonary support (CPS) in cryonics is difficult to perform adequately, and impossible to sustain for more than brief periods (30-60 min) before exhausting even a 3-man standby team, this is even more the case for active compression-decompression CPS (ACD-CPS) using the ResQPump (formerly the Ambu CardioPump). Even in the conventional medical setting of [...]

Two useful new respiratory products

Sometime in the 1780s the French scientist Jacques Charles’s noted that  at constant pressure, the volume of a given mass of an ideal gas increases or decreases by the same factor as its temperature on the absolute temperature scale. Or, put more simply, the gas expands as the temperature increases. This is known [...]

Response to Aschwin de Wolf’s ‘Evidence Based Cryonics’

Response to Aschwin de Wolf's 'Evidence Based Cryonics'

In his article entitled ‘Evidence Based Cryonics’ Aschwin de Wolf unassailably argues that: “There is an urgent need to move from extrapolation based cryonics to evidence based cryonics. This will require a comprehensive research program aimed at creating realistic cryonics research models. It will also require vast improvements in the monitoring and evaluation of cryonics [...]

Marcelon Johnson dies and is not cryopreserved

For Immediate Release, Friday, 24 January, 2009
Date: 23 January, 2009
Introduction
I have been informed that Marcelon (Marce) Johnson died on 01/21/2009, was cremated, and not cryopreserved.
I understand this information may come as a surprise and as a disturbing shock to many people, especially those who loved and knew Marce, as I did. I thus feel [...]

Time for the rebirth of cryonics in Britain

A PDF file of this article with images is available here.
“Tenderly you stroke a Nettle, and it stings you for your pains. Grasp it like a man of mettle, and it soft as silk remains.” – Old English proverb
Nearly 20 years ago Alan Sinclair successfully undertook to establish a cryonics facility in the UK. The [...]

D(+)-Lactose and other sugars in organ preservation and cryonics

A PDF file of this document is available with images and structural visualization of various sugars.
D(+) lactose monohydrate is the principal sugar in mammalian milks. The monohydrate part is easiest to explain; it simply means that the lactose molecule has one water molecule attached to it. This is important because some chemicals can have a [...]

Structure-function analysis of neuroprotectants

Structure-function analysis of neuroprotectants

In “The chemistry of neuroprotection”, the author argues convincingly that there could be great benefit from a systematic and rigorously scientific study of the physical chemistry of putative neuroprotectants vis-à-vis their pharmacological effect. However, the first example used of the earliest thinking in this direction (which comes, not surprisingly via V. A. Negovskii, the father [...]