Depressed Metabolism

The biology-of-aging blog Ouroboros has posted a skeptical post about cryonics that is highly representative of how most biological scientists respond to questions about cryonics. The discussion of cryonics is largely reduced to a discussion of the technical feasibility of suspended animation and resuscitation requirements. But suspended animation is not cryonics. Cryonics should be discussed [...]

Today is the second anniversary of Depressed Metabolism. As of writing, this website has close to 200 feed subscribers. On an average day the website has 150 unique visitors, which is an encouraging increase in traffic since our last update. This is even more remarkable in light of the fact that new blog entries with [...]

This is the seventh entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. After spending a few years on perfecting on Andjus’ technique for resuscitating rodents (rats and hamsters) from ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures, Audrey Smith upped the ante and attempted the same [...]

This is the sixth entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. After successfully reanimating rats from deep body temperatures of 0 – 2 degrees C and subsequent respiratory and cardiac arrest, Andjus allowed the survivors to live for many months afterward in order [...]

This is the fifth entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. As we have seen, Radoslav Andjus had determined a method for achieving excellent (75-100%) recovery rates in rats cooled to 0-2 degrees C by local cardiac heating prior to warming the whole [...]

This is the fourth entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. Up to this point we have discussed the groundbreaking research in the early 1950s performed by Radoslav Andjus in resuscitating rats from body temperatures between 0 and 2 degrees C. Having determined [...]

This is the third entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. Andjus and Smith were delighted that they had managed to modify Andjus’ chest-wall heating technique from using a hot metal spatula to using a focused beam of light in order to preferentially [...]

This is the second entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. As discussed previously, in 1951 Radoslav Andjus developed a simple method for resuscitating rats cooled to deep body temperatures between 0 and 2 degrees C which involved applying a hot spatula to [...]

This is the first entry in a series about resuscitation of non-hibernating rodents from circulatory arrest at ultraprofound hypothermic and high subzero temperatures. Prior work in hypothermia began in the early 1900s, but because cardiac and respiratory arrest were observed in the animals around 15 degrees C, researchers assumed they were irreversibly dead [...]

Consumers are constantly bombarded with advice about health. Lower your cholesterol, avoid carbs, take dietary supplements, avoid Teflon, get a full body scan, etc. Such advice does not fall on deaf ears. Who does not want to remain healthy, look good, and extend life? Two other factors contribute to our eagerness to consume and follow [...]

According to those who research them, capuchin monkeys think only about two things: food and sex. As a result, the vast majority of their behaviors are also geared toward the acquisition of food and sex. Not surprisingly, these desires can be exploited to teach the monkeys other behaviors. However, no one has ever observed animals [...]

A recently conducted study brings a warning to technophiles who think that the facts are all that matter when informing a group of people about a new technology. The fact of the matter is that the message matters more.
In their article “What drives acceptance of nanotechnology?” (Nature Nanotechnology), the Cultural Cognition Project and the Project [...]

Over the years, experimental science has developed a standard protocol for the testing of medical hypotheses using animal models which calls for the use of males only. Why? Because no laboratory scientist wants to deal with those pesky female hormones. Female hormone fluctuations are viewed as just another variable to be controlled (generally by excluding [...]

It’s difficult to follow up a best-selling book about the cultural history of the penis, but David M. Friedman has a knack for engaging readers in topics that others find difficult to broach. This time he tackles the touchy subject of death by relating the intertwined biographies of Charles Lindbergh and Alexis Carrel in [...]

Unless you are a long-time cryonicist or a surgeon, you may not have heard of BioTime before. This company, recently profiled for its innovative stem cell research in Life Extension Magazine, is best known for producing the blood-volume expander Hextend, which was initially developed by Trans Time, an early cryonics company performing ultra-profound hypothermia research. [...]

Life Extension Foundation (LEF) unveiled a new blood test in an article in this month’s Life Extension Magazine (November 2008). Unlike cholesterol testing, which simply gives a measurement of high-density (HDL) and low-density (LDL) lipoprotein levels and provides little information about acute risk of stroke or heart attack, the PLAC® blood test “can accurately identify [...]

On August 23, Chana and Aschwin de Wolf drafted a blog entry on the phenomenon of partners who are hostile to cryonics. We sent our draft for review to a number of high profile cryonicists and received a message from Mike Darwin telling us that he still had an unpublished article on this topic. Because [...]

In ‘Who is Against Evolution?’, David Friedman discusses the phenomenon that most people who are against teaching creationism tend to avoid and discourage discussing the human implications of evolution themselves:

People who say they are against teaching the theory of evolution are very likely to be Christian fundamentalists. But people who are against taking seriously the [...]

It is well established that investors with a diversified portfolio of index funds can do just as well (if not better) than “professional fund managers.” Now comes a new study that shows that consumers predict inflation as accurately as professional economists.

Thomas and Alan Grant of Baker University in Kansas analyzed surveys of U.S. and Australian [...]

The blog Soft Machines writes about a new opinion piece in the Financial Times by David Shaywitz and Nassim Nicholas Taleb on biomedical science and drug discovery. The molecular revolution in biology was supposed to substitute rational design of drugs for trial and error and handwaving. So why do pharmaceutical companies have so little to [...]

One problem in assessing the merits of taking a specific dietary supplement (ranging from vitamins to  exotic multi-ingredient compounds) is widespread selection bias in the documentation that is supposed to support the use of the supplement in question.  The sheer number of scientific studies combined with variation in research methodologies virtually guarantees that for every [...]

In an effort to determine why so many cytoprotective treatments for stroke that are shown to be promising in laboratory animal experiments ultimately fail in human clinical trials, DeBow et al. performed an analysis of cytoprotection studies published in several leading journals. While noting that limitations in preclinical assessments also contribute to the premature advancement [...]