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Zombie Dogs
Just what we need:
SCIENTISTS have created eerie zombie dogs, reanimating the canines after several hours of clinical death in attempts to develop suspended animation for humans.
US scientists have succeeded in reviving the dogs after three hours of clinical death, paving the way for trials on humans within years.Pittsburgh’s Safar Centre for Resuscitation Research has developed a technique in which subject’s veins are drained of blood and filled with an ice-cold salt solution.
The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity.
But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.
Plans to test the technique on humans should be realised within a year, according to the Safar Centre.
Read the rest. The plan is not to perfect suspended animation (a la cryogenics) but to “save lives such as battlefield casualties and victims of stabbings or gunshot wounds, who have suffered huge blood loss.” Rich people in other words. Supposedly there is no brain damage found in the dogs. If this isn’t the craziest thing I’ve heard recently, then I don’t know what is.
- Dog Love
- Acting For Dogs
- Zombie Infestation Simulation
- When the spirit moves you…
- Pack of stray dogs decimate zoo gazelles
- Prev: L. Ron Hubbard vs. Philip K. Dick
- Next: Bigfoot on Mars
June 27th, 2005 at 9:28 pm
OMG, I just read this at Cryptogon before coming here. Seriously depraved shit, in my opinion.
Also, I really loathe medical research that is performed on dogs. Really pisses me off and makes me sad at the same time.
June 27th, 2005 at 9:29 pm
it’s creepy if you consider what the spiritual implications are in a situation like this.. the body is dead, so the soul goes up into the ether or whatever.. then what ? 3 hours later it gets sucked back down into the body again ? that’s like a deluxe ultra supersize near death experience.
June 27th, 2005 at 9:31 pm
yeah i mean to mention… i mean, its more than a near death experience. its pretty much an after death experience after that. how the fuck do they expect this 3 hour period of death to not have any effect on people? how many of these procedures could you effectively endure in your life? do you lose legal status as a human during this time period? theres so many weird mind-boggling questions here.
June 27th, 2005 at 9:53 pm
How can you be sure the soul that comes back down was the same one that went up?
Those discarnate baddies are always lookin’ for a chance to play down here. Just sayin…
June 27th, 2005 at 9:59 pm
people call this shit science.. scio, to know. i’m afraid it’s a wholely and terrifyingly inaccurate term. these “scientists” are like toddlers playing with hand grenades. it amazes me how people are able to utterly divorce the physical from the spiritual.. though i don’t even like to use the word “spiritual” anymore, because i think it reinforces the perceptual wedge that’s already been driven between the earthly and the metaphyiscal. how can these people study string theory and not think twice about the question of soul or spirit in this context ?
June 27th, 2005 at 10:01 pm
slomo, that’s one of the first things i thought of. it brings to mind the “walk-in” phenomenon which i’ve also always found to be exceptionally creepy.
June 27th, 2005 at 10:06 pm
OOH! heres an even better scenario. what if we combine this technique with some of the ritual magick/initiation stuff that we’ve been talking about. Say you ritually prepare somebody as a sacrificial victim. And then at the pre-ordained time, POW! You use some weird magic shit to pull in some kind of discarnate entity, one which you’ve been prepping and propitiating for a while for that very purpose. And you could totally hide this shit… one day somebody goes in for some kind of life-threatening surgery, it goes wrong, and BLAM! One of the doctors utters a little invocation of some kind, and you have yourself something utterly creepy on your hands.
June 27th, 2005 at 10:10 pm
Totally OT, but speaking of shit science: While we’re busy reanimating dogs, congress is meanwhile harassing scientists who are trying to figure out if our planet is just sorta kinda fucked or really completely apocalyptically fucked.
June 27th, 2005 at 10:28 pm
smells like archons if you ask me. meddling and more meddling and nothing truly creative. just a lot of decay and perversion.
June 27th, 2005 at 10:33 pm
Well, it sounds great if you ask me! Sign me up!
June 27th, 2005 at 11:22 pm
I recall Russians already using something similar on humans. For heart surgery I believe. They pack the person in ice, drain his blood, replace with a solution of some sort, perform the surgery, and then revive him. No idea of their success rate.
June 28th, 2005 at 12:05 am
The fact that this is happening in the scientific world doesn’t surprise me. I remember a few years ago watching a show on “mysterious things” or something to that effect. In a particular point in the show, they went on to this story of a South American (or perhaps Middle American) witchdoctor who would go to the graves of men who had recently died of natural causes, perform a ritual, and rise them from the dead to become his servants. They were legally dead, and thus not a legal entity. They were therefore eternal endentured servants to this witchdoctor.
Now, I’m aware that it could have all been a “hoax” involving people who falsely pronounced dead (at least in legal terms), but the possibilities were creepy.
Now that it is possibly happening in the scientific world only further proves that the “Sci-fi/Fantasy” of the right brain is a prophet to the “non-fiction” of the left. (Following the ins and outs of that sentence and the word ‘prophet’ would make for an interesting article).
June 28th, 2005 at 12:53 am
I saw a girl packed in ice to attempt the same effect for surgery once, but can’t recall why.
June 28th, 2005 at 1:32 am
Weird. i was just posting about zombies in a completely different context earlier.
from a buddhist perspective there is no ’soul ‘ to get yanked back and forth. death causes the awareness localised in the body to become boundless again. bringing the person back would likely recreate the bounded awareness phenomenon. it’s hard to explain. it’s like scooping a cup of water out of the ocean, and pouring it back in again, and so forth. it’s the cup, not the water that creates the sensation of being someone.
although i have heard that most pople who have near-death experiences tend not to live much longer after that…
June 28th, 2005 at 1:36 am
These scenarios seem interesting, but some of your worries seem exaggerated. “Battlefield casualties” do not traditionally have a lot of money, though the DoD does. And I’d kind of like to see a walk-in if the host died anyway, and left for good — think what we could learn! If hostile, it might pose less of a threat in a human body (depending on how many of our instincts it gains, what powers it has beyond possessing bodies and how embodiment affects them.)
June 28th, 2005 at 2:24 am
DUH! We’re talking about zombies here for chrissake! Of course we’re going to exaggerate!
June 28th, 2005 at 3:24 am
had to be in Pittsburgh didn’t it? that would be a movie i’d see though, “Dogs of the Dead”
June 28th, 2005 at 7:21 am
Dog Dead Afternoon!
June 28th, 2005 at 12:52 pm
I think it is interesting to see people’s responses to this. I think Zacharius hit the nail right on the head - it’s the cup that creates the sensation of being someone. Great analogy. I think it is absurd to be afraid of the “soul” leaving the body as if it is some little man hiding out in our pineal gland who packs up his bags and teleports off to supernatural land once we are clinically brain dead.
As for possesion, I would not be surprised if it is just as easy for “entities” to enter a “living” person as it is for them to enter a temporarily “dead” person. In fact, I would bet it is easier because the mind of the living is completely distracted and is susceptible to all manner of outside influences - from peer pressure to corporate logos/advertisements, to subliminal symbolic manipulations. When the doors of perception are closed fewer influences (good or evil) can get through.
June 28th, 2005 at 1:52 pm
the soul/body analogy is an oversimplification. i wasn’t implying that the soul is a little man hiding out the pineal gland who after the death of the body goes and takes up residence on a cloud. the point i was trying to make was that we do NOT fully comprehend the “being” issue, and therefore it seems reckless, to me, to go around jolting dead things back to life.
additionally, i don’t personally feel that i can really take an all or nothing approach to the life/death thing in the sense that you’re either A or B, a person in a body or completely at one with the universe/god, a cup of water or the entire ocean. it’s too binary for me. what about when you’re being poured, or scooped.. or what if someone comes along and drinks you? i mean given that it’s possible to have this corporeal sense of self, i don’t think it’s too far fetched to wonder if maybe some “people”, after they die, retain a sense of self-ness, even after they have returned to what WE, the living, would perceive as a discorporate state. i think there’s a lot of fluidity and a lot of other levels - higher, lower, parallel, perpendicular, whatever.
June 28th, 2005 at 3:07 pm
just because we don`t fully understand what “being” is doesn`t mean we shouldn`t jolt “dead” things back to life. it doesn`t mean we should either. i had issue with the future hi group because of thier want for things to be thier way only. meaningful discussion of different viewpoints was off thier table. using the word zombie to describe the result of this process creates hallucinations of dawn of the dead scenarios. including concepts of spirit and soul and setting arbitrary boundaries as a result futher stops the discussion. if we could apply numerical values to spirit and to soul then we could evauate the risk that a process such as described above could provide to humans or dogs. we can`t evaluate these concepts and so it`s not useful to make predictions like zombification as a result. if we do then we are no better than baptists.
what if we could go through this process and as a result save lives? that`s a preety human desire, i believe.
interestingly, i read a book about zombies that suggested that witchdoctors mixed powders that contained dried puffer fish, which was discovered to contain a neuro-toxin that induced paralysis when blown into the face of the intended victim. the victim could then be medically examined, pronounced dead, buried, and at some point days later dug up for use as a zombie. milder forms of the same potion could continue to be administered to perpetuate the zombie state.
there are bad fuckers out there that would find the worst application of anything for thier needs.
i read a t-shirt once that had a warning label on it that read “this product not tested on animals, you are the first”
June 28th, 2005 at 3:40 pm
We can’t & we shouldn’t in my opinion.
Right. Exactly. Humans use stories to describe things they don’t understand. It’s not bad or dangerous. There’s no other way to think about things. Even numbers are a story.
I swear to god, every time somebody does some kind of crazy fucked up science that crosses ethical boundaries, this is the argument we hear. That or helping handicapped people. But what the hell’s wrong with death? Compassion is wonderful and human. But death is completely natural. People, animals, plants, fish die all the time. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s not something we need to stop. I think it’s something we need to accept.
June 28th, 2005 at 4:11 pm
if going around talking about zombification is in some way reckless, approaching everything with this blase “oh it’ll be fine” attitude is equally so.
yeah, maybe bringing people back from the dead would be fine and everyone would be happy about it. or maybe it would be a huge mistake with dire ecological, social, political, and god knows what other consequences.
we’re still pretty ignorant, collectively and individually. i think delving into this kind of shit is like playing russian roulette.
it may not be “useful” to entertain ideas about zombies, but it IS creative. creativity may not be “useful” or “efficient” but i think it’s pretty damn enriching.
anyway has it not been said that science fiction predicts the future, and are we not seeing more and more evidence that this is indeed the case ?
no one can convince me that humanity is prepared to handle the RESPONSIBILITY aspect of playing god.
maybe instead of trying to undo death we should stop slaughtering each other in the first place. that would be a way more cost-effective way of avoiding battlefield casualties.
June 28th, 2005 at 4:23 pm
but you are trying to find meaning to concepts of spirit and soul. we are all scientists in that we are looking to predict and control our environment. it makes our lives more liveable to have some control of it. until,of course we unattach from outcome sufficiently and it doesn`t matter any more.
it is part of what it is to be human.
i agree that there is nothing wrong with death. but it does have a way of coming at the end of suffering, which is what research is about. not immortality.
your search through piles of web pages is to gain meaning to this chaos, and the trickster gives you glimpses and whispers of answers. he is fucking with you in amost heinous way.
i like the buddhist approach to non-attachment. it allows me to stand in the line at starbucks and not inventory. i can then play a tune in my head or plan a therapy session or whatever else other than being pissed that the coffee line is so slow.
the trickster will provide many slippery slopes to slide down, all driven by our anger and frustration. if we stop being angry and frustrated the trickster finds another game to play.
a quick example. my baptist friend went to EST with all the morality and anger of his faith and the EST buried him. he still has nightmares. a client of mine went to the landmark forum, which is EST in another dress and was able to not get drawn into the reaction to the screaming and yelling and the trainer faded, having no plan b.she still gets calls asking for her to do her volunteering but it doesn`t pull her back, whereas the baptist gets himself in a right state, headaches, depression, etc.
i have three cats and had a special relationship with my dog, rocky, for 12 years. i don`t like the thought of any harm coming to any creature. the wild rabbits in our garden are a blessing for us here at the house, but it doesn`t mean that science shouldn`t test processes.
and no, i wouldn`t like the tests done on my animals………………
the future hi lot had a hissy fit when i suggested that any advancement in technology is owned by industry/government, for use at thier bidding. thier position was that it should all be owned by us all.i could see thier point, but wouldn`t have wanted to be at the confrontation. i`ve seen that get ugly before.
and about the money element. you can get hung up on that barbed-wire fence too. there are thousands of rich people having expensive stuff all around us. it is a form of entitlement that can cause pain to the disenfrancised and those who believe it`s a zero-sum game. that sets us at odds with other people for no reason.
and, bye the way, crossing ethical boundaries is about as human as one can get.
June 28th, 2005 at 11:54 pm
Tim, your story seems false-to-fact. Unless these dogs are eating brains. Braains…