Doctors to begin first suspended animation tests on humans

Once you’re stabbed or shot, you’re living on borrowed time. The faster you’re brought to the ER, the better chances you have of survival. Usually, the process of keeping you alive until then involves transfusions and stopping the loss of blood as best as can be done, but a newly approved technique just might buy you a few extra hours without the need for all that extra blood. The idea, strange as it may sound, is to keep patients in suspended animation — neither alive nor dead — until your body is whole once again. To do this, doctors will be kept at the ready at Pittsburgh’s UPMC Presbyterian Hospital. Once a stabbing or gunshot victim is admitted in critical condition, these doctors will go to work, entirely replacing the patient’s blood with a cold saline solution. By stopping nearly all the body’s cellular activity, this solution basically brings you to death’s door without letting you die.