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Asked by to Nat, Nate, Roberto, Sam, Sarah on 16 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
Question: Is suspended animation possible for humans?
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Nate Bastian answered on 16 Jun 2014:
Yes, I believe that it is, although it hasn’t happened yet. Many animals are able to naturally go into a kind of “suspended animation” state (check out this odd ball – http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070220-frog-antifreeze_2.html). So, in the future, I think that we’ll be able to do it….
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Sarah Casewell answered on 16 Jun 2014:
I think so – quite a lot of animals can hibernate, so it’s only a matter of time before we work it out. It would be very useful for space travel!
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Sam Connolly answered on 17 Jun 2014:
There’s already something called cryonics, where people are frozen because they have illnesses that can’t be treated at the moment and they hope there will be in the future. At the moment there’s no way to wake them up again though, so it’s a bit of a gamble! There’s definitely research being done into better ways of doing, because it’s likely to be necessary for long-distance space travel. I think it’s probably possible!
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Natasha Stephen answered on 18 Jun 2014:
Yes, it’s theoretically possible and there are some early experiments being conducted with this but as Sam says, it’s a bit of a gamble at the moment because we don’t yet know how to wake these people up without any detrimental effects!
Hopefully it is something that will be ‘worked out’ in the future though as it would be very useful if we want to explore further and further into space!
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Ben commented on :
Most likely yes, in fact researches are already trying this (more below).
Rather than freezing someone for a matter of years though, surgeons in America are getting ready to suspend a patient who comes to the hospital after suffering a fatal gunshot or stab wound for a few hours- giving them time to operate on the patient who would otherwise sadly pass.
There’s a nice article from New Scientist here that talks about what they aim to do: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129623.000-gunshot-victims-to-be-suspended-between-life-and-death.html?page=1#.U57Ee_ldVkQ
The surgeons involved are referring to this as ’emergency preservation and resuscitation’, rather than suspended animation. However, this science may open the door for preserving people for longer periods of time.; like the suspended animation in sci-fi.