2-13. Who has successfully kept dogs cold for hours? Did they survive? Any brain damage?
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This article is from the Cryonics FAQ, by Tim Freeman tim@infoscreen.com with numerous contributions by others.
2-13. Who has successfully kept dogs cold for hours? Did they survive? Any brain damage?
Several people have achieved that. The first cryonics organization to
do so was Alcor, in the mid 1980's. For example, the Jan. 1986 issue
of Cryonics magazine describes, in the article "Dixie's Rebirthday", a
German Shepherd dog named Dixie who "experienced the privilege (and
the peril) of having all her blood washed out and replaced with a
synthetic solution and then being cooled to 4 C. For four hours she
was held at this temperature: stiff, cold, with eyes flattened out,
brain waves stopped, and heart stilled. Then, she was reperfused with
blood, warmed up and restored to life and health." She made a total
recovery. Several variations, with different perfusates and slightly
different temperatures and/or times were also performed by Alcor.
Later, ACS performed a similar experiment on a beagle named Miles and
recently (1992) BioTime successfully cooled and revived a baboon.
In comparison, hypothermic cardiac surgery was pioneered on humans
decades ago, although the temperatures used were not nearly as low as
in the dog experiments above. More recently, the October 1988 issue
of The Immortalist described successful surgery on a brain aneurysm in
which the patient was cooled to 15 C for almost an hour. During that
time the patient's blood remained drained from the body, there was no
respiration, the heart did not beat, and the brain barely functioned.
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