Scientific MOOCs follower. Author of Airpocalypse, a techno-medical thriller (Out Summer 2017)


Welcome to the digital era of biology (and to this modest blog I started in early 2005).

To cure many diseases, like cancer or cystic fibrosis, we will need to target genes (mutations, for ex.), not organs! I am convinced that the future of replacement medicine (organ transplant) is genomics (the science of the human genome). In 10 years we will be replacing (modifying) genes; not organs!

Anticipating the $100 genome era and the P4™ medicine revolution. P4 Medicine (Predictive, Personalized, Preventive, & Participatory): Catalyzing a Revolution from Reactive to Proactive Medicine.

I am an early adopter of scientific MOOCs. I've earned myself four MIT digital diplomas: 7.00x, 7.28x1, 7.28.x2 and 7QBWx. Instructor of 7.00x: Eric Lander PhD.

Upcoming books: Airpocalypse, a medical thriller (action taking place in Beijing) 2017; Jesus CRISPR Superstar, a sci-fi -- French title: La Passion du CRISPR (2018).

I love Genomics. Would you rather donate your data, or... your vital organs? Imagine all the people sharing their data...

Audio files on this blog are Windows files ; if you have a Mac, you might want to use VLC (http://www.videolan.org) to read them.

Concernant les fichiers son ou audio (audio files) sur ce blog : ce sont des fichiers Windows ; pour les lire sur Mac, il faut les ouvrir avec VLC (http://www.videolan.org).

Affichage des articles dont le libellé est BRAIN DEATH. Afficher tous les articles
Affichage des articles dont le libellé est BRAIN DEATH. Afficher tous les articles

The Wacky Science of Brain Death

http://www.iflscience.com/brain/brain-activity-seen-in-patients-ten-minutes-after-death

"A pair of studies in 2016 found more than 1,000 genes functioning days after death. Perhaps don’t run around saying their’s life after death just yet, though."


 http://www.iflscience.com/brain/brain-activity-seen-in-patients-ten-minutes-after-death
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Using Stem Cells To Reactivate The Brains Of The Dead?

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The Legal Fiction of Brain Death

Why these disparities? Scientific criteria for brain death may vary from one country to another... I found this out early 2005, this is the reason why I started this blog... Nothing new here, except for one thing: this is no longer taboo...

Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas: Jack's Obsession



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Post-mortem organ donation won't help you before you die, but the science of cryonics might

Web site for this picture
A brain dead patient can "donate" his organs, but this prospect might not help him deal with his end-of-life issues (ever heard of "Ikigami"?)... When you are brain dead, you cannot consent to organ donation (informed consent and brain death don't agree). If you decide to donate your organs upon your death, you make this decision while you are alive and conscious. "In the unlikely event of ..." That's what the air hostesses say, right?
Dying in piece(s) or dying in peace?

This is the story of Kim. She suffered from glioblastoma, an incurable brain tumor. Glioblastoma is just another word for "Ikigami". She died at the age of 23, but before that, she had been looking for something that would help her die in peace at such a young age. She decided that this thing would be: freezing her brain.
This cryonic project was probably what helped Kim best before her death from brain cancer.

Link to this picture










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"Medicine is science is fusion cuisine." The end of entrenched specialists?

http://www.nytimes.com/video/science/100000001255558/eric-lander.html

Data hoarding. No sharing. Big Pharma looking for blockbusters only. And then, this:



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No Brain No Pain? Brain Death Sci-Polemics

NB: "Eminence-based medicine VS evidence-based medicine" is a terminology you can find in the medical bestseller, available today (Jan. 06, 2015) on Amazon (book + kindle), "The Patient Will See You Now" by Eric Topol MD. What does it mean?

 The book is saying we have to move from an era in which "medicine is not a science, [but] empiricism founded on a network of blunders" (Desmore) to a "new medicine as a real data science with each individual capable of calling the shots, making the choices." (The Patient Will See You Now," page 290).

Eminence-based medicine:


In this letter he sent to me in March 2005, French pioneer of heart transplant Christian Cabrol PhD (over 80 years old today) is answering my question about brain death and feeling pain if I am a "post mortem" organ donor. His answer is pretty straightforward: no brain no pain, you cannot feel pain if you are brain dead and if surgeons are retrieving vital organs from you in this case. "If the brain is destroyed, you cannot feel pain." ("il n'existe aucune possibilité de sensation douloureuse si le cerveau est entièrement détruit").

 Evidence-based medicine:

Professeur Cabrol, I would like you to meet a patient of the future. He is a MIT engineer, and a brain tumor patient. Here in this cool video, he explains how curiosity saved his life. He had "awake brain surgery" a few months ago.

"The reason why they do this is because they had to cut through healthy brain tissue and they wanted to make sure they are not cutting my language center. (...) I'm talking about random topics while they are cutting out [part of] my brain! (...) It's the weirdest drug experience you can ever have. If any of you are worried about the surgery, it's actually NOT painful. The brain does not have pain receptors inside so I actually enjoyed the surgery, which is a weird thing to say."


OK, so, let me get this straight... This guy has a brain and he does not feel pain. Soooo... that "no brain no pain" thing is not true. If pain receptors are located outside of the brain, can I feel pain if I am brain dead?

I'm sorry, Professor Cabrol. You failed to answer my question.

Dear reader, did you know that French citizens are not allowed to have their genome sequenced? It is forbidden by law (fine, prison). However, consent to "post-mortem" organ donation is written in the French law.

Genomic Entertainment:

"Post mortem" organ donation, + the "no-brain-no-pain" question = "The Nightmare Before Christmas?"



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"Life After Death May Be Possible"?! -- Futurama's Bender: "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"


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Brain Death Is Getting A Reboot And It's Called Brain Health


"You change the software, you change the species:" Geneticist J. Craig Venter, creating a humanized pig for organ transplantation. "If we have the ability to make some things more youthful (cells, for example), can we say that we are 'youthanizing' them? I like to coin new terminology."  
"We can reprogram our DNA to be in a more youthful state. If we could turn medicine into an info-driven science, it would turn humanity into an info-driven species, working from knowledge; not from myth."
From euthanizing to "youthanizing" (brain cells, for example), thanks to genetics? Looks like brain death is getting a reboot and it's called brain health...

https://www.zeitgeistminds.com/talk/4544525162774528/dna-the-software-of-life-j-craig-venter




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BREAKING: Death Of Brain Death

Couple of reasons for this:

- "Cadaveric organ donation"-- brain death = death. Truth is: we dunno for sure. They say they can transplant people thanks to "cadaveric" organ donation. But what really happens when you get to ingest cadaver is ebola. Not really a life saver -- mortality rate of ebola: 60%. Transplant surgeons are no Harry Potter wizards. They need live organs they can transplant to live people.

- Artificial Intelligence: Wao. Check this out:

IBM launches functioning brain-inspired chip

"Operates at 46 billion 'synaptic operations' per second per watt; 100 trillion 'synapses' planned, matching the approximate number in the human brain."


"Brain death," when you can get a brain-inspired chip with "1 million programmable neurons?" L.O.L.





http://www.kurzweilai.net/ibm-launches-functioning-brain-inspired-chip

http://asmarterplanet.com/blog/2014/08/introducing-brain-like-chip-revolutionize-computing.html

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"Restoring active memory program for traumatic brain injury patients"

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Here's How To Cure Brain Death (according to Google)

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rip, brain death - Repose en paix, mort encéphalique



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"Suspended Animation Goes Primetime: Say Goodbye To Death As We Know It"




http://singularityhub.com/2014/05/27/suspended-animation-goes-primetime-say-goodbye-to-death-as-we-know-it/
"But advances in neuroscience, ideas about brain death,rain death, and the introduction of mechanical ventilators—with their ability to keep the heart pumping long after the brain had died—forced a society-wide reevaluation of  terms."(source)

"At issue were irreversible comas and the tricky legalities of organ harvesting (i.e. when is someone dead enough that we can borrow their kidneys to give to someone more alive and in need, but not too dead that those kidneys stop working). And it was just this issue that brought together an ad hoc committee at Harvard Medical School in 1968. In an effort to come up with a hard and practical definition of 'irreversible coma,' the committee also established 'brain death' as the best proof of life’s end.
The Harvard criteria spread from there, effectively becoming the accepted definition the world over. But once again, not so fast.
Back in 2002, researchers at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor announced that they had—using pigs—found a way to remove all of the animal’s blood and replace it with cold saline solution, which induces rapid hypothermia and halts almost all cellular activity—essentially placing the pig into suspended animation.
Once again, our technology messed with our terminology. 'After we did those experiments,' Peter Rhee, one of the main researchers involved, recently told New Scientist, 'the definition of dead changed. Every day at work I declare people dead. They have no signs of life, no heartbeat, no brain activity. I sign a piece of paper knowing in my heart that they are not actually dead. I could, right then and there, suspend them. But I have to put them in a body bag. It’s frustrating to know there is a solution.'
And that solution is finally being tested out in humans. As of March 29, 2014, a team of surgeons trained in this saline-cooling procedure is on emergency call at the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In this field trial of the technique, patients who arrive at the hospital after having suffered cardiac arrest after traumatic injury (i.e. gunshots) and do not respond to attempts to restart their heart will be cooled with saline  to about 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit). Their cellular activity will stop. They will be 'clinically dead.' But—if doctors can repair the trauma in roughly two hours—they are still capable of being revived.
In itself, this is amazing. This is two hours of suspended animation—which  has been the stuff of sci-fi for almost a century. Today it’s scientific fact.
But where things get really interesting is what happens tomorrow. As the technology progresses, it is not too much of a stretch to say those two hours of suspended animation will give way to four hours and eight hours and sooner or later whole days and weeks and months—in other words, we’ll have mastered artificial hibernation.
And there are plenty of good reasons to master this technique, with deep space exploration being at the top of most people’s lists. But what happens, say, when a spaceship on its way to the planet formerly known as Pluto, complete with a crew in hibernation, gets dinged by an asteroid and knocked off course and is thus lost before they land and can be reanimated. The crew spends years and years and years in artificial hibernation. So are they alive or are they dead?
Put differently, if we know this crew can be later revived, but centuries might pass before we can actually catch the ship and revive the crew, is it ethical for us to shoot up a death ray laser beam from Earth to destroy ship and put the crew out of their suspended misery?
Since that 1768 Encyclopedia Britannica definition, the entry for death has been rewritten over 30 times. You would assume that today, in a society that can measure effects down to the quantum level, that death’s definition would be fixed. But with suspended animation suddenly heading into human trails, when it comes to defining death, we’re still nowhere close to a straight answer."

Source:
1. http://singularityhub.com/2014/05/27/suspended-animation-goes-primetime-say-goodbye-to-death-as-we-know-it/
2. http://www.forbes.com/sites/stevenkotler/2014/05/21/suspended-animation-goes-primetime-say-goodbye-to-death-as-we-know-it/
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Henry Mash, neurosurgeon: "Nobody really understands the brain"


http://www.pbs.org/pov/englishsurgeon/interview_henrymarsh.php

Published 13 March 2014
"What is it like to be a brain surgeon?

How does it feel to hold someone's life in your hands, to cut into the stuff that creates thought, feeling and reason?

How do you live with the consequences of performing a potentially life-saving operation when it all goes wrong?

In neurosurgery, more than in any other branch of medicine, the doctor's oath to 'do no harm' holds a bitter irony. Operations on the brain carry grave risks. Every day, Henry Marsh must make agonising decisions, often in the face of great urgency and uncertainty.

If you believe that brain surgery is a precise and exquisite craft, practised by calm and detached surgeons, this griping, brutally honest account will make you think again. With astonishing compassion and candour, one of the country's leading neurosurgeons reveals the fierce joy of operating, the profoundly moving triumphs, the harrowing disasters, the haunting regrets and the moments of black humour that characterise a brain surgeon's life.

DO NO HARM is an unforgettable insight into the countless human dramas that take place in a busy modern hospital. Above all, it is a lesson in the need for hope when faced with life's most difficult decisions."

Dr. Henry Marsh's segment starts at 17:52 on following audio link (source: Guardian books podcast)

==> DOWNLOAD AUDIO LINK

Well, I've read "Do No Harm"... Reminds me of the three surgeons in my family, really... The book was scary, I even felt like puking on a couple of occasions... After reading this book, I asked the surgeons in my family: "Are we so sure about brain death? are those people really dead?" Their answer was unanimous -- which I found quite striking, because I can tell you, they usually disagree on a lot of things -- "- We dunno for sure." 

"Nobody really understands the brain", says Dr. Henry Mash at the end of this interview (The Guardian Books Podcast). Yeah, at least I got that part right, I think...

Wow.

So, lemme get this straight: a highly experienced brain surgeon stated -- in May 2014 -- that "nobody really understands the brain", and yet, at Harvard Med School in Boston, they did define "brain death" as death (from a legal point of view, too) in... 1968! Did we know more about the brain in 1968 than we do now? Doesn't seem to make sense... A few years ago (in 2008), same Harvard Med School said that, well, you know, "brain death" is not striclty equivalent to death, so, maybe, just maybe, we could extend the concept of death definition in the perspective of organ donation to "donation under cardiac death" -- since, well, "brain death" was already included... (read here). So, again, wow. There is a lot of stuff that needs to be read between the lines, here... Since we've got these "wonderful" immunosuppressive drugs, we need to tweak and twist the definition of death. And yet, try as hard as we may for organ "donation" industrialization, the problem of organ donation *shortage* remains... Not enough *dead* people... Yikes.

First in-depth mammal brain map to reveal neural blips

Great, this has been done quite recently (2 April 2014, NewScientist)... eeerrrr... for the mouse (not the humans: not quite there yet)... And there is this cool Human Connectome Project...

http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org
As a conclusion... Well, I know the surgeons in my family will hate this, since in their opinion, Google equals "the death of surgeons" and doctors will be replaced with algorithms -- all Google's fault, mind you... And er, yes, the surgeons in my family are bio-luddites who seem to think I am Ray Kurzweil's PA -- and Siri is my middle name ;-)



http://www.foodista.com/blog/2012/10/02/mayim-bialik-trashes-meat-for-peta



Post by Catherine Coste.


Will Google underestimate the complexity of the brain?

Yesterday, I was taking a stroll at the U of I... Spooky, isn't it?... and yet interesting...

"ALMA MATER To thy happy children/Of the future/Those of the past/Send greetings."




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Redefining (Brain) Death : "Emergency Preservation & Resuscitation"

"Suspended Animation": Sci-fi or End Of "Brain-Death"? 

"We are suspending life, but we don't like to call it suspended animation because it sounds like science fiction," says Samuel Tisherman, a surgeon at the hospital, who is leading the trial. "So we call it emergency preservation and resuscitation."

http://gizmodo.com/surgeons-are-about-to-start-human-trials-for-suspended-1552062924
Well, you can't have your cake and eat it. As soon as suspended animation will be in, brain death will be out. 3D bioprinting, we need you!

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129623.000-gunshot-victims-to-be-suspended-between-life-and-death.html?full=true#.U0e1dVc9-If

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22129623.000-gunshot-victims-to-be-suspended-between-life-and-death.html?full=true#.U0e1dVc9-If
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Can Google Solve (Brain) Death?


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THE BRAIN DEATH MINDMAP


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MIT neuroscientists classify retinal neurons into 15 types, ncluding some previously unknown

"The researchers believe there may be still more types of neurons that did not appear in their data set and remain to be identified. In future work, they hope to examine larger sets of neurons in hopes of finding some of these other neuron types. They also hope to use their technique to study parts of the brain that have many layers of neurons — especially the neocortex, where most cognitive functions take place." (Source)
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Is Organ Transplant An Epidemiologic Nonsense?

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"Family presence for Brain Death Evaluation. Should families be present for brain stem testing?"

http://www.acepnow.com/article/ed-physicians-tweet-etools-ketamine-evaluating-brain-death-free-open-access-meducation-foam/

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