digibutter.nerr

[Abstract]

You're born. You live through life like a normal human; you go to school, make friends, maybe harass the other gender from time to time. You meet someone you enjoy the company of, get into a relationship with them. Wait, wrong move, it's gone. You go through several, relationships, get married eventually. Maybe have a few kids. Then you get old, and, inevitably, die. Then what? Do you simply rot in the ground, or does life continue in another plane? Do we live for a reason, were we created by another being, who, is all-powerful, all-knowing, and, hopefully, benevolent? Or do we live simply because we do? When we die, what happens?

The sad thing is, is that no one knows. No one knows. What comes after you die? No one knows. You can't open a book, read about death, and learn what happens afterward. The reason is simple: no one comes back after dying. Or, that's what I thought, anyway.

I'm not speaking of anything paranormal, magical, or even wondrous. In fact, I find it quite disturbing. I'm scared of what human beings can do with science. I'm scared of what distances man will go to know. I'm scared of myself, because I'm a scientific mind myself.

One day, I was surfing the web. Just like any 15-year-old girl. Well, sort-of. I was looking at bizarre experiments. The first that I gazed upon was Vladimir Petrovich Demikhov's Two-Headed Dog. Not a mere freak of nature, oh no. The furthest thing from it. Demikhov had mutilated a puppy, removing half of its body, leaving only its head, torso, and front legs. He then grafted the infantile dog onto a mature dog, connecting the windpipes of the animals together in order to create a monstrosity like none other. I was horrified to see the animal walk alongside its owner, the two personalities acting almost as they had before the surgery. I told myself to look at nothing more, to stop there.

But I didn't.

I came across a Soviet experiment soon after. A severed dog head, being kept alive on a crude machine. I watched it react to various stimuli, in a fairly realistic manner. I told myself that it must have been some propaganda video; fake, a hoax. The dog's tongue couldn't work still! The cut couldn't be that clean! Nonetheless, it was disturbing, even to someone such as myself. I continued to look.

Finally, I reached the topic of this discussion. Revival of a dead mammal. Once again, a dog. A recently deceased dog, at that. The canine had its blood drained, a new liquid replacing it. With an electric shock and the return of its blood, the dog's heart began to beat once more.

But it didn't stop there.

The dog's heart kept beating. It sneezed. It began to breathe. Although its brain was damaged, and it was rendered blind, the dog was alive.

I was not amazed like I thought I would be. I was nervous, afraid... scared even.

They had restored life to a deceased being

I told myself it wasn't real. It had to be fake. It just had to be. There were so many ways that they could have faked everything in that video. Every single damn thing.

But still...

I began to think. The things science could do! The revival of a creature... did it disprove the existence of Heaven and Hell? I began to feel queasy. Although I am in no way religious, in the back of my mind I always kept a small spark of hope that there would be an afterlife. There were so many paranormal happenings around my family. The ouija board had basically cursed us. My mother read tarot cards, always accurate. We would get our palms read.

Nonetheless, my scientific mind went into overdrive. I got scared. Death. Life. Their meaning? I couldn't tell.

In the back of my mind, I began to hope that they would revive a human, just to hear our fates.

Now.

Enough about my experience.

What are your thoughts on the revival of dead organisms? Is it good? Bad? Wrong? Right? Should it be done? Is it insane? What do you think?

[Light Prognosticus]

Let me try to be fast, as I had a BIG text and it got deleted, making me want to write no more...

I have three reasons to disagree with the "revival idea".

- Reason 1: Too many years of life
I'm born, I life, possibly I marry, I enjoy my life and, either young or old, I die. When a young life is lost (Like a 12-year old who was taken by his father and his uncle to a robbery, was inside a truck and was shot by a policeman who simply shot and accidentally hit him), this reason would make no absolute sense. But imagine you are an ill person with 100 years. Why would you want to continue to live? What would you be able to do if you were revived with brain injuries? You'd probably be bored of life. And how many years would you live? 1 minute? 1 day? 1 year? And would it be worth to suffer just to have some more time of life? Maybe you'd prefer to suicide you'd prefer to suicide yourself than to live more. Unless you'd like to tell your after-life experience...

- Reason 2: Possible paradox
Imagine if you're a spirit and you're going to have one more chance to live so you can make up for your bad things. You don't remember a thing, yet you have your old soul. What if you're revived and your soul needs to be in your old body? Can your soul be in two bodies at the same time? Wouldn't it cause a paradox? And even if it didn't, would it be right to make families suffer? (The rest of this part will be covered in reason 3)

- Reason 3: Suffering
During your life, you probably experience some saddening experiencies. The first that may come to mind is the death of a close relative, someone you really loved. He/she goes into a coffin, has a funeral and it's over for him/her. The sadness is big, as the body enters decomposition. But what if someone would come to you and told you they could bring him/her back to life? Absentmindedly, you'd probably accept, thinking you'd have your dear relative with you. Right? Probably not. As said before, wouldn't that relative be a body in decomposition with several brain injuries? Do you prefer to see someone dead, but with no more suffering? Or someone who is suffering all the time? I belive you should think of the others before looking at you. That's just my opinion. And wouldn't it be double-suffer for you if that person died again? And if you died first, wouldn't that person be crushed? That is, if he/she could think for himself/herself. Also, about one soul in two bodies, what if one was souless? Wouldn't that person act absentmindedly all the time?

- Reason 4: Nature has its course
You're alive. Lives must be preserved and we should do whatever we can to save them. Some people stay in the verge of dieing not due to Nature, but due to other people. But while getting ill is somewhat incertain, death IS certain. It's the course of nature. It can't be stopped. If we stop the time from flowing right, it's like stopping the Earth from going around the Sun. It's against the course of Nature. It's completely... INSANE!I belive you get my point, so I'm going to stop writing right now and wait to see if someone agrees.

But there's one last thing: AbstractThoughts, if I were you, after what I saw, I wouldn't be able to sleep for lots of time.

[lovegod703]

I have no idea, but all I can say is that if it's real, I hope hey can bring back being deceased up to 10 years ago. (My grandpa, but then again, he's cremated) and my cat, but she was cremated, too.

[Sam]

I believe there is an afterlife or lifestream but I have my doubts. We don't know for sure, and the only way we can find out is by dieing. Even then, once we are dead we cannot tell anyone if there is or what its like because we'll be dead. Therefore we may never discover if there is an afterlife.

[BAMFing ARCHER]

I think the afterlife and "revival" is something that we are not meant to meddle with or know about. The complexities of the universe are not meant to be dabbled by it's creations. If we do, then it's out of the frying pan and into the fire for us.

[carfilledwithfish]

To me, usually, the desire to learn something new and have a better understanding of the world outweighs any moral qualms about what one would have to do to figure out how stuff works. We could learn a lot by bringing someone back from the dead.
Testing on animals to find out whether or not you CAN bring things back to life is one thing, but it's not going to tell you a lot about a potential afterlife. If there is an afterlife, who's to say that animals have the same one that humans do? Plus, they can't talk, so they can't exactly tell us what it's like.
Has anyone ever tried this on a human? I'm sure they could, if someone gave their consent to be used for this experiment after they died.

[Spiny]

I was hoping I wouldn't be the one to bring this discussion up. Never really good with GD topic starters.

My take on the matter, is that it should only be used if someone died of a heart attack before their time.

Any other way would just be pushing it.

[Chaos-Stev-0]

I think if something dies, it should stay dead. Some people want to die because they are getting really old, and want to res in peace.

[Abstract]

@ Light Prognosticus: This, I completely agree with. It's one of the main reasons I was so disturbed that they would even attempt to bring the deceased back to life. As far as I'm concerned, if something is dead, it should stay dead, considering the consequences of bringing it back. Blindness? Severe brain damage? The organism would be nearly a vegetable.

On another note, it has bothered me quite a bit. I must admit that I did have a bit more difficulty sleeping at first.

@ Blitzwing: I do agree that you can learn a lot from revival, but, the idea of it is still rather disturbing.

And, they had plans to attempt to revive a freshly executed convict, but decided against it; they were afraid that they would have to release the convict afterward.

@ Chaos-Stev-0: Old people should never have to return to life. For one thing, they would only live for minutes due to cellular damage over years of life. For another thing, most elderly people want to die, as you said.

@ Pokemoneinstein: It's impossible to bring the dead back to life unless they have recently died. The brain suffers incredible amounts of cellular damage within minutes after death. If it did work, though, would you really want a relative or pet who was hardly who you once knew?

@ Pyroclasm: We aren't meant to know about it, but, human beings have very little respect of the ways of the universe.

@ The Spy: That's how it should be, but, if they someday revive a human who suffers none of the side-effects of revival, then they could possibly talk about how death was. Assuming that they don't lie about it.

@ Spiny: Personally, I'm very opposed to the idea. Even if it's someone who died before their time, the consequences are far worse than death, in my opinion. The dogs who were revived lived for six months, then died again. They were blind, were subjected to mental retardation... The other dogs in the household were terrified of them for some odd reason, as well. Bringing a young person back to that is wrong.

[Black Yoshi]

I have heard of the puppy revival thing before... it's still as wrong as it was when I heard it. We need to put a limit on some practices like this before we end up doing something we regret. Some things are just better off left to nature...

[Chocolate Kirby]

I think that it would be.....weird. It reminds me of zombies, which freaks me out. I think that the dead should stay dead. You never know, they might be in a better place.

Oh, and I heard of this guy who got stung by a sting ray stabbed a guy in the heart and when he got to the hospital he died. But the people revived him some time later. He said that the saw a ton of light while he was dead. He seemed pretty normal, like it never happened, in the interview, though.

[Die4Less]

Some People's Religions Might Determine What Happens After Death In Their Opinion.

[Zelnor]

I believe in an afterlife, and though I don't understand the possible ego-mechanics this would require, I am pretty sure whatever it is you saw was a load of bull.

Science (TM) teaches us that conciousness, as emulated by or hosted in teh brain (depending on your view) is visible to our current technology as a vastly complex pattern of action-reachtion electrical stimulations. Sensory input can be traced to parts of the brain and shows spikes in its bioelectrical pattern.

The revival of a dead mammal as such is commonplace today, though it depends on your view of "dead mammal". Defibrillators allow us to get somebody who'se heart would else fail or has already failed back into life. Technically that person was dead, yet we brought them back; indeed, many of these individuals report a Near Death Experience (NDE). Persons experiencing an NDE have the strangest tales to tell and it is still unknown if this is some sort of pacifier a dying brain pulls on us before getting medicine's fo tshoved up its arse or if it's real - another experiment was once the operation of a woman's blood clot in her brain, and though every single sensor said she was just about totally stone dead, she could recall "floating above" the OP and could report the events of her own operation which she could not have witnessed.

So, generally, the revival of a dead mammal has become commonplace - though the timeframe is very small. Once the brain has died and the chain of electrical signals is broken, you can at maximum get a lifeless husk to breathe and drool, working on instincts preserved in the hindbrain; instincts we re born with (another thing at which I marvel; we are born able breathe, see, work...).

The human body, and all of, if you excuse my religious term, creation, is a marvel, a sort of finely tuned cornucopia of little systems working togehter and once they're out of balance, they're utterly thrashed.

Therefore, that dog revival story seems fishy to me; especially though whilst there are fluids designed to act as a short-term replacement for blood, it's impossible to totally run on it as it lacks the sufficiet capability of transporting oxygen and is often also imcompatible with the body's system. Also, if he already was dead an amount of time, his brain would have shut down.

Keeping a head alive is, I think, impossible in the long run because a body has complex needs; the biochemistry must be right and ultimately only the body's own organs can produce and alter what it needs.

As for needling together two dogs along the windpipe, if he sliced two dogs in half, how the hell did he keep them from bleeding out like a punctured water balloon ?


As my moral opinion revival techniques - "sudden" revival is fine, such as preventing a heart attack from claiming a live, but hooking someone up to a machine park and keeping them alive is in some cases merely prolonging their suffering.

But of course this is a complex matter; and in the end... It's only decideable from case to case.

I, personally, too think we should at least restrict research and development in this area, but when has that ever stopped humanity ?

Somewhere in the essence of our species, there it's built in: The desire to throw all the switches and flip all the levers and stick your finger in the electric socket of the universe, just to see what happens.

We calculated an atom bomb, saw that it was very bad, and decided to make one anyway to see if our calculations were correct.


I just hope that curring-edge nanotechnology and robot-scientists have seen their disaster movies.

Humanity needs to be more Genre Savvy.