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Blurring the Line Between Life and Death

Something as simple as the "twilight sleep" anesthesia used during colonoscopies can blur the distinction between life and death. The experiences you had while under the influence of the drugs are lost forever, having failed to imprint themselves on your memory. That person you were during that time-slice is, for all intents and purposes, dead.

My sister is a nurse who administers this sort of anesthesia during colonoscopies and endoscopies. She mentioned once that some doctors are very rough with patients during the procedure on the theory that they won't remember the experience anyway, so it doesn't matter how you treat them.

I responded that the same would be true of a terminal patient...soon they will be dead and won't remember a thing, so why not abuse them to your heart's content? My sister agreed that the logic was exactly the same.

Others in the room quickly changed the subject.
 
Z said:
Is the underlying program that brings your Spore creature 'to life' any different, metaphysically speaking, from the underlying laws of physics that bring Ed Asner to life?
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...and is there any way to stop these underlying laws of physics?
 
Ixion said:
I wonder where that came from? :D
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I would love to give you full credit.

But, in all honesty: The subject also came up in an I-Con panel. That, and the concept of coaxing cancer cells to regenerate lost body parts. (Where would the disease end and the healing process begin?!)

Z said:
I kind of wonder myself about conscious life versus automatic life. Too many people today walk around in a semi-zombie state, going through motions but not being aware of anything - even themselves. Half-alive, they seem to me. Empty, hollow, brain-dead things that don't want to wonder about the world around them, that have no curiosity beyond the next tabloid scandal they read...
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There could be different "levels" of conscious life: Some "higher" than others. But, perhaps it is not a ladder, either. Maybe types of consciousness could be modeled like a bush?

Z said:
Is the underlying program that brings your Spore creature 'to life' any different, metaphysically speaking, from the underlying laws of physics that bring Ed Asner to life?
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I agree that A.L., in general, could beconsidered alive, according to how you define the word.

But, I also think Spore is a bad example. The computer-controlled creatures feature a more procedural-based (almost like "script-based" but more flexible in its state management, etc.) A.I., rather than truly complex-adaptive forms of A.I.
 
Wowbagger said:
I would love to give you full credit.

But, in all honesty: The subject also came up in an I-Con panel. That, and the concept of coaxing cancer cells to regenerate lost body parts. (Where would the disease end and the healing process begin?!)

There could be different "levels" of conscious life: Some "higher" than others. But, perhaps it is not a ladder, either. Maybe types of consciousness could be modeled like a bush?

I agree that A.L., in general, could beconsidered alive, according to how you define the word.

But, I also think Spore is a bad example. The computer-controlled creatures feature a more procedural-based (almost like "script-based" but more flexible in its state management, etc.) A.I., rather than truly complex-adaptive forms of A.I.
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Well, yeah - it was really just a vague analogy. Spore creatures don't even seem to have will, after all.
 
It doesn't bother me that you had seen it before. Honestly, the idea of a fetus mimicking a tumor has been kicked around for awhile, so it doesn't surprise me that interested parties may have heard of it before.
 
It would be cool if one month fetuses could be born and make it on their own immediately.
They'd be sort of human, but small and amphibious. They'd stay that size, and be carnivores of bugs.

Oops. Topic drift.
 
aggle-rithm said:
Something as simple as the "twilight sleep" anesthesia used during colonoscopies can blur the distinction between life and death. The experiences you had while...
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As an anesthesiologist, I could speak at length to this comment... but, WADR, I think you're confusing concepts a little here... although I know what you're driving at.

Loss of consciousness and inability to lay-down memory is slightly different, IMHO, than "blurring the distinction between life and death". At no time during any routine anesthetic are you not "alive", in that your organs aren't preserved and functioning independently, especially as you describe your sister's technique.

The only instance where this may be true are during the times we induce cold total circulatory arrest techniques (for instance, during aortic arch repair) when there is no circulation going to the body and you are temporarily separated from cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). Literally, the patient could be considered "dead" for those few minutes that the CPB is switched off. However, we know that very slow cellular metabolism is still occurring and that, needless to say, we can revive patients from this condition.

Now, simply having patients amnestic for a minor procedure is an entirely different concept, which is often what "sedation nurses" (which, I'm assuming, is what your sister does as opposed to being a registered nurse anesthetist) do in colonoscopy clinics. The interesting thing is that patients will often chat with you and/or tell you funny stories that they cannot later remember doing. This is hardly a "blurred line" between life and death, again IMHO. It is no different, as you say, as going on a complete bender and drinking yourself to the point of amnesia.

~Dr. Imago
 
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Dr. Imago said:
Now, simply having patients amnestic for a minor procedure is an entirely different concept, which is often what "sedation nurses" (which, I'm assuming, is what your sister does as opposed to being a registered nurse anesthetist) do in colonoscopy clinics. The interesting thing is that patients will often chat with you and/or tell you funny stories that they cannot later remember doing. This is hardly a "blurred line" between life and death, again IMHO. It is no different, as you say, as going on a complete bender and drinking yourself to the point of amnesia.

~Dr. Imago
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I suppose what I'm talking about is more philosophical than physical. The thought that there can be, in effect, a discontinuity in your existence is a disturbing one to ponder.
 
Wowbagger said:
On another forum, someone reminded me of a fish that completely dehydrates when its lake dries up, and then revives when it gets wet again, but we can't remember what it was called. Anyone know anything about it?
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A lungfish does that. It doesn't completely dry up, but encapsulates itself in a mud ball with a little moisture in the middle.

ETA: Off-topic, but interesting: The lungfish might seem to be a transitional form between fish and land animals, but it is actually a very primitive form of fish. As modern fish evolved, their lungs turned into air sacs to provide boyancy.
 
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aggle-rithm said:
I suppose what I'm talking about is more philosophical than physical. The thought that there can be, in effect, a discontinuity in your existence is a disturbing one to ponder.
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But, this happens to us everday for 5-8 hours (on average) during the periods of non-REM sleep.

:)

~Dr. Imago
 
Wowbagger said:
On another forum, someone reminded me of a fish that completely dehydrates when its lake dries up, and then revives when it gets wet again, but we can't remember what it was called. Anyone know anything about it?
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"During winter months, when the water is cold, they (desert pupfish) become dormant, burrowing in the muddy bottom of their habitat."
See:LINK
 
You can see how some have survived in very cold water for remarkable periods and been okay. That one in Vegas with the over turned jeep was incredible.

The particular hospital had a revival unit they had not tried and it worked.....can't find a link.

Oh here we go

No pulse, no heartbeat and body temperature 30 degrees below normal - hopeless situation?

Four year old Jimmy Tontlewicz was pulled from the freezing waters of Lake Michigan after disappearing under the ice for more than a half hour.

Thirty year old Murray Brown was found thirty minutes after his Jeep crashed upside down in a chilly creek near Las Vegas, Nevada. Two and a half year old Michelle Funk was rescued from an icy river in Utah after being submerged for over an hour!

All survived!

Each case is a story of perseverance and medical ingenuity that will not only affect the patients and doctors, but will change medical history forever.


As neurosurgeon Julian Bailes likes to say, “There has never been a drug as protective as the cold. It’s harnessing the cold that’s the problem.” Dr. Bailes was one of the surgeons who revived Jimmy Tontlewicz. He is now helping develop a blood substitute which will enable surgeons to lower body temperatures and buy valuable time for operating on trauma victims with severe head injuries.

Fortunately for Murray Brown, his trauma center doctor, Larry Gentilello, is the inventor of the Continuous Arterial/Venous Rewarming Device, a machine designed specifically for reviving hypothermia patients. Murray was the first human to benefit from continuous arterial/venous rewarming.
Michelle Funk, may be the luckiest of all. No one else has ever drowned for over an hour and recovered. She was not only the first child, but also the first drowning victim to be revived using an extracorpeal rewarming technique pioneered by her ER doc, Robert Bulte, MD.
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more

http://www.figure8films.tv/shows/cws.htm

You wonder how more might have been saved had we known......:confused:
 
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Frankenstein type monsters used to blur the line in people's imaginations. The mummy, even more so. Dead, then alive. Jesus is another focal point of that phenomena. Gore is usually implicated. (Not Al; blood.)

There should be a horror movie wherein a dumb janitor is on his way to dump a bucket of aborted fetuses into the dumpster behind the clinic, and accidently spills a bottle of cleaning fluid into the bucket. The unborn fetuses would somehow congeal into a new life form, and emerge from the dumpster, hungry, and pissed.

I hope that wasn't off-topic.
 
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