We hope you have your escape plan ready for the Zombie Apocalypse.
Because pretty soon scientists could be bringing dead people back to life (well, sort of).
In the name of scientific research (and not as a result of our obsession with The Walking Dead), a ground-breaking trial has been given the go-ahead to test if parts of dead people’s central nervous systems can be regenerated.
US biotech company Bio Quark has been granted permission to recruit 20 patients who were certified dead from a traumatic brain injury. Through a series of experiments – injecting the brain with stem cells and peptides, using lasers, and nerve stimulation techniques like the ones used to bring people out of comas – they will test the brains of those declared clinically dead.
They will be monitored using brain imaging equipment for several months in an attempt to see if they can bring them back to life, specifically in the upper spinal cord (which is the lowest region of the brain to control independent breathing and heartbeat).
The team of scientists hope that they can re-start their subjects’ brain stem cells using the tissue surrounding them – similar to a process whereby creatures like salamanders are able to completely regrow their limbs.
While this may sound pretty sci-fi – or like the fictional work of Joey Tribbiani’s neurosurgeon, Drake Ramoray, on Days of Our Lives – the doctors behind the project are confident that they will see results in the first two to three months.
“This represents the first trial of its kind and another step towards the eventual reversal of death in our lifetime,” said Bio Quark CEO Dr. Ira Pastor.
So while we won’t have to worry about zombies chasing us around an empty field, there is hope that the initiative could pave the way for discoveries surrounding Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease in the not too distant future.
“It is a long term vision of ours that a full recovery in such patients is a possibility, although that is not the focus of this first study – but it is a bridge to that eventuality,” Dr. Pastor added.
It’s a long way away from a full resurrection of the brain – but given the spate of 2016 celebrity deaths that took legendary musicians like Bowie and Prince from us, we’ll gladly settle for a pipe dream.
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