A Controversial Trial to Bring the Dead Back to Life With the Use of Stem Cells

- in My World
stem cells

Health is something very complex, and that is why our body or simple we, are complex forms of life. For any particular medical problem, there are a lot of ways to treat it, and research can go in any direction in order to figure out how a treatment works.

The most real, as well as most intensive way of testing a treatment to see if it really works, is somehow going to be to look up-close at the cells of the body and see exactly what effect a chemical, nutrient, vitamin or mineral is going to have. However, it is not that simple at all. These days, there seems to be the notion which says that stem cells can be used to treat anything. First, we will explain what brain stem death is.

What is brain stem death?

Brain stem death is the condition in which a person no longer has any brain stem functions and has lost the potential for consciousness permanently, as well as its capacity to breathe.

A person is pronounced as being dead when the brain stem function is permanently lost.

However, even though brain dead humans are technically no longer alive, their bodies can usually still circulate blood, as well as digest food, excrete waste, balance hormones, grow, sexuality mature, heal wounds, and gestate and deliver a baby.

As some studies from recently suggested, some electrical activity and blood flow continues after brain cell death, just not enough to allow the whole body to function.

And while a human being lacks substantial regenerative capabilities in the central nervous system, a lot of non-human species, like amphibians and certain fish, can repair, regenerate, as well as remodel some substantial portions of their brain and brain stem also after some critical, as well as life-threatening trauma.

A groundbreaking project which may “reverse death.”

There was a groundbreaking trial in order to see if it is possible to regenerate the brains of dead people, which has won approval from health watchdogs. In the study, which was expected to launch in late 2016, scientists were reportedly going to use stem cells in an extremely controversial attempt to “reverse death.”

Philadelphia based company Bioquark had the purpose to use stem cells therapy for people that were pronounced brain-dead clinically.

A specialist from India, Dr. Himanshu Bansal, who works with Biotech companies Revita Life Sciences and Bioquark Inc, was granted ethical permission to recruit 20 patients who were declared clinically dead from a traumatic brain injury, in order to test whether some parts of their central nervous system can be brought back to life or not.

Scientists will use a combination of different therapies, which include injecting the brain with stem cells, as well as a cocktail of peptides directly into the spinal cords of such people, also deploying lasers and nerve stimulation techniques which were shown to bring patients out of comas.

The participants in the experiment will have been certified dead and only kept alive through life support. They are going to be monitored for a few months with the use of brain imaging equipment to look for some signs of regeneration, especially in the upper spinal cord, which is the lowest region of the brain stem that controls independent breathing and heartbeat.

However, it sounds like the trial has not taken place yet. At the website of Bioquark, a fairly hazy description of the experiment was provided, encouraging people to contact the company to essentially find out if the experiment is taking place or not, as well as how it is taking place.

If the experiment happens, the team believes that brain stem cells may have the ability to delete their history and re-start life once again, based on the tissue that surrounds them, which is a process which is often seen in the animal kingdom in creatures such as salamanders which can regrow entire limbs.

It has been reported that the trial is going to take place in 2016 originally, but that did not come to function too. However, it was launched in April 2016 in Rudrapur, India, but there were no patients enrolled. The study was shut down by some regulators in November of 2016, as the Drug Controller General of India hadn’t given permission.

However, the CEO of Bioquark Inc. Dr. Ira Pastor said:

This was the first experiment of its kind and another step towards the eventual reversal of death in our lifetime.

He added:

It is our long-term vision that a full recovery in such patients is a possibility, even though that is not the focus of the first study – however, it is a bridge to that eventually.

The idea of this study is controversial, and a lot of people are skeptical of it. That is probably why it doesn’t seem to have come to fruition yet.


Featured Image Credit: Prometheus/Twentieth Century Fox.

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