Imagine it: you have been rushed into the emergency room and you are
dying. Your injuries are too severe for the surgeons to repair in time. Your
blood haemorrhages unseen from ruptured vessels. The loss of blood is starving
your organs of vital nutrients and oxygen. You are entering cardiac arrest.
But this is not the end. A decision is made: tubes are connected,
machines whir into life, pumps shuffle back and forth. Ice-cold fluid flows
through your veins, chilling them. Eventually, your heart stops beating, your
lungs no longer draw breath. Your frigid body remains there, balanced on the
knife-edge of life and death, neither fully one nor the other, as if frozen in
time.
The surgeons continue their work, clamping, suturing, repairing. Then
the pumps stir into life, coursing warm blood back into your body. You will be
resuscitated. And, if all goes well, you will live.
Suspended animation, the ability to set a person’s biological processes
on hold, has long been a staple of science fiction. Interest in the field
blossomed in the 1950s as a direct consequence of the space race. Nasa poured
money into biological research to see if humans might be placed in a state of
artificial preservation. In this state, it was hoped, astronauts could be
protected from the dangerous cosmic rays zapping through space. Sleeping your
way to the stars also meant carrying far less food, water and oxygen, making
the ultimate long-haul flight more practical.
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