Immortal Wizards?

Have you heard about the ECMO Machine? It’s the newest, magical gadget in our bag of wizardry.  Brought to you by the ingenious human drive to never die, it can apparently bring people back to life after being dead for an incredible amount of time.  We’re not talking minutes here, people, we’re talking hours…..within 8 hours, to be exact.

ECMO stands for Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation….which is wizard-speak for something outside your body that pumps oxygen to your vital membranes or organs, namely the heart and lungs.  It is used for people who have such severely diseased hearts or lungs that they can no longer adequately provide oxygenation for themselves through regular breathing.   But it can also be used in other, nature-dodging ways.

The ECMO machine has gotten some press lately for its use in mostly Asian countries where people have been brought back from clinical death.  This device is wizardly enough on its own, but now we are really playing at being gods, triumphant over even death.  As an added benefit, when mighty death can’t be thwarted, the device can be used to keep a cadaver fresh and healthy enough to prolong and increase the success rate of organ harvesting. Is that the PC way to describe it? Organ harvesting? Probably not.  Either way, people on waiting lists for hearts, kidneys and eyeballs are in luck with this new development because even more squishy parts will be delivered to our needy friends.

The horizon is clear, the future is great. Right?  Right? Isn’t it?

Well, yes. This is a fantastic technology worthy of the rank of Grey Wizardry.  But there are also a lot of possibilities that are either fascinating or terrifying, depending on your view.  One delightful avenue for us to roll down is that of Near Death research.  The field is currently reliant on people’s subjective reports, producing mostly qualitative studies. This is problematic because most hard-core, dogmatic scientists require what is supposedly objective and definitely quantifiable data.  The Near Death field has begun to rely mostly on placing stickers and objects in impossible to see places in an emergency room or Critical Care Unit and questioning supposed Near Death experiencers on the placement of said objects in order to satisfy the objectivists.  It still hasn’t helped, of course, because many of the people who refuse to acknowledge the research seem to do so out of sheer dogmatism, not out of an actual, scientific basis.

So what will the desperados in the Near Death camp likely do?  Find people to volunteer to die.  Let them be dead for hours.  Bring them back with the ECMO and record the data, subjective or not, of their experiences. Part of why this would help to battle if not satisfy those in the other camp is that their argument to explain away the Near Death Experience itself relies on the precise moments of death. During the moments of clinical death, the brain undergoes a chaotic electrical storm, of sorts.  It lights up all over the place, in completely unpredictable ways that differ from patient to patient.  According to the unbelievers, this storm is the cause of all Near Death Experiences.  They may be right.  Still, if the people in the Near Death camp want to prove this wrong once and for all, it may help to have proof that people experience this Near Death phenomenon even long after the brain is clinically dead, long after all electrical chaos has ended.

Enter stage right: the ECMO machine, here to solve the problem.  Hours after the brain stops functioning, what do people experience? Can we play a certain song or show certain images in the room where their clinically dead bodies lie and have them report those experiences back to us?  The possibilities are wild and exciting.

In steps the ethical debate, stage left, to muddy things.  What if the ECMO machine can bring people back, but there is a cost. Some brain damage? Some organ damage? Is the lifelong risk of the burden of these injuries a fair trade-off for “proof” of something that, most likely, people will still find a way in which to be dogmatically opposed?

It’s impossible for me to say. What do you think?

Another possible ethical question concerning the use of the machine involves the availability of the technology. As with all technology, there is a divide between the haves and the have-nots.  The device is more available to those with the money to get themselves to a hospital at all, especially the more advanced hospitals.  With health care support declining in many countries, will we see a day when only the well-off can die and return to life?  Along with other life-extending technologies, such as the studies of telomeres and the promising directions in that field, will we find that only the rich will live forever, while the poor come and go without hope of experiencing renewal and extension?

 

I hope not. I hope we keep our Grey Wizard status and that we do not travel down the path of darkness, into a dystopic world where robots and immortal-ECMO-vampire overlords rule the world.  I couldn’t resist, I just had to throw that idea into the mix.  All joking aside, I’d much rather go down the path where people everywhere can benefit from the ECMO machine and also use it to further explore the mysteries of the Near Death phenomenon.

And, finally, I honestly hope that we don’t use this and other technologies to keep people alive indefinitely. I, for one, would like to die some day.  Life would be pretty boring if you experienced it endlessly, wouldn’t it? Who wants to live forever? Do you?