Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021) | Hacker News Reader

Mammals can breathe through their intestines (2021)

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This reminds me of the scene in The Abyss where the rat is forced to breathe in oxygen-rich perfluorocarbons[1]. I think this idea of introducing oxygen through perfluorocarbons has been explored but not sure it’s made much headway in humans to date [2]. This paper seems like a clever idea to introduce the liquid anally where oxygen can diffuse through the linings, and to also use same liquid (because of its viscosity) to scrub the intestines of mucus, to facilitate the oxygen diffusion process.

[1] https://filmschoolrejects.com/the-abyss-breathing-fluid/?amp

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid_breathing

I wonder what effects emerge from chronically removing intestinal mucosa

What could possibly go wrong ?

I've done it. Inflammation, sensitivity to bacterium, gut pain. The mucus regenerates but takes some time. I found that in my case diet cranberry juice and mastic gum helped until the mucus regenerated.

Some people with severe IBS get to experience this often. I am thankful to not be one of them.

That sounds horrible

Research on perfluorocarbons in humans progressed into several inventions. Being immersed is not one, but increasing air transfer within the lungs using a spray, reducing the impact of the bends through an injection, or reducing incidence of traumatic brain injuries due to swelling is a third.

There's quite a large group of doctors out there researching them.

I had the exact same though - this could make the suits a reality - providing that the traveller does not need to take large doses of morphine to deal with the pain or are dosed with amyl nitrite.

I bet you would be "gassy" for weeks on end - with a dangerous combination of both pure oxygen and methane - sounds like a party to me.

Liquid breathing hurts?

I'm guessing, with the reference to amyl nitrate, they are assuming that whatever is stuck up your ass to facilitate this breathing process, is going to hurt.

Your anti-drowning reflex kicks in, which is fairly unpleasant, and I don’t imagine the lungs are used to a fluid with that much viscosity or mass

The article is not referring to using your lungs to breath...

I can only imagine they way they are indicating the administration of the oxygen would be painful.

Having gas pumped into you intestines is quite unpleasant. (Woke up mid-colonoscopy, not fun.)

The fact that it was an actual rat actually submerged in actual perfluorocarbons and actually breathing the stuff still blows my mind.

"He's diggin' it"

Cameron seems to make a big deal of "the rat really survived" (5 rats, in fact), glossing over the fact that the shocking animal cruelty was also real. It's rather hypocritical to pride yourself on the realism of the scene, while cutting all the parts where the rats defecate from panic.

You better not know what else scientists do to rats. And please, don't even start on the argument that they do it for science and not for entertainment. Entertainment in the form of science fiction is crucial for inspiring new generations of scientists.

It sounds like the next generation of scientists could benefit from inspirational films showing less animal cruelty.

If you insist on knives without any blood, you'll be looking for a very long time.

> You better not know what else scientists do to rats.

Most people know what scientists do to animals—there have been enough awareness campaigns over the years. Animal experiments are tolerated, and usually strictly regulated [1], because they can potentially improve the lives of people.

> Entertainment in the form of science fiction is crucial for inspiring new generations of scientists.

I don't see why that (if it is true at all) is a reason to abuse animals for movies. If you wanted, you could make 'inspiring' science fiction showing harm to animals by using special effects.

[1]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

Would this technically count as science, given that it was a real test of perfluorocarbon breathing and that it was documented?

Scientists don't abuse or cause distress or panic in animals, just FYI. There are very strict rules around it.

Simply not true. There are some rules to limit the amount of abuse or distress for some types on animal, but that doesn't prevent anywhere near all of it.

Ive done animal experiments. All the rats were unconscious.

I've assisted with animal experiments as well, they were not unconscious.

Then you’re aware of the standards? Any discomfort has to be justified by the value of the data?

And generally if you can relieve discomfort then it’s a requirement?

The fact you said “limit the abuse” makes me think you aren’t that familiar. No “abuse” is allowed.

Just be because abuse has been justified doesn't make it not abuse.

Why do I have to think of the Apes, Dogs, and cats with a plug in their skull, for neuroscience? What about the countless bunnies and dogs, used for 'dermatologically tested' label for cosmetics, wet wipes, whatever, by rubbing that stuff in their eyes?

One strict ruler up yours!

I'd genuinely like to see some objective information about the scene and how it qualifies as animal abuse. The AHA pretty closely monitors scenes with animals and has since the 1940s [1] albeit the rules and regs it follows have continually been improved upon. I understand that there are extenuating circumstances, like the tiger nearly drowning in the "Life of Pi," but from what I can tell, they mostly get it right. After looking for a good amount of time, I'm yet to find a substantiated account of how the rat in "Abyss" was subject to abuse. I understand how the scene might feel but feelings don't equate to actual events.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Humane#Work_in_the_fi...

How hard did you look?

From https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096754/trivia/ (which is incidentally the third Google result[0] for "the abyss american humane"):

"The American Humane Association rated this film "unacceptable" because of the rat that was submerged in oxygenated liquid in one scene."

From the same page:

"James Cameron later admitted that four rats had indeed gone through the procedure without problems; the fifth, however, suffered a cardiac arrest. Fortunately, Cameron was able to revive it through careful chest compressions, and later kept it as a pet."

From the article linked in the original comment:

"Supposedly, the only purpose for the cuts in the sequence was to avoid showing the rats defecating from panic."

And you need only watch the scene to see a rat in enormous distress. I'm not sure what more you want.

[0] The first Google result is an explanation from American Humane themselves that they "were told there were no animals in the film. Therefore, AHA was not aware of the scene involving the rat and was not on the set."

I remember seeing a picture of a rat in a tube lab breathing this type of liquid circa 1981. Mind was also blown.

I don't have the source but the navy tried something similar for allowing scuba divers to fill there lungs with oxygen rich liquid I don't think it was perfluorocarbons but the ended canceling the project because while they could oxygenated someone they were unable to exchange out carbon and ultimately the person they experimented on (yes human experiment) died from CO2 toxicity. Id be interested to see how long they can ventilate an animal like this

Any chance of a source on this?

People dying during research like this is definitely on the extreme end of things.

Almost everything we know about all the ways diving can kill you comes from the US Navy's experimental diving unit. A lot of people died after they intentionally gave people the bends.

If I recall correctly, similar experiment have been tried lately, where the subject survive. (maybe because they were shorter than the navy's one)

However, the subjects stated afterward that they felt adequately oxygenated, but also were on the verge of panic due to the constant feeling of drowning induce by having your lungs filled with liquid.

None of them felt like they would be able to do any kind of productive task in this state.

Whenever I have a tiny bit of water “go down the wrong pipe” I think about how truly awful it must feel to drown. Just inhaling a teeny tiny amount of water is so uncomfortable and sometimes even scary even though you can still breath and you know everything will be perfectly fine. I can’t even imagine how awful that sensation must have been for the people involved in this experiment.

Indeed this response is what makes simulated drowning (waterboarding) a torture.

Peter Watts' Rifters series is premised on the development of this sort of technology for human use and goes into uncomfortable detail about the (false) feeling of drowning

The last I heard, this form of liquid breathing may have use for premature babies. The concept is that their lungs may better handle liquid than air, so long as they don't start breathing air. It would require a respirator that pumps liquid, a tricky practical problem.

Why can't this be repurposed as a lung cleanse? I imagine that heavy smokers' lungs (or coal miners') could benefit from a wash and rinse, perhaps with some vibration assistance. With a medical team standing by to resuscitate.

God knows I've breathed in enough silica dust that I could go for something like this.

Might cause more damage on the way out.

That mucus usually supports digestion of food, AFAIK?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gut_microbiota

Are you suggesting an IV-drip with likkidfood instead?

> Because they are highly dense, perfluorocarbons can also help flush mucus out of the intestine > Introducing oxygen to the intestines would probably kill the microbes involved in digestion

Combining these two for any significant amount of time seems like a recipe for microbiota dysbiosis.

It would be interesting to somehow determine if most of the oxygen is absorbed in the small or large intestine.

Mucus is what keeps bacteria from reaching the intestinal epithelium, especially in the large intestine (https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0803124105), and oxygenating the gut will cause a bloom in facultative aneorobes including E. coli and Salmonella, while killing anaerobic commensals like Bacteroidetes.

Right, First do no harm

I think if you're going to die from lack of oxygen, then that's the top priority.

People have no idea how important the microbiome is to their health. At the very least, one should make a "backup" of the microbiome so it can be repopulated later in case something goes pear-shaped. Messing with stuff can cause all kinds of endotoxin / auto-immune issues.

I'm no medical science person, but I had surgery a year ago for some type of severe gangrene, and while I miraculously came out whole, I'm still suffering horrible digestive issues that had nothing to do with it, presumably from the antibiotics needed to nuke the bad bacteria (because of intolerance to the one that was more efficient they had to use more indiscriminate solutions).

It didn't specifically cause the issues you mention, but it sure caused some.

I had antibiotics induced digestive problems too. I saw a specialist and the treatment was another cocktail of antibiotics.

It worked immediately after taking the first dose.

What kind of specialist was this?

A gastroenterologist.

Go to sprouts/whholefoods/mother's and get the most expensive probiotics like the emergency 5 day version. Repeat maybe a few weeks after.

I love the thought that one's gut should have an off-site backup for DR purposes.

One theory is that this is what the role of the appendix is: backup, storage and recovery.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/01/170109162333.h...

Current backups are in close relatives. They'll take a sample of feces from a relative, liquify it and remove solids, and seed your rear end with the results.

Been doing this for decades.

Turns out that’s what the appendix is for!

How does one make such a backup?

Core dump and cold storage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fecal_microbiota_transplant

If you’ve got a tube up your arse so you can breathe through your bowels, you’ve got bigger issues than microbiome ones. Even not needing that but being sick enough they’re considering that (if it was ever adopted) you’re going to have problems / you’re probably on wild cocktails of drugs.

It is very unlikely much if any of the tested fluids were reaching the small bowel - between the small and large bowels (you probably know this) you have the iliocaecal valve (which can reflux) but the change in diameter means that even if it was incompetent moving any sort of volume would need a cannulation of that valve

One other "fun" use of perflurocarbons (like fluorinated crown ethers or cyclo-alkanes) is that, containing large amounts of 19F, they are MRI visible. So, you can directly image the compound in the lungs leading to some really striking images [1, 2] while they are in the gaseous phase, or indeed in the liquid phase when one lung is partially inflated. I think that some compounds like these have been proposed for use in patients who have inhaled hot or burning gasses (viz: most likely blast/explosion/deflagration victims) and suffered an internal lung injury. Oedema can impair oxygen availability at the surface of the lung and it's my understanding that there is at least one or two research projects using PFCs as an intensive life-supporting measure as a consequence .

[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/jmri.26292?...

[2] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mrm.28270?c...

[3] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/mrm.10008?c...

One can also do that with nuclear spin polarized 3He or xenon. The nuclei of these isotopes are sufficiently shielded from the environment that polarization (induced with circularly polarized light scattering off alkali vapor mixed with the inert gas) survives for quite a long time. The polarization is orders of magnitude stronger than that induced by magnetic fields in ordinary NMR.

And then you get the chemical shift differences of the dissolved phases when imaging with 129Xe as well – got to love SEOP and hyperpolarisation techniques in general! :-)

One limitation I’ve seen on this is that the same mechanism can’t remove carbon dioxide, so this is limited to supplemental oxygen in like a surgery or emergency scenario vs a long-term alternative to say a tracheotomy.

Indeed. Something people always forget is that hypoxia is bad, but hypercapnia is worse (insert references here to the spiral of death, etc)

Of particular note: hypoxia is painless, only hypercapnia (too much CO2 in the blood) hurts.

This is why inert gasses can be quite dangerous to be around, you won't get the "I'm suffocating" feeling at all, you just get lightheaded and die.

Not necessarily as limiting as you might think. At altitude, people urinate more starting well before you are in any danger of altitude sickness because the air is too thin to breathe out waste gasses rapidly enough and the body compensates by shunting them out through the kidneys.

So... at high altitude, your piss is carbonated?!

It's actually the opposite. At altitude you have to breathe more to get the same oxygen, and this makes your carbon dioxide lower than normal, this makes your blood too basic, so the body pisses out basic compounds to compensate.

Anybody else concerned about the ethics of scrubbing intestines, injecting gas into intestines, then suffocation the mammals to death?

Are animals in these procedures routinely anaesthetised?

If you eat meat you are probably financing worse things, like sentencing animals to a life in a house of horrors. Eg: piglets have their teeth and tails removed without anesthesia. Many simply die from shock.

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_animal_farming#Anima...

If only human beings could live long, happy, healthy lives while avoiding animal products!

Oh, wait.

And it's not just meat, either. Milk, cheese, leather, gelatin, etc. We subject billions of animals to truly nightmarish torture and 99% of us don't ever really stop to consider it.

Can milk be ethical?

I personally don't think so, unless in life-threatening situations.

The dairy industry is arguably the worst of factory farming: all the horrific aspects of the meat industry, but prepended with years of subjugation (forced insemination, illness, etc.)

In the best case, a cow is treated like a pet, which A.) is never the case, and B.) still necessitates taking something from an animal without it's consent. Something that is specifically for it's newborn, as well. That's _always_ gonna be wrong, unless it's a matter of life and death for someone.

Animal trials usually involve a ethics committee. The big problem is that outside of mathematical/computer experiments, it is almost impossible to do medical testing in an ethical way. With exception to experiments done on brain dead (which still involve some measure of uncertainty), on who or what should test be conducted on. In the past we used war criminals or criminals sentenced to death, but that has an obviously ethically problem. We could use military recruits that volunteers, or poor people who would volunteer in exchange for monetary compensation, but how well understand is the consent and how ethical is it use people like that? We could use patients who are out of options, but how ethical is it to exploit people who has no realistic choices?

It is hard to view animal testing as anything else than cruelty to animals. I can only hope that it was there was no other options, and that they indeed got anaesthetised.

(Someone here mentioned experiments in breathing in oxygen-rich perfluorocarbons that used navy recruits. I have seen discussions about how much those consent should actually count considering the power balance and hierarchical culture that exist in the military).

It would be funny, if it wasn't dramatic, that animal cruelty is so common that people are only triggered by these exotic and very small scale experiments.

Killing a few mice or cloning a few sheep is barbaric but slaughtering millions of mammals every single day is business as usual.

Obviously as soon as one points that out the cognitive dissonance kicks in and the downvote brigade shows up

You have my upvote.

Both intestines and lungs are epithelial tissue covered in mucus. I'm not that shocked by this news.

Edit: though I don't like the title. It's not breathing. It's absorbing oxygen.

Breathing involves inhalation and exhalation.

Well I think most of us have the exhalation part figured out by now.

Both are also essentially diffusion surfaces for transfering vital substances into (and in the case of lungs, also out of) the body.

The surface area of the lungs is commonly compared to that of half a tennis court, about 80--100 m^2. Checking just now, the surface area of the human digestive tract is about 32 m^2:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/24694282/

I think the Dutch knew about this back in the late 18th Century - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_smoke_enema

It's where the phrase "blow smoke up your arse" comes from.

That wiki page is quite something...

This isn't related though. The fact that drugs can be absorbed through intestinal mucosa is well known, that's how suppositories work. And it was known in pre-colombian south america too. But here we are talking about oxygen.

dumb question -- is it not possible to just directly oxygenate blood? like what stops having a special IV that takes blood out, oxygenates it, and puts it back in?

Yes, it's entirely possible; it's called ECMO. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxygen...

It's very risky and requires a nurse at the bedside 24/7, so it's a last-ditch sort of intervention.

why is it risky?

You need to treat lots of blood continuously, so you have to cut a bypass into the largest, irreplaceable blood vessels, unlike smaller operations like kidney dialysis where you can just "plug into" an arm.

Mechanical pumping of blood is a problem as it damages blood cells. Infection is a severe risk. Any break in the operation or a temporary "plumbing issue" where the machine connects with the body can be fatal. So you need 24/7 monitoring capable of really rapid response.

Red blood cells are meant to travel into capillaries so must deform but will shear easily when subjected to stress which activates clotting action - mechanical pumps still cannot replicate the pumping action of heart.

How has medical science never heard of bellows?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellows

Heart is truely an amazing organ - don't think we will get close to a mechanical replacement.

Has multiple chambers, Has chambers that pump sequentially with different pressures and volumes, Never needs to stop for additional lubrication, Never needs to be "charged", Never stops for maintenance, Is powered by oxygen delivered by the red blood cells it is pumping, Is controlled by the body's "proprietary" electro-chemical control system, Is not rejected by the body's internal bio-chemical defense mechanisms, Produces only carbon dioxide as waste, delivers that waste to red blood cells, Doesn't have a single rough or chemically reactive surface, Forms perfect in-line seals around each chamber without crushing red blood cells, Never leaks a single drop, Doesn't retain any fluid in the chambers, Doesn't allow "backward" flow, Has a pump action and pressure that are strong enough to circulate blood up from your toes, but delicate enough to prevent damaging any red blood cells or capillaries

I don't care how amazing the body is (it is), blood flow needs constant flow with a pulse. Put two bellows in parallel, use a linear motor to push out quickly and pull in slowly on each, and voilà mechanical heart without shear.

MIT licensed, go save lives you f'ers.

People with a LVAD don't have a pulse, actually; it's not required. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventricular_assist_device

In a suitcase ???.

It is and they do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extracorporeal_membrane_oxygen...

I'm not advocating it, but intravenous ozone is a treatment offered by some alternative medical practitioners, as is rectal ozone.

After some research, it seems like ozone is a last resort treatment in non-evidence-based medicine when vitamins and magical crystals can not cure the cancer or HIV. At least, that is what the first page of Google results tells me. So I would also not advocate it.

Could be used for anal bleaching as well, I guess.

Not a dumb question. What you've just described is an ECMO machine ("extracorporeal membrane oxygenation", related to the surgical machines oft known as a heart-and-lung machine). The act of putting the patient on it is called putting them "on bypass" and involves cutting through some of the most major blood vessels in the body, administration of large doses of heparin as a blood thinner, and a team of about ten to twenty people to ensure that they don't die. It's a major operation. After a while the mechanical stress of the pump causes blood cells to be sheared and lyse, causing haemolysis, which would otherwise be fatal if not replaced.

Is the heart that much better of a pump than the ECMO? I didn't realize there was mechanical stress on the blood itself from the ECMO machine.

"Yes", is the short answer. Every ECMO machine I've ever seen uses a [1] peristaltic pump and, despite the use of tubes coated with anticoagulants and with various proprietary bits of chemistry [2] to reduce the size of the inviscid layer and hence shear stresses, the maximum length of time you can spend on them is limited. It's always a downhill battle and typically a "metric shitton" of heparin is infused in order to reduce the risk of thrombus, despite the hemorrhagic risk [3].

All of these things are fine balancing acts but you do not want to be on ECMO for a long time. Similar technologies, such as cardiac LVADs are only licensed in the UK as a bridge to transplant, for example, where a well-defined end-date already exists before putting the patient on them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peristaltic_pump [2] https://www.terumo-europe.com/en-emea/products/tubing-set-pe... [3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5457945/

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but isn't breathing out carbon dioxide important?

Very. Too much CO2 is deadly.

Sounds like the premise to a South Park episode.

It seems all types of human cells absorb oxygen. Skin to a certain extent. The interesting part is researching and documenting oxygen intake per cell type.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2290093/

This sounds like the plot of an unaired episode of House.

> unaired

This is from 2021, no updates from last year's story. Can we add the year tag to the title?

this is a great idea. dont let hacker news be like reddit!

In a funny light, I can see this being used as a performance enhancing drug in free-dive competitions. I wonder if the one's with perfluorocarbons had to have the perfluorocarbons constantly cycled out, or if it was just an injection of a certain amount. Imagine a free diver being able to go down deeper with an extra tank of oxygen in the trunk.

Poor mice

My thoughts exactly

Yes, and what about the pigs?

The detached coldness in the writing about the experiments on these creatures dates all of us.

I find it odd how this can float by while we pine over the potential sentience of a server at Google.

The acceptance of the brutality is inherent to our false sense of modernism.

Future generations will look back on this era's treatment of animals as barbaric. They will have the benefit of being able to grow vat meat identical to any steak and perform drug testing purely in-silico, so they will not need to use animals in the way we do now, but still, when you remove the economic/scientific rationale and look at the fundamentals of our treatment of animals, you can't help feeling at least a little bit saddened by it.

Or maybe they won't care and have less empathy for animals. If anything, it seems like if there were to be evolutional pressure, it would favorize humans sacrificing animals to improve humans' condition.

Both of these issues have at their core the same question: are we gatekeeping "sentience" or I suppose, moral consideration, really - behind the rather utilitarian "so what's it done for us lately?"

Exactly my thoughts

Rarely do I wince at the mention of animal testing (which is not endorsement), but this article so thoroughly described the torture and killing of move and pigs in such a clinical fashion so as to be horrifying. All to prove a premise that is also quite horrifying in itself.

Lots of folks asking where the CO2 is expelled from. I speculate, due to the lack of information, it's still being expelled through the lungs the usual way. Although, I suppose it's possible the CO2 is diffusing out the intestines and into the perflurocarbons.

Lots of talk about absorbing oxygen but little discussion about releasing carbon dioxide, or if releasing CO2 is even required with anal ventilation.

Also, as anyone who has had a colonoscopy can tell you, inflating the colon is on the painful side of uncomfortable.

not surprising, as methane and hydrogen produced by bacteria in the gut and detected at elevated levels in the exhaled by breath air (i.e. gut->blood->lungs) is an actual diagnostic test for SIBO (small intestine bacterial overgrowth)

> [...] to help save human lives when standard ventilation methods are unavailable, as for example, during the recent coronavirus pandemic.

The tragedy of our era is how Science forgot about the antidote to oxygen toxicity in the 1950's.

While sometimes oxygenation and ventilation are useful, long-term use always accelerates deterioration. I knew a guy who lasted about a month on the breathing machines before giving up his ghost.

https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/10.1513/AnnalsATS.202005-405...

https://www.taxiwars.org/2021/06/folly-medical-hyperventilat...

I wonder if this kind of studies came out just as a way to justify something seen recently from rectal nutrition (Guantanamo) to anal swab covid tests (China)...

That reminds of one of the "enhanced interrogation" technique used in Gitmo where suspects were "forced hydrated via rectum" to cause often urination and defecation.

The phrase, “blowing smoke up your ass” comes from the practice of using bellows, like from a fireplace, to inflate, if you will, a drowned person rectally.

Are there any implications for next winter? If regulations says we should cover breathing holes...

Yeah, Joe Rogan will have to burn his panties in the name of liberty.

If gov mandates everyone wears panties, he propably will ;)

Ok, so if mouth to mouth does not work, flip over...

serious question, how does one exhale through their intestine? like do they have a scuba gear like machine?

Not sure, but taking such a "breather" would be a good time to catch up on Hacker News.

That explains this smell.

Isn't that the mechanism for breathing before the human is born?

No, before being born, in mammals the blood is oxygenated across the placenta.

oh shit

> To find out, Takanori Takebe, a gastroenterologist from Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and his colleagues tested several approaches to ventilating the intestines of mice and pigs that were deprived briefly of oxygen. In one group of 11 mice, four had their intestines scrubbed to thin the mucosal lining and improve oxygen absorption. Next, the researchers injected pure, pressurized oxygen into the rectums of the scrubbed mice and four of the seven unscrubbed ones.

> Then, the researchers withdrew oxygen from the animals, making them "hypoxic." The three unscrubbed mice that received no intestinal oxygen survived for a median of 11 minutes. Mice with unscrubbed intestines that received oxygen through their anuses lasted 18 minutes. Only the ventilated mice with brushed intestines lived through the hourlong experiment, with a survival rate of 75%, the researchers report today in Med.

This is fucking horrifying.

Some ethics board out there looked at this proposal and thought "well, that looks fine to me!". That thought is almost as horrifying as the torture these scientists visited upon these defenseless mice.

Yeah not sure the ends justify the means here, that's for sure.

They do. If this can be extended to humans, the resulting technology would have saved hundreds of lives during Covid alone, not to think of burn victims.

I mean maybe eventually some method is discovered, but this doesn't have an immediate human application. I don't think we're going to start scrubbing intestines to treat covid anytime soon.

If you don't want to know how the sausage is made, mate...you may think different if you will end up laid up with non-functioning lungs and only this niche medical apparatus available.

What ever works in a bio lab before? There are devices that are made to turn live mice into a fine slurry to study their contents

New startup idea: an alternative to those awkward CPAP masks.

And here I've only been exhaling with them this entire time. This is a whole new world.

The article actually starts with this gem:

  > On a good day, things exit through the anus.

This kind of makes me wonder if diving suits are going to include emergency buttplugs in the future.

Wait, yours doesn’t?

At one point in time, they would have, had they existed at all: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31283950/ "Intra-rectal tobacco insufflation as a resuscitation method for drowning victims: A gold-standard in the 18th century"

Surely horses from this time period were available to comment.

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