Chief Zombie Dog Researcher Objects to 'Zombie Dog' Label

According to today's Pittsburgh Press, the director of the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research, is not amused that the tabloid press--and bloggers around the world--have dubbed the canine subjects of his reanimation experiments "zombie dogs."

"It's so unfair and so bizarre," Dr. Patrick Kochanek said. "Somebody must have thought the title 'zombie dog' would be a catchy phrase. Obviously they were right, but obviously that is the farthest thing from what we are doing, which is trying to save lives."

The timing of the "zombie dog" story and its rapid morphing into an Internet urban legend couldn't have been better, actually. It turns out to have come on the heels of the third annual Safar Symposium, held at the University of Pittsburgh. According to the PP story, trauma surgeons from across the country learned at the symposium that "raising people from the dead might not be a celluloid fantasy."

This story does confirm that the Safar scientists claim to have found a way to revive dogs three hours after clinical death--an hour longer than in previous experiments. They also hope to begin human clinical trials within a year on a protocol they believe could revolutionize trauma care by saving people in cardiac arrest because of massive blood loss.

"Soldiers in combat and gunshot or stabbing victims often bleed to death because medics don't have enough time to perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation or deliver blood," the story explains. "This type of injury kills about 50,000 Americans every year and is the leading cause of death among troops killed in action ... ."

The Safar Center's namesake, Dr. Peter Safar (now deceased), invented cardiopulmonary resuscitation. He also "collaborated with Army officials to develop a novel 'big chill' concept for bringing people back to life after their hearts stop beating because of massive blood loss." His idea was to flush the circulatory system with an ice-cold salt solution, which would drop the core body temperature to about 50 degrees F.

Safar reasoned that cooling the body in this way would buy time to transport the injured person in cardiac arrest to the hospital. The cold temperature would preserve the body against damge to tissues and organs, even though the heart would be stopped. Patients later would be revived by pumping warm blood back into their bodies and administering a brief electric shock to their hearts.

In objecting to the term "zombie dog" to describe his most recent experiments, Dr. Patrick Kochanek evidently did not have anything to say about being called a boffin.

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