American company brings dead people back to life

Bioquark, a life science company, hopes to bring people declared as clinically brain-dead back to life through stem cells. Trials will be initiating soon.

With rapid increases in technology from human head transplants to reversing symptoms of ageing, researchers are surely setting high goals.

With their latest discovery of reversing death, the Philadelphia-based biotech company is supposed to work on its project by the end of this year.

Though the trials were expected to begin in 2016 in India, the regulators had it shut down. Now, the researchers plan on conducting considerably similar plan and will enroll 20 patients who will go through different treatments.

With the stem cells being cut off from the patient’s own fat or blood, a stem cell injection will be given to the patients first. Then, a protein blend will be injected into the spinal cord which is supposed to advance new neuron growth. With the intention of promoting neuron communications, the laser therapy and nerve stimulation will be conducted next for another 15 days, reported Futurism.

In the mean time, the researchers will examine behavior and EEGs both to see any indications of the treatment causing any alterations.

However, a few researchers have raised questions regarding the informed consent from the patients. They question about how will the researchers go forth with their trails and how would they complete the paperwork considering that the patients is already brain dead?

Another question raised was what if the brain activity came back and what would be the patient’s mental state? And what could be the possible outcomes other than extreme brain damage?

According to Science Alert, back in 2016, Stat News reported neurologist Ariane Lewis and bioethicist Arthur Caplan stated in Critical Care the trail as “dubious”, “has no scientific foundation” and suffers from an “at best, ethically questionable, and at worst, outright unethical nature”.

Researchers also doubt the company’s techniques and believe “there is no way this technique could work on someone who is brain-dead”.

Researchers claim, “The technique relies on there being a functional brain stem – one of the structures that most motor neurons go through before connecting with the cortex proper. If there's no functional brain stem, then it can't work.”