New York doctor says we will soon be able to resurrect cadavers 24 hours after death

(http://www.dailymail.co.uk) The head of intensive care at the Stony Brook university Hospital in New York claims that soon, medical science will have the capacity to bring the dead back to life.

"In the past decade we have seen tremendous progress. With today's medicine, we can bring people back to life up to one, maybe two hours, sometimes even longer, after their heart stopped beating and they have thus died by circulatory failure," said Dr. Sam Parnia.

The American critical care physician went on to claim that, had James Gandolfini, the Sopranos star who died last month, had his fatal heart attack in New York, he might still be alive. Dr. Parnia desscribed his techniques for resuscitating the deceased to Germany's Der Spiegel magazine: "We'd cool him down, pump oxygen to the tissues, which prevents them from dying. Clinically dead, he could then be cared for by the cardiologist. He would make an angiogram, find the clot, take it out, put in a stent and we would restart the heart."

Dr. Parnia goes on to explain the current limitations of resuscitation science: "Of course we can't rescue everybody and many people with heart attacks have other major problems, but if all the latest medical technologies and training had been implemented, which clearly hasn't been done, then in principle the only people who should die and stay dead are those that have an underlying condition that is untreatable. A heart attack is treatable. Blood loss as well. A terminal cancer isn't, neither are many infections with multiresistant pathogens. In these cases, even if we'd restart the heart, it would stop again and again."

"Most, but not all of our patients, get discharged with no neurological damage whatsoever," he said, adding that it is a "widely held misconception" - even among doctors - that the brain begins to suffer massive damage from oxygen deprivation three to five minutes after the heart stops.

The efficacy of Dr. Parnia's practice is evident in the statistics. The average resuscitation rate for cardiac arrest patients is 18 percent in U.S. hospitals; the resuscitation rate at his hospital peaked at 38 percent earlier this year. His hospital's average is 33 percent.

As medical science continues to advance with the exponential growth of technology, it is likely that this death-reversing trend becomes more pervasive. "In the future, we will likely get better at reversing death. It is possible that in 20 years, we may be able to restore people to life 12 hours or maybe even 24 hours after they have died."

"My basic message: The death we commonly perceive today in 2013 is a death that can be reversed."