Controversial Study Aims to ‘Reanimate’ the Brain Dead

I do wonder how you get consent from these people.
http://rozeklaw.com/2016/06/02/controversial-study-aims-reanimate-brain-dead/
A new study intends to take 20 brain-dead patients and regenerate their nervous systems.
The study is led by Ira Pastor, chief executive of Philadelphia-based Bioquark. And ever since he announced the study, he told The Washington Post his email in-box has been flooded with inquiries about the details of his techniques and religious representatives warning him that his study violates the very laws of nature.
“Such confusion, hope and fear is not unexpected given the radical nature of the project. But Pastor explains that any changes due to the treatments will likely be subtle, at the cellular level at first, and detectable only by sophisticated blood and spinal fluid testing and MRI imaging,” the article reads. “Such work, he says, may have more applications for treating traumatic brain injury, mental illnesses, spinal cord issues and Alzheimer’s in the short-term rather than disorders of consciousness.”
Pastor says in the article that no patients will be woken up for the study.
“Brain death is perhaps the least understood state of the human mind. Most of us — including many scientists — take it for granted that the condition is absolute and final. Pastor argues that’s a mistake. He says he believes it is a potentially curable condition and that given the right combination of stem cells, drugs, electrical currents, magnetic fields or other stimuli we haven’t thought of yet the mind may yet have the power to reawaken.”
The idea is controversial for a multitude of reasons, be it religious, moral, scientific – but one major concern is economical. With success, it could mean hospitals will be required to keep brain dead patients on life support indefinitely. And the entire organ-donation system may come to a halt since it relies heavily of the families of brain-dead patients.
According to the article, there has not been a single documented case of a person who met the criteria for brain death and was then revived in any state.
“At any given time, hundreds of thousands of people in the world are estimated to be trapped in the little understood place between consciousness and nothingness,” the article reads. “Some of them are in a vegetative state that occurs when the part of the brain that controls thought no longer functions but they sleep, breathe as normal. Others are in a coma where they cannot be awakened and don’t respond to light, sound or touch. Those most severely impacted are considered to be brain dead.”
Research on actual brain dead patients who are still on life support is rare. The MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston published results of a ground-breaking study on brain-dead and nearly brain-dead patients in 2002 that some believed would set the stage for further work in this group. The research involved infusing millions of peptides or strings of amino acids — that scientists believed may have the potential to block blood vessels feeding tumors — into the patients and then doing a number of invasive biopsies to see what happened. The results, published in Nature Medicine, yielded “a wealth of data,” according to a write up that year in Science magazine.

Six Healthcare IT Influencers in 2016

You will notice that not a single one has anything to do with stroke. It would be laughable how poorly stroke is run except for all the disability and death that comes from total lack of progress in stroke. We'll just have to deal with it until we can replace all the stroke boards of directors with actual stroke advocates not just zombies.

http://liveclinic.com/blog/2016/02/24/healthcareit-influencers-2016/
Eric Topol

Brian Aher

Kevin Pho

Robert Wachter

Berci Mesko

Matthew Herper

Zombie Brains: The Neurological Processes Behind The Behavior Of The Undead

I do wish our neurologists would spend as much time analyzing stroke problems as non-existant zombies. Their priorities are screwed up.
http://www.medicaldaily.com/zombie-brains-neurological-processes-behind-behavior-undead-356392

Zombies and brains are inextricably linked. They go together like vampires and blood, or werewolves and the moon. Everyone knows that if the zombie apocalypse ever really hits, we’d have to protect our heads from becoming the next meal for an undead dude. Knowing that brains are a zombie’s favorite snack might be common knowledge, but what about what’s going on in their brains? What is it that makes them insatiably hungry, resistant to pain, and just cognitively,well, not right?
Unfortunately (or fortunately, really), scientists don’t have any real zombies to run tests on or interview about their current mental state — all we can do is hypothesize. But luckily, neurologists know the human brain well enough to guess what the not-so-real zombie brain might look like. Spoiler alert: It isn’t pretty.

Insatiable Hunger

Visual Recognition

Movement

Reactive-Impulsive Aggression

Zombies may not be upon us just yet, but when they do come, at least we know why they’re acting the way they are — not that it would help much.

More at link.

Flee from zombies and giant boulders with the Race Yourself fitness app for Google Glass

This would be great for making our rehabilitation harder and getting more repetitions in. Hell I'd probably learn how to run again by using this, even if they caught me numerous times.
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2014/01/08/flee-zombies-giant-boulders-race-fitness-app-google-glass/#!sthRA
Fitness apps seem like a perfect fit for Google Glass, given that the head-mounted computer is devoid of wires and requires a minimal amount of input from your digits.
Race Yourself is a promising piece of Glassware that, using augmented reality, gives you an avatar to compete against in the real world. Over 30 game modes will have you racing against yourself, a giant Indiana Jones-style boulder and even hordes of zombies.
The app will also support multiple activities, so you can cycle against the Peloton in the Tour de France or skydive through virtual rings in the sky.