In the new study, Takebe and his collaborators provide evidence for intestinal breathing in rats, mice, and pigs. First, they designed an intestinal gas ventilation system to administer pure oxygen through the rectum of mice. They showed that without the system, no mice survived 11 minutes of extremely low-oxygen conditions. With intestinal gas ventilation, more oxygen reached the heart, and 75% of mice survived 50 minutes of normally lethal low-oxygen conditions.
Because the intestinal gas ventilation system requires abrasion of the intestinal muscosa, it is unlikely to be clinically feasible, especially in severely ill patients -- so the researchers also developed a liquid-based alternative using oxygenated perfluorochemicals.
Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.
Here now is footage of the experiments:
A new world of recreational butt-diving is stretching wide open before our eyes. Born too late for the moon, too early for Mars, but just in time for plumbing the briny deep through a butt hose.
I'm a meat eater so perhaps hypocritical, but do you wonder a bit about the decision making of the vertebrate experiment ethics board that hears "we want to run a brillo pad up a rat anus and then suffocate it" and is like "good luck, have fun"?
I would like to see how they "scientified" that sequence of events for the grant proposal. It could provide useful funding lessons for all of us.
Here is how:
'Supporting critically ill patients with respiratory failure' is very in right now, they say.
I get the rationale, but they can't seriously think any result is actually going to apply to humans where the gut surface area to body volume ratio is so much larger can they?
They got paid to do butt stuff with rats and then kill them! Win win!
Well, they say it will – 'The level of arterial oxygenation provided by our ventilation system, if scaled for human application, is likely sufficient to treat patients with severe respiratory failure, potentially providing life-saving oxygenation' – but I have no idea how realistic this is. Note they did it to pigs too, I have no idea how their gut surface area to volume goes compared with humans. But I've always thought of pigs as basically the same as humans (omnivores, live in mud, make disturbing squealing sound when being killed, etc).
On the other hand 'we get to do this awful and obviously hugely cruel experiment and claim it is For Science', so I don't know.
Get vaccinated now or risk geting LCL fluid pumped through a hose up your butt...
I think I'm going to add a few new clauses to my advanced directive.
"No" to all heroic measures including but not limited to "anally administered oxygen."
"No butt stuff" should suffice.
I don't know. Someone I know who is old enough that she's realistic about dying in the next few years and who has a medical background said to me, early in the plague that dying was not worrying her, but that slowly suffocating with a tube stuck down her throat was just a uniquely horrible way to die. And I think she probably knows / has seen this happen in the past.
So maybe it's better than that.
As Garfunkel and Oates used to sing, "Up the bum, no harm done".
I wonder if they've considered that the ones that lasted longer were just trying harder to live longer so they could exact revenge on the scientists?
Of course there is the Arse-Breathing Turtle, but that's not a mammal because it doesn't sweat milk and have a stinging tail like normal mammals.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elseya_albagula