CURRENT, AUGUST 2014No one wants to die. We may say that we’ll go willingly when our time comes, but most of us won’t. Trust me on this. I’ve been a hospice doctor for 15 years, and I’ve seen the lengths that people go to buy a little more time.
That’s especially true when what is kicking us off the merry-go-round of life isn’t a chronic illness like cancer or dementia, but a heart that’s just decided to stop beating. It seems so simple. And so . . . fixable.
So fixable, in fact, that over the last 200 years, scientists have pushed relentlessly at life’s terminus, trying to find new ways to bring people back from the dead when their hearts stop. The result has been a lot of very weird science. Back in the 18th century, for instance, the Danish physician and veterinarian Peter Abildgaard used electricity to resuscitate chickens.
I set out a year ago to find out where those early experiments have taken us since that first chicken resurrection. And I ...
