DARPA: NO BLOOD? NO PROBLEM!

A while back, I men­tioned a Darpa plan to have sol­diers sur­vive major injuries — despite los­ing half or more of their blood. In this month’s Wired mag­a­zine, I’ve got a short piece on the Darpa project, with a few more details.
When marine mam­mals like whales and seals dive deep, they let sec­tions of their bod­ies go cold, cut­ting their meta­bolic rates dra­mat­i­cally. Darpa hopes that drugs or tech might allow sol­diers to pull off the same trick — the agency’s goal is to enable a rat to sur­vive more than six hours after 60 per­cent of its blood has been drained.
Even Darpa man­agers admit it’s far-​​fetched. Plan B: min­i­mize blood­shed at the source, includ­ing spurt­ing arter­ies. The Deep-​​Bleeder Acoustic Coagulation project aims to build on the work of researchers at the University of Washington and else­where. They’re using con­cen­trated, intense sonic blasts to heat the dam­aged cells. “Focused ultra­sound allows a non­in­va­sive method of cau­ter­iz­ing” — with­out fire or a laser — the sci­en­tists say. But these spe­cial­ized ultra­sound machines are big and bulky and need an expert hand to guide them. Darpa’s look­ing for a portable emit­ter for com­bat that doesn’t need an expert oper­a­tor.
In a recent report, Darpa wor­ried that flesh-​​and-​​blood sol­diers could become the “weak link” in the mil­i­tary chain. This is one of a bunch of ways the agency is plan­ning to make it stronger.

November 2nd, 2004 | Medic! | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.