Live To 150

Am I the only one to notice that we’re coming up on the first anniversary of the...See more » Am I the only one to notice that we’re coming up on the first anniversary of the appearance of one of the great news headlines of all times? The headline: “Boffins Create zombie dogs.” No, this wasn’t a headline in The Weekly World News, nor was the story below it a hoax, although the writer certainly took every liberty of sensationalizing the facts. (”Boffins,” by the way, evidently is a British and Australian slang term for scientists.) The story first surfaced on June 27, 2005, on an Australian news site. It concerned experiments being conductd at the Safar Center for Resuscitation Research in Pittsburgh in the United States. Scientists there had developed a technique for draining a dog’s veins of blood and filling them with an ice-cold salt solution. As the story described it: “The animals are considered scientifically dead, as they stop breathing and have no heartbeat or brain activity. But three hours later, their blood is replaced and the zombie dogs are brought back to life with an electric shock.” Supposedly, the scientists at the Safar Center planned to test the technique on humans within a year. The ultimate aim is to be able to keep people in a state of suspended animation for a few hours, long enough to save lives such as battlefield casualties and victims of stabbings or gunshot wounds, who have suffered massive blood loss. As you might imagine, the blogosphere went wild over this great story with its horror-movie headline and accompanying photograph of a snarling wolf. (I myself was one of the first to blog about it, here, here, here, here and even here.) Debate raged as to whether there could possibly be any truth to it. Then the local media in Pittsburgh went after it. They got in touch with the folks at the Safar Center–a real organization–and reported that, sure enough, the essential facts of the story were correct. Not that the scientists were particularly happy about the fright-night tone of the original news report. In fact, they were downright livid. But by that time the zombie dogs were out of the bag, so to speak, never to be called back. Now, one year on, I have many questions, as I’m sure you do, too: * Are the boffins at the Safar Center still creating zombie dogs? * Have they tried it on any people yet? * Did mobs of outraged Pittsburghers bearing torches and pitchforks descend on the Safar Center to try to put an end to these unspeakable acts of science gone mad? * Has anyone ever picked up on my suggestion that zombie dogs Of Pittsburgh would make a great name for a rock group? * Has Pittsburgh begun holding an annual zombie dogs Festival? If not, why not? Meanwhile, why wait for Pittsburgh to get the fun rolling? I hereby declare the last weekend in June to be Zombie Dog Days, now and forevermore, not just in Pittsburgh but anywhere people are captivated by the thought of the canine undead. And never forget: “If you get lazy the dog will not look zombie enough.”See less »