Surgeons attempt zero gravity surgery : Pure Pedantry

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Jake Young is a MD/PhD student at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in NYC getting a PhD in Behavioral Neuroscience. He holds a BS and MS in Biological Sciences from Stanford University. If a volcano were to erupt Pompei-style in Central Park, his body would be preserved in a scoliotic posture over his lab desk. Archeaologists would later conclude that he spent most of his day training rats to perform tricks, until he went blind building electrical equipment by hand using a dissecting microscope. But, still, he died happy...because science is cool.

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Surgeons attempt zero gravity surgery

Category: Medicine • Space
Posted on: September 27, 2006 1:19 PM, by NotoriousLTP

Have you ever seen a cyst fly?

A team of French doctors planned to slice a cyst off a man's arm Wednesday in the world's first zero-gravity surgery, operating aboard an airplane soaring and diving in and out of weightlessness.
The experiment is part of a broader effort to develop robots for surgeries from a distance, in space or on Earth, the doctors said. The surgeons will be strapped to the walls of the Airbus 300 Zero-G for the three-hour operation.

The plane was scheduled to take off Wednesday midmorning from the Institute for Aeronautic Maintenance in Merignac, adjacent to Bordeaux in southwest France. It was to make 30 roller coaster-like maneuvers, called parabolas, during the flight.

The operation, announced Monday by chief surgeon Dominique Martin and the French National Center for Space Studies, is part of a project backed by the European Space Agency that aims to develop earth-guided surgical space robots.

Note to self: Do not release scalpel -- lest puncture wound repair need to be added to cyst removal.

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