Hours after enjoying Korean barbecue with his friends on the slopes of western Japan’s Rokko-san, Mitsutaka Uchikoshi found himself in deep kimchi. After the barbecue on 7 October 2006, his friends took the cable car down to the base of the mountain. Mr. Uchikoshi, however, chose to walk. Whether smugness or soju inspired the 35-year-old civil servant’s solitary trudge down a 3,000-foot mountain in 50-degree weather, we may never know. But Mr. Uchikoshi, provisioned with nothing but water and barbecue sauce, bade his friends “Sayonara” and set off alone.
Trouble soon found him. While seeking the trail leading downward, Mr. Uchikoshi got lost. Then, while crossing a stream, he fell and fractured his pelvis. Somehow, despite pain, disability, and hemorrhage, he lived to see another day. Lying in a field, the sun weeping on his face, feeling strangely comfortable, Mr. Uchikoshi drifted off to sleep.
We have all heard this type of story before. In fact, this past December, a 9-day search for three climbers on Mount Hood produced only the frozen corpse of Kelly James in a snow cave. He, too, likely felt warm and comfortable as hypothermia set in and he lost consciousness for the last time.
When Mr. Uchikoshi’s body was found, 24 days later, it had almost no pulse, barely functioning organs, and a temperature of just 71 degrees. But he was alive. Doctors who treated him for hypothermia and blood loss at Kobe City General Hospital said he survived by lapsing into a state of hibernation, recovered fully, and suffers no physical or mental disability. Mr. Uchikoshi’s happy accident, however, begins my own tale of frustration, as I attempted to exploit this bizarre occurrence—for the betterment of mankind.
Reading Mr. Uchikoshi’s story, I thought: If only humans could hibernate at will using a serum based on Mr. Uchikoshi’s blood, soju, barbecue sauce, or some combination thereof. In tribute to the late Chris Farley, who showed its effectiveness against flu on Saturday Night Live, I would call it HiberNol.
Wilderness survival. Carried by all hikers, HiberNol could prevent needless non-combat American deaths like those on Mount Hood.
Domestic relations. Imagine, ladies, hibernating through NCAA playoff season; or, men, hibernating while seated outside the department store fitting room. Thanks to HiberNol, couples could increase their proportion of quality time together by eliminating situations in which one is tempted to gently pull his or her loved one aside and pluck out her or his eyeballs with a fondue fork.
Survival of the human species. With all but a skeleton crew HiberNollified during space travel, extra chips, beer, and video gear could be cut from payload. With the money saved, we could colonize Mars or another uninhabitable world before we finished rendering this one uninhabitable. Paris Hilton, the Waltons (from Wal-mart, not John Boy and his lame-o family), yours truly (the trillionaire CEO of Big HiberNol), and everyone else with the means would escape to Martian pleasure domes, leaving behind the rest (y’all, for instance) to eke out nasty, brutish, and short lives on a devastated planet. Poverty, global warming, and overpopulation, all remedied in one Gordian stroke.
Et cetera. The list is virtually endless and not subject to the fruitflyesque attention span of my cyber audience.
My research.
I started by consulting my science library, which is a copy of UFOs: The Complete Sightings. Not finding anything, I turned to the internets.
Starting with the “Mainstream” media, I read all newsbyte accounts of the incident; however, all rehashed or quoted the same three stories published by AP, BBC News, and Guardian. Each lacked complete explanations, such as the role of soju or barbecue sauce in inducing hibernation. Each also quoted Professor Hirohito Shiomi, studying hibernation at Fukuyama University in Hiroshima, who said:
This case is revolutionary if the patient truly survived at
such a low body temperature over such a long period of time. Researchers would
have to clarify whether Uchikoshi's body temperature dropped very quickly, or
whether he started losing body heat much later and was in fact dying when
rescuers found him.
Disappointed that “real” journalists had not followed up on this statement, I e-mailed the “Contact us” address at Fukuyama University:
Sorry about using English, but I don’t know any Japanese; and who won the
war,
anyhow? Based on his statement on the subject case, I have the
following questions for Professor Shiomi:
1. If you’re such a big-deal
hibernation expert, why weren’t you consulted in this case before the press
contacted you?
2. You question whether Mr. Uchikoshi’s temperature dropped
soon after he was injured or just before he was rescued. If the latter, how did
he survive for the other 22 or so days on nothing but water and barbecue sauce?
Huh? Huh?
Despite my deferential posturing and including my blog’s title so he would know I was a cyberjournalist and not some random jerk, Professor Shiomi did not respond to my request for comment. Draw your own conclusions.
So I entered the blogosphere. A lot of people look down their noses at blogs, saying any idiot can publish a blog. I know that’s not true, because I have two of them. One blog I found, BigDaikon.org, had a post (by Meganekko) that suggested that hibernation among Japanese civil servants is actually pretty common. At uplink.space.com, the discussion was more erudite, raising other explanations, such as— a coma induced by the fall (Billslug); a combination of hypometabolism and hypothermia (Stevehw33); or volcanically produced hydrogen sulfide, which, combined with hypothermia, can produce suspended animation and a 90% reduction in cellular metabolism (DocM). All interesting theories, yet ignoring the soju and barbecue sauce.
Clearly, to learn anything useful, I must conduct my own experiments. I consider my lack of scientific or medical training, special equipment, and experimental subjects other than me not a limitation, but a liberation from preconceptions born of training, experience, and observation. After all, Pierre and Marie Curie, who never graduated from an accredited U.S. University, shared the Nobel Prize for physics. Further, they cooked up polonium and radium in their apartment in violation of their lease, simultaneously exposing themselves to lethal doses of radiation and potential homelessness. If they risked all for science, how could I do less?
Conclusion
As I headed out to the woods behind the house, lugging 20 pounds of sliced beef, a jar of barbecue sauce, and a case of soju, my wife met me at the door and asked what I was doing. “Experimenting,” I answered, eyeing the fondue fork in her clenched fist. “You know, the Japanese hibernation guy.” Having read the article, she nodded and stepped aside. “Go ahead. I’m changing the locks. I’ll send someone out in 24 days to check on you.” Fine; see if I share the Nobel Prize with her.
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