The first experiments with liquid breathing, 1987, personal photo archive A. V. Filippenko.



On December 19, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin demonstrated liquid breathing technology to the Serbian President. To do this, a resisting dachshund named Nicholas was loaded into a vessel with a clear liquid. After a few tens of seconds, the live animal took out and drained the liquid from the lungs of the dog.



Against the background of the failure of the second launch of Vostochniy, the video of the demonstration, where the deputy prime minister responsible for the cosmodrome drowns the dachshund, caused a noticeable negative interest. Critics have indicated that this is not an experiment to test a hypothesis, but only a scientific demonstration. Animal advocates recalled laws criminalizing the demonstration of cruelty to animals. One of the main observations is the lack of novelty: publicly available sources say that experiments on liquid breathing went half a century ago.



The technology implies that the lungs will fill with oxygen-rich liquid mixture, which people will breathe. This is necessary either to dive to considerable depths, or to protect the body from overloads or decompression sickness during an abrupt change in pressure. In medicine, liquid breathing can be used in the treatment of premature babies. With all the attractiveness of a wide and noticeable practical application, the idea has not yet found .



A surge of attention introduced many to technology, although successful animal experiments have already been carried out decades ago. Pulmonologist and developer of fluid breathing technology, MD Andrei Filippenko agreed to answer us a few questions.

Liquid breathing in Russia

In 2015, in the Foundation for Advanced Studies, Andrey Filippenko initiated a project to develop a technology for rescuing submariners by free-floating using liquid breathing. However, the technology was not developed from scratch: it goes back to the Soviet era. In the eighties, Filippenko led the R & D project “Olifa MH”, where the feasibility of this technology was tested.



In the period from 1986 to 1989, researchers conducted experiments on animals, where dogs breathed liquids for 2 hours without serious consequences for animal health. At the same time, we tested a prototype of a portable liquid breathing apparatus.



Andrey Filippenko told us about the technology being developed, its history and future.



When did you become interested and start developing fluid breathing systems?



I learned about liquid breathing in the sixties, when my father received a paper from his command stating that there was such an idea suggested using saline solutions to rescue submariners from great depths. His father was an officer of the 1st Navy Institute, who was engaged in shipbuilding, the development strategy of the submarine fleet, and he was asked questions on rescue, as he served in the emergency service units in the Far East and Sevastopol in the fifties.



A letter from scientists was in the mid-sixties, then I was a schoolboy. And then I saw mice in saline, that they survived under elevated oxygen pressure. For me, since childhood, this was not news and still causes interest as a scientific and practical problem.



I followed this topic as much as I could when I was already a doctor. I finished first the Physics and Mathematics School 239 in Leningrad, I went to the 1st Medical Institute. Academician I.P.Pavlov, and there, while studying at the senior courses, the washing of the lungs sounded in one way or another.



Why attention to these developments was paid just now by a recent demonstration? This has not been talked about for the last twenty or thirty years.



The interest in my development of professionals is more or less constant, as I have constantly improved the technology and promoted the topic in specialized organizations all these years. He spoke at various meetings and showed my videos there, more often, of course, after the accidents of submarines. Especially there were many such meetings after the death of the submarine "Kursk", which is shown by me on the recently created electronic resources. Perhaps many in the leadership of the military industrial complex in those years had other priorities. In particular, it was more profitable to buy foreign solutions for the rescue, for example, American, and not to develop their own. Therefore, I consider it a personal achievement that I managed to convince the FPI in 2014 to resume research on this topic. I was able to train the staff of the foundation and specialized organizations and transfer the accumulated knowledge. I am especially proud that we have managed to include Sevastopol in this work, a city with which many things connect me.



The interest of the general public was stimulated by a number of articles and public statements by representatives of the Advanced Research Foundation in the summer of 2016 before the start of the topic “Terek-1”, which was connected with the forthcoming financing of this major biotechnological project. It is interesting that a review by a Canadian researcher was voiced, and many decided on possible plans to sell this technology abroad at some stage. Now a year has passed and it was necessary to show the results of activity.



On the other hand, if you look at the pace of scientific and technological development, what have you done over the past 20-30 years?



You know, I, a thirteen-year-old schoolboy, in 1967 at VDNH presented three devices. Of course, without the help of our Young Technicians Club of the Novosibirsk Academgorodok, this would not have happened. True, I opened the congress of young technicians as the youngest - it was funny that I have three devices.



The first is a real ruby ​​laser that burned through the blade. It was a development that scientists had made seven years before in the USA and for which the Nobel Prize was received.



The second is a device for studying the volume of the lungs. That is, in fact, those devices that carry out functional diagnostics of the lungs. The third device is a pill that ran on the floor. She ran left-right to the sounds of different pitch pipes. When the battery was discharged, she herself found an outlet through the source of infrared radiation, connected and charged herself.



Not all modern robots that appeared forty years later can do this. But there was not a single chip.



For fifty years, not even in the last 20-30 years, this is clearly a slow development. I must honestly say that we almost do not do science and technology. I'm talking about civilization in general.



So it is not surprising that it is not done. Very many developments have ceased to be done since the late sixties, and so gradually died out. The only change is the processing of audio and video signals and the network. That is the technology that is needed for global control over people. Everything else, from my point of view, is almost worth it.



I take the end of the XIX century, when almost everything modern appeared in the homes of many states except the Internet: plumbing and heating, electricity and telephone. A variety of technologies appeared in the 20th century. There was a powerful shift in aviation, the use of atomic energy. In the sixties - spacewalk. And the slow, creeping development now surprises me. We spend more on cosmetics than on space. This is ridiculous after the “first bell” - the Chelyabinsk meteorite.



Understand. What was the state of these developments then?



If we look at this technology, which was - yes, in 1962 a man made and showed: if we fill the lungs with saline, then according to Henry's law , it can be filled with oxygen, and it will be almost breathing - just like in the air ( 20 %). There are immutable laws of physics that diffusion must go. And she goes, animals are able to live in these conditions. And the mouse survived. For three seconds it could be raised from three hundred meters. This J. Kylstra convincingly showed.



In 1966, they tried a new class of fluids - fluorocarbons, which dissolve an abnormally large amount of oxygen at normal pressure. 40-50% - twice the amount of air. Naturally, according to the laws of physics, this oxygen will go inside the body, because physics always beats biology. When I am told that divers drink some teas that dramatically improve the removal of inert gas from a person, I can say that this is not true. It is impossible to significantly shift the physical process of inert gas removal without changing the pressure or temperature. A completely different situation is when inert gas is not present at all with liquid breathing.



When fluorocarbon fluids were made, they were convinced that small animals can survive in them after saturation of O _2. Once the first level of understanding of the phenomenon of liquid respiration by fluorocarbons, is found. All these works were on small animals. This was due to the fact that the fluids were very expensive - this is fluorine chemistry.



Fluorocarbon fluids require purification from, first of all, fluoride ion, since it is extremely harmful to the body. For small infusions into the body, they learned to clean. About half a liter of oxygen and two liters of CO _{2 will} dissolve in one liter of fluorocarbon liquid. Naturally, such a liquid can be a gas transport if it is in the lungs and can be exchanged for fresh with a new breath.



Normally, the oxygen transport role is played by nitrogen. It as if allows you to lose your oxygen in the human body and takes CO ₂ . Air enters the lungs, oxygen partially enters the body, CO _{2 is} given away and we exhale such a mixture.



Why exactly fluoride compounds are well studied? Back in the 30s, the engine of the rockets V. Glushko said that fluorine is an oxidizer is better than oxygen. In terms of density and specific gravity, monoxide-based fuels are superior to oxygen-based fuels. In the thirties, Glushko spoke about the development of the chemical production of fluorine compounds and achieved this later at the productions of the GIPH at Leningrad. The State Institute of Applied Chemistry ( GIPH ) soon marks the centenary - it was built a little earlier than Glushko said for other tasks. In fact, it was the largest chemical institute in the world. When I came to him, I saw more orders of Lenin than in the Pravda and Izvestia newspapers combined.



Most of our military missiles were associated with fluoride. This is an excellent oxidizer, but extremely difficult to work. Not even the fact that it is dangerous, it is a completely different class of reactions. It is possible to create liquids that are almost not extinguished [for example, chlorine trifluoride - approx. Ed.], it is difficult to communicate with them.



Now we see a pile of bricks on the site of a huge GIPH building on Prospekt Dobrolyubova in St. Petersburg. His work actually ceased with the collapse of the USSR. I'm talking about the fact that by and large stopped. Yes, there were a few employees who worked for the Russian Federation, they were reduced. But the Boeing group of 200 people was sitting and working, someone else, and they were already working in other countries for official orders.





So you think that before the collapse of the Soviet Union, these developments were going quite well?



We all often underestimate ourselves. I like the work of Ilona Mask, but the US Air Force was also engaged in the return of these stages of missiles. It was he took this job and continued.



When I saw firsthand that there were experiments on liquids of much lower quality than ours abroad, this was a shock for me. And for them it was a shock that you can make such a pure liquid, which we did in the GIPH, which was really safe for the body with liquid breathing, did not suppress spontaneous, independent breathing.



Fluids were made in the 1960s, there were a lot of them, they were different. But everywhere there was a cleaning problem. Pure iron does not rust, normal - yes. The ability of small impurities to the main substance to cause body reactions is very important for medicine. Yes, we can carry gases with fluorocarbon fluids, but these are small impurities. For example, to the main substance perfluorodecalin at the level of percent causes reactions in the body, and they are unfavorable for us. These substances enter the body less and, accordingly, the reaction is much less with the use of so-called blood substitutes. As a matter of fact, for this purpose these fluids in medicine began to be used in the seventies. When they learned to make these liquids in tons, then they began to engage in liquid breathing for submariners.



But already in 1986 in our works it was shown that animals - in particular, adult dogs, the basic model of work for pulmonologists - cannot breathe the liquid themselves, only with the use of artificial ventilation devices. Without the ventilators, the dogs did not breathe, as we found out, the respiratory center, which was suppressed by impurities and anesthesia drugs, did not work.



How did the collapse of the Soviet Union and the past 20-30 years influence your work?



There are scientific problems, there are organizational ones. Until recently it was like this: when 15 years passed, the pace became 15 times slower, 20 years - 20 times slower and less efficient than in the Soviet Union.



At one time, I was surprised when I came to the best Western laboratories, to the equipment primitivism that was there compared to what I had in the Soviet Union. If there are no good instruments and liquids, you will not do anything.



But we must not forget that the main thing is not technology, but people. In the USSR, there were a huge number of specialists in various data fields. You come to the GIPH - and this is a huge building in St. Petersburg on Dobrolyubova Avenue - and if you have a question about the solubility of oxygen, then you go to this specialist, and he will tell you everything if you are interested in some kind of carbon dioxide. gas, that is, another specialist, if I am interested in temperature dependencies, there is a third one. They know everything not from textbooks, but from real measurements and the subtleties of working with various substances. This set of specialists is no longer there.



I have been to other laboratories and organizations in the world, there are also the same difficulties with professionals.



So this is not just our problem?



Of course.



These experts are not just somewhere left? Humanity has no interest?



What tasks are important in the interest of "humanity", judge by the fees of pop stars and people of science, by the duration of patents and copyrights.



But to be honest, not the best specialists left our fizmatovsky class abroad. The best ones are left - I'm not talking about myself. The guy who knew several languages ​​in our country was already in school, then he studied another half of the Indian languages, another at sixteen was an excellent mathematician at the international level — they did not leave. To say that the best have left is not true.

Rogozin's dog

Demonstration on December 19 caused a lot of criticism. I understand that you have nothing to do with this demonstration?



No, it's true. Except for one: there was directly Fedor Arsenyev and Anatoly Bala, at least two specialists whom I taught personally. Arsenyev is a specialist who previously worked with guinea pigs, but, like all other employees of the Advanced Research Foundation, did not know and did not see any real experiments in fluid breathing. Bala is a young doctor who, with his initiative, went with me to the first ever sea descent in August 2015 in Sevastopol, and with this in mind he was later recruited to the Foundation. In the FPI, over the years of searching, they could not find a single person who could show them the very method of liquid breathing, without this another carrier of knowledge on fluorocarbons for medicine - Pushchino - did not take on the subject matter.



For the FPI exhibition, the first persons of the state, I developed a system for guinea pigs - I was told that Putin might not like the experiments on dogs, he needs something else. I had to excel, since mice with liquid breathing look, I must say, rather ugly: the eyes are beads, they are wet and miserable after the procedure. And guinea pigs with liquid breathing look pretty decent. The only problem is the small lungs, since the laboratory guinea pigs are not mobile and they are not developed. So I had to invent them a workout.



I trained the staff at the FPI and several other specialists at the Institute of Toxicology of the FMBA, and then they taught others.



If you had the opportunity, how would you have this demonstration?



Let's say this: I was not at all a supporter of demonstrations in a large public. All the demonstrations that I showed, including members of the Politburo in the eighties, are films or experiments that were conducted for a narrow circle of professionals who understand what it is for. I would not say that it is very good to demonstrate to the public the very fact of the transition to liquid breathing, which looks in inept hands, like drowning, which was replicated by television journalists.



I insisted above all on a good vivarium. At first it was necessary to show him and the place where she would be after the experience. During the demonstration, the dog must be calm. This is a dog with which animal specialists have worked, a veterinarian should be close by. It is important not only to plunge, but then competently and with the use of modern technologies to care for the animal, for this it offered a number of solutions that were rejected without any discussion by the head of the FPI.



By the way, there is no experience, because for the last 20 years, we have almost no people who experiment with large animals. We do not have vivariums of good quality for dogs. I think I know them all, that is in Russia, how many goals are in each. This is the most serious problem.



Would it be more logical to show Rogozin and the Serbian President a calm dachshund, which is already and breathing fluid? As I heard, there are already experiments where dogs are in liquid for hours.



It was possible to repeat what I did in the eighties, and show with the video in high quality that she breathes, swims - as it did in the 80s.





The fact is that the whole point of the demonstration was lost when they tell you that they stuck a taxi. Why put it in? Why so, head down? After all, who understood this? There are no such people. It just looks like they wanted to drown. The reason is not at all in this, that it was necessary to do the experience with the dachshund, it was necessary to imitate how the animal would endure a real sea dive.



December 19, immersed not in a horizontal position, but in the vertical. Because the submariners in a horizontal position are not saved by ascent. Experience with a dog - they do it either with the head up or, as we did, with the head down with an insufficient amount of liquid. If the liquid is expensive, then it is easier to do with the head down, it is heavier than water and it is enough for external purification from carbon dioxide and additional oxygenation with oxygen.





2015, the first marine descent of a dog with liquid breathing, personal photo archive by A. V. Filippenko.



When I made my first experience with a dachshund in 2015, it was awesome for us. Veterinarians directly said that no animal can breathe head down in such a heavy fluid that you need to raise the diaphragm during inhalation. But it was their hypothesis. Facts have shown more. The dogs were able to breathe upside down for a short time.



Do you assess negatively this demonstration and its consequences?



Here are two aspects. The first is that liquid respiration has reached the world level as a Russian development. This is very good and it is a very big success. When I came to foreign laboratories, and the leading scientists involved in the rescue of submariners, shook my hand, this one thing. But these are scientists, they themselves depend on the policy of the priorities of the grantors.



One of the best specialists in the States who competed with me then, was removed, he began to study genetics. Why?The same reason: as soon as the Soviet Union disappeared, cosmetics and genetic issues became much more important than the entire development of civilization. I am talking about human genetics here, I know what can and cannot be there. It is about the same as with robotics: many words, and the results are so modest compared to Azimov's fantasies, which, we believed, would come true by the 21st century.





The dog, which participated in the trials, in 2015, personal photo archive A. V. Filippenko.



It was possible to carry out better, it was necessary to show success, but not a formal report.



And from the very beginning it is necessary to determine what we are doing for. I say that FPI does not investigate liquid breathing by itself - this is the task of the Academy of Sciences. Very interesting problem, it will be enough to deal with it for another fifty or a hundred years. There are many different aspects, different reactions in different animals, an interesting influence on the biochemistry of impurities of these fluids. You can bury you forever. This is a good fundamental science, which is necessary, ultimately, for the development of future lung medicine.



There is a long overdue practical need - this is the rescue of people from submarines. Our country knows about this from hearsay. Many people remember the largest accidents of the Kursk and Komsomolets nuclear submarines. Even without this, it is impossible to advance in a number of directions in space. The third is medicine.



First, it was necessary to explain why it is done, why it is done this way, and then show it. The shown variant was made incorrectly from the point of view of the statement of the show itself, we will say so. It was a show. The show failed.

Rescue submariners

In many ways, the technology of liquid breathing is postponed to the far shelf - at least in the West - due to the fact that the alleged ventilation of the lungs is not enough to blow the liquid. They are designed only for a mixture of gases. Will some breathing machine, a tube in the lungs be needed for liquid breathing?



In fact, I began work when it was already well shown that using a mechanical fan you can make liquid-breathing clocks. The dogs breathed perfectly for hours, supported the necessary indicators of gas exchange.



My task was quite different. You do not need to breathe for hours to save divers. Submariner during this time simply freeze. At the depth of the emergency submarine there is no electricity, and when the temperature at 4 ° around, it is difficult to warm up. I will clarify: the water temperature at a depth of about 4 ° in almost any part of the ocean.



Hours - is it with the tube?



Never mind. Even if you breathe, you will freeze anyway, you just can't take it.



Were any experiments where animals breathed without artificial ventilation? Is it possible that a person does not have enough muscles for fluid breathing or has this question already been covered?



For me, this question is already passed. The question is put differently: can everyone do it? Guaranteed to say: not all. It requires good healthy lungs.



Should there be exceptional health for short-term fluid breathing? There is another aspect. Tell me, please, how much do you weigh?



Well, 120 ...



Decently. Imagine people like you fall into the water. For example, "Titanic" - they all died in five minutes. And they did not die because they were drowning, but because of the icy water. Why did people die? They did not die because they cooled. It is difficult to cool such a mass as a large person swimming in clothing and a lifejacket by one or two degrees in a few minutes. This requires large heat loss, a powerful flow of water, as in a waterfall. That is, people did not die from a decrease in temperature, but from fear. Most of the deaths of people in cold water is from fear and panic.



The Russians have a dip in the hole for baptism. Such passengers who swam in the hole more than once if they fell from the Titanic would have survived, since some of the underloaded boats returned, but they did not find the floating and living ones. Psychological preparation is extremely important.



What are some of the side effects of fluid breathing? Does lung surfactant wash out?



Very serious research about surfactant with perfluorocarbons in humans was not. We are less interested in the surfactant that mice have - it is different from what a person has. Experiments on animals, no matter how we carry them out, still have some relation, but they are not decisive.



If we wash the lungs with saline, the surfactant is guaranteed to be washed off. This has been known since the beginning of the 20th century.



Many researchers, when they learned that fluid breathing is possible, tried to make it “Perftoran”. “Perftoran” is a liquid approved in Russian medicine, which is injected into the blood to improve the gas transport function. I myself can say that when my father was dying from cancer, we used both blood and Perftoran. When there is no necessary blood type, you can pour Perftoran.



There are different versions of this drug, take 20 percent of fluorocarbon fluid - perfluorodecalin.



And you yourself can easily figure out that this is clearly not enough to make a 20% solution of oxygen in one liter of the drug. This can be achieved only if perfluorodecalin ≈50%. And this is all - a strongly hypoxic mixture in which the animal cannot live.



Nevertheless, such errors were made. And the experimenters wondered why surfactant was so well washed away. But how will it not be washed out when there is a highly active substance in “Perftoran” that creates an emulsion - an emulsifier? Here in life, “Fae” is an emulsifier, and it perfectly washes away any fat.

This emulsifier, which was in "Perftoran", perfectly washed off the surfactant. No wonder the animals died.



If we work with water or some similar “blood substitute”, then the surfactant is guaranteed to be washed. If we work with fluorocarbon liquid, it is practically not washed out. With human harder. Few in vitro experiments . It will be necessary to conduct research and say that yes, that’s one hundredth or less percent is being washed out. Some part really can not be excluded. But we still have to work on this.



That it is not critical is absolutely true. In a healthy person, the surfactant is renewed after hours. And even the one that left the alveoli, can be updated. If you leave a little bit, not scary.



How many dogs lived on average on which experiments were conducted? If they died, were their diseases related to the respiratory organs?



The dogs, which are shown in the presented videos, - “stars” - lived without noticeable pathologies all their lives and gave healthy offspring. For example, the dog I called “Cosmo” lived for about 10 years and repeatedly brought healthy puppies in the territory of 40 NII scientific research institutes. Many experts saw her in the 90s.



However, not all of our animals had a long and carefree life. Diseases of laboratory animals, including respiratory organs, were caused by both the living conditions and the conditions of a particular experiment.



In order to talk about the average life expectancy of dogs as a certain scientific fact, they must be kept in proper conditions. Animals after experiments do not understand hands, they are in a vivarium, under the supervision of specialists, where infection with some germs is excluded.



To clarify, I will say the rule of keeping laboratory animals: people who brought their pets to the vivarium - for example, their pet dog - are fired. You cannot bring your animal to a vivarium, because it has its own pathogenic microbes, and this can change the experience that is being conducted. Properly kept laboratory animals are different, statistics make sense.



I fought for the fact that in Sevastopol was just such a vivarium. Unfortunately, this was not done, because all dogs after the experiments are being taken by plane to Moscow. This is nonsense. Well, handing over hands is not a science right away. Once dogs are handed out, science is forgotten. I did this myself when the phenomenon of fluid breathing was more important than statistics, and there were no places for keeping dogs, and someone agreed to take them. But this is rather a test experiment. In the statistics for the Farm Committee, such animals should not go. There are requirements for conducting experiments.



That is, there are no specific figures for mortality?



Why, there are concrete numbers. In different series according to the conditions of the experiments the numbers differ.



In sparing conditions - high survival rate. In close to the real in submariners - below. In the first case, the experiment with liquid breathing can be carried out correctly and briefly. That is, do not strive for the maximum duration, do not strive for some extreme situations - and in submariners it is 4 °, that is, hypothermia. In the second case, if you immerse the animal in cold water, it breathes cold liquid, then it may have pneumonia, as it would be in supercooled submariners. And they can also be weakened by radiation. Then the death rate will increase.



It is important that nothing extra gets into the respiratory fluid. This liquid must be very highly purified. This is what I have been seeking for several years, working with GIPH - they made me liquid. The Chemists of the Institute of Chemical Industry and Chemical Industry told me that we had done better than all the world’s analogues. I replied that I was not interested, I have such adverse reactions, that is, the liquid is "bad." And he demanded "better" than one year. GIPH, as a result, made a uniquely pure composition, which was surprised both in America and in England. There are "left-handed chemists" in St. Petersburg.



The liquid must be ultrapure, even in comparison with that which goes to the gas transport "blood substitutes". Since its volume passing through the respiratory system is an order of magnitude larger than the main substance of the emulsion is introduced into the “blood substitute”, therefore, impurities enter the body also by an order of magnitude more. And when he began to conduct experiments, it was far from being the cleanest. And in the early stages, many dogs could not wake up after a fluid breath. Everything was good only in the very first minutes, but since this is mechanical ventilation, there were also means for anesthesia and for suppressing spontaneous breathing. There was a long dog out of anesthesia, unacceptable to imitate the rescue of submariners.



Another point of purity is the ingress of hair wool. There are no dogs without wool. I can see very well on the video that the wool, if it gets into the liquid, floats in it not from above, but by volume. If it gets into the lungs to the distal parts, then it will inevitably cause inflammation, because each hair is the abode of a large number of microbes. Wool keeps warm, because it is a lot of capsules with air. When washing, we wash only something on top, and the microbes inside the hairs remain. Although I thoroughly washed the dogs before the experience, but if the wool gets into the lungs, then there should be inflammation.



But we can deal with inflammation, if the goal is to leave the animal. As with hypothermia, this is not a new task, it is not a problem of proper breathing.



If a person breathes from a mouthpiece or face mask, if he does not have a mustache, he will not get anything into his lungs. And for dogs it is harder to do. However, if everything is done as it should, the dog will not die and will live a normal life. As our dog lived at the 40th Institute of the Navy after descending 700 meters.



If you go back to people and pneumonia, then in 1977, Falechik experimented on one of his lungs. He later developed pneumonia. How do you want to avoid this effect in submariners in a cold environment?



He was not very cold and poured, he had no special sensations. There was still a heated liquid, not four degrees.



Here the following is important. We are able to treat pneumonia if it is not in a weakened patient. When there is pure warm (37 degrees) fluid in the lungs, which does not contain any inclusions in the form of hair, then pneumonia should not occur. Reactogenicity of the lung tissue to fluids and solutions is not a disease.



It is known that the perfluorocarbon liquid itself reduces the inflammatory response. It is noticed that if a fluorocarbon blood substitute is injected into a person, then all this fluorocarbon goes out through the lungs. And the course of pneumonia improves because those alveoli that do not normally breathe begin to breathe. This is understandable, because the fluid itself has a surfactant-like effect. She herself is able to straighten the alveoli, which is very important.



But once again, when I say that everything will be fine, this is in terms of statistics. When we talk about something, in particular, the rescue of the free ascent, which is now used for submariners, which is generally accepted in the NATO countries, in 5 percent of cases they have trouble - not only large, small, but death. If you became a soldier, then this is your choice, and yes, you can die in the service, sometimes during exercises. But everyday civilian work with an electrician is not such a simple activity.



NATO submariners conduct annual tests of free ascent when breathing air. And someone's ears are torn during rapid decompression, someone has a severe decompression sickness. There were also deaths, I heard about this when I was at NATO headquarters at a relevant meeting with the participation of Russian specialists in 2008. Representatives of the NATO fleets reported this as a completely ordinary situation, in the way it fits into the statistics: if out of 100 people, 95 have none, then everything is fine.



So with dogs: we have to make some limit. If we set ourselves the task of drawing up a method of salvation, then we must assign a certain 90-95% chance of survival. And we must clearly understand that as soon as we increase the percentage from 90 to 95, the number of animals, experiments on which must be carried out to substantiate and clear evidence, increases dramatically. Hence the growing requirements for the vivarium area.



Left image: memorial to those who died at the Kursk nuclear submarine, Serafimov cemetery, personal photo archive of A.V. Filippenko. Experiments on dogs go, among other things, in order to give a chance to escape, such as the sailors in the ninth compartment of the Kursk.



How will rescue submarin liquid breath?



The rescue submariner - this is several stages. In this case, I speak not just as a research doctor, but as a person who worked in the 40th scientific research institute , that is, in Lomonosov, in the department who was engaged in the rescue of submariners. First you need to find a submarine. Then, in the case of a free ascent, it needs to be organized. And the third point is to assemble them on the surface, heat them, heal them on board and in the base and return them to service.



I can answer the question only for the stage of leaving the submarine. In the variant not of breathing for hours with liquid, but ascent. Now, at least in the NATO countries, the following approach has been adopted: when it is clear that the submarine cannot float, it throws out a buoy, which will report quickly enough to the satellites where it sank. After this, the divers do not wait for several days, but begin to prepare for rescue. Either they can be saved with the help of collective means of salvation, or they try to escape with a free ascent. So it was conceived, because according to the regulations, ships should now arrive in 72 hours, but everyone understands that this is difficult. The easiest way to organize aviation support.



I and supporters managed to break the attitude to aviation support with us too. Now it is an accepted doctrine: aviation support in the rescue of submariners in the Navy is in effect. Although back in 2005, during the naval saloon, there was a rather vivid discussion that this should not be done. But the facts of the rescue of seafarers from the AS-28 underwater vehicle in the same year using air delivery of underwater vehicles proved convincing.







The scheme proposed by A. Filippenko, in which the rescuers also use liquid breathing, sink to the depth and help the sailors to leave the submarine compartments. They are delivered by an airborne vehicle.



What will the removal of fluid from the lungs look like? Will it be such an unattractive situation? Will it be possible to get used to this operation?



Air and fluid are removed from the lungs equally - by the tension of the diaphragm and respiratory muscles during exhalation. Do we breathe attractively? A person breathes through his nose or opens his mouth, the chest begins to make some movements. Attractive or not - the question is complicated.



Well, we are accustomed to this.



Predators are also accustomed, so when they come up, we stop breathing. This is a normal reaction.



The question looks different. It is necessary not to cough when fluid is poured into the lungs. Therefore, anesthesia should be performed first. And then, just like breathing air, inhale the liquid. It has no taste, smell. If its temperature is close to body temperature, then it is well tolerated.



When even water droplets get into the larynx, the cough automatically begins. We do not need a cough with liquid breathing. It is necessary to pass it naturally and calmly. But this is a problem that all anesthesiologists perfectly solve, which inject intubation tubes, bronchoscopes, when they look at the lungs. This is a standard medical procedure.



Yes, here it should be for the specific conditions of the submarine. This should be some kind of simple military method. I set this task before the anaesthesiologist of our first Leningrad Medical Institute, and we solved it. Now it can be solved in twenty other ways. I don’t know what the final result will be; tests must show it. I, in any case, do not see any major problems in this.



The next step is to fill the lungs with respiratory fluid.



Yes everything is correct. But I want to say that one person out of ten thousand who undergoes bronchoscopy in the offices, yes, he dies. This is international statistics. Therefore, to say that any research with a person is safe - this is not true.





2004, meeting in St. Petersburg on the basis of the TsDB MT Rubin SWERG-2004 with the participation of NATO representatives on the Kursk disaster, personal photo-archive of A.V. Filippenko.



A person will be able to independently surface to the surface, and there he will already be reanimated, or will he be able to remove the fluid from his lungs himself?



I studied two options with animals: one to reanimate, the other when it is released itself. They did both. I think submariners will be able to emerge both in consciousness and be adequate on the surface, and in a state of anesthesia, which is more difficult to exit from the submarine at depth. In the second method without resuscitation is indispensable.



As soon as we fill the lungs, there should be no coughing. If we are well-anaesthetized, then there will be no coughing. The glottis is passable. I am considering options, and when the liquid pours itself, and when we put the phone. Both in one, and in another there are advantages and disadvantages.



The exit of the liquid from the lungs of the submariner on the surface, bringing it to life, from my point of view, should help make a short-term liquid breathing apparatus on the submariner.The demonstrator of the high-speed rescue hydrodiving suit of the submariner, which I began to experience in Sevastopol, is for him a device.



On the surface, the submariner should free himself of the fluid and do something a little: help another submarin that has emerged nearby, check the operation of the alarm and communication. Going to the shore is insane, his task is to simply take time until the aviation support team picks it up. They can be delivered in different ways.



Or jump from low-flying helicopters, or with parachutes from aircraft. The main thing is that specialists who gather these submariners in inflatable rafts “houses” and provide this or that help come down to it. Here there may already be an artificial ventilation apparatus. I used a variant of such a small apparatus to apply it if necessary.



Everything is determined by the weight / volume that can be left on the submarine for rescue equipment or dropped with the equipment of the aviation support group.



This technology, which was developed by us, does not require forced ventilation?



It is technologically difficult for a submariner to make an apparatus so that it is simple, light and with forced ventilation. While we do not have this and there was no such task. Therefore, I did with independent ventilation.



By this, it is fundamentally different from what was done before that abroad. While we were learning to ventilate our lungs ourselves for salvation by free ascent during high-speed ascent to the surface.



Is liquid breathing technology used anywhere?



Now this technology is used in rare cases in the form of partial liquid ventilation for newborns. In St. Petersburg, about 3 people a year, about which pediatricians know in advance that these will be sick children who cannot breathe their lungs themselves. In these cases, they save them with gas mixtures. At the same time, squirrels begin to sweat as a rejection reaction in the alveoli, and such children do not live for more than 14–15 years. They are alive after our events, but they, as a rule, do not survive the childhood age.



Yes, this is a problem. The only thing - these children are not so many. According to Peter, there are several people, and midwives do not yet consider it appropriate to introduce this method because of the high costs of such treatment.



When it was the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Pulmonology, then many came from different republics, including from Central Asia, there were more patients, patients with rare pathologies, than in St. Petersburg. Now there is a shift in the directions of complex patients to Moscow and abroad. But in any case there are such children, and I learned how to save them in America. I am not a pediatrician, and to practice such a method of partial (partial) liquid breathing is not my task, I just got acquainted with it and transferred knowledge here.



When you say “used,” this is used — partial fluid ventilation in US child resuscitation. Independent liquid ventilation or liquid breathing is not yet used for people.

Instead of scuba

-, . . .



, , , , , ?



Not.



Is it possible that this will be a scuba replacement?



There will be no replacement of scuba at shallow depths, and at depths of more than 200 meters it can only be when we have batteries ten times more powerful with the same weight and volume. Under the water is cold and there is no light. Therefore, to walk at great depths without a power source is impossible.



In general, I propose to go to great depths along with the robot - equipment can be hung on it. It will be an assistant, a dog, such a Italian greyhound. The robot carries with it batteries as golf clubs.



How do you think, what are the lower causes of the depth of liquid breathing technology? Somewhere starts to play neurological high pressure syndrome or something else?



I worked at the institute, which was engaged in the nervous syndrome, and repeatedly listened to the discussions of physiologists of different countries on high pressure nerve syndrome. What it is is not yet well known. Moreover, it is almost only the beginning to be studied for a person. Animals are not so.



But the fact that a small amount of nitrogen is enough to suppress the symptoms of nervous syndrome that we could see is a fact that I have observed. Accordingly, I do not see major problems in the nervous syndrome for a person, even if such a method as the introduction of additional gas suppresses it.



What to say about very high pressures is difficult to say. There are practically no normal studies for more than 3 kilometers, no such questions have been asked.



I was offered to make the delivery vehicle better, of course, alive, but “either the carcass or the stuffed animal” even from the depths of the Mariana Trench, into which one billionaire, whom I was presented at the conference in St. Petersburg, wanted to dive. We corresponded with him. I said that after certain works, I imagine how this can be done, and maybe in the form of what can be revived when it reaches the surface. I think that this can be done, but this is no longer the task today, since there is no activity on his part.



I say that it will be possible to revive from the depths a little more than 3 kilometers, because the mice were lowered to such depth without any problems. Therefore, I think that dogs will be able to dive there. Rather, it is technically difficult to organize. But it is possible, but why?



The Mariana Trench is an exclusive question, there are those who want to go there. There are encouraging facts. It is known that our general A. A. Romanov, next to whom there was a big strong explosion, spent 18 days in a coma, and then began to withdraw little by little, although 19 years later he was not healthy. But medicine is improving all the time.



I heard this number - 500 meters. Supposedly it will be possible to immerse a person for half a kilometer with liquid breathing.



The fact is that I did much more on dogs and this personally convinced me of the possibility of human descent. There were experiments with animals much more in depth. Not everything is published, not everything is shown. I do not see big problems up to several kilometers. Let's say up to 2.5. Further - indeed, more difficult.



There were such fundamental experiments, I met a developer in Sweden, who did all this on small laboratory animals. This is old work.



Once again, I'm not saying that this is easy to do. It is difficult, first of all, from the point of view of devices - the equipment is lousy at such depths.



Suppose a liquid breathing apparatus is created: either there is enough energy for it, or it will be powered by a cable. It will not be particularly dangerous. Then tight suits will go into the past?



Not.Practice shows that new vehicles and communications do not cancel the old ones. Due to the fact that the Internet appeared and, including by air, twisted pairs and telephone wires did not cancel. And until now, all essential messages are transmitted by couriers - and in banking houses, and in public services. There are technologies that are thousands of years old.



Hard suit - well, a fun toy and will always be if there are no narrow spaces for its passage. Technically, too many problems, the deeper, the worse it works. But it should be so, because there the pressure is not balanced. At our institute in Lomonosov, where I worked, there was such a hard spacesuit. Always passed and looked at him with great interest. And this - the development was the thirties.

Space

Can you create any kind of anti-grip suit where a person is immersed in a liquid and his lungs are also filled with some kind of liquid?



Yes, I believe it, K. E. Tsiolkovsky experienced immersion, but there was no order for the costume.



There is an interesting detail here that I encountered in the [promising technologies] Foundation, when some professors and doctors of science believed, and some did not believe. “This can not be, because there can never be.” The evidence-based discussion took place only a year later (alas, discussions are rare even at round tables), where it turned out, all because of what paradigm a person has, how he perceives overload . Only as a long process or not.



For example, most biologists separate red blood cells from blood plasma — inserts into a centrifuge, and red blood cells are separated from the plasma. In the technique of gravitational method isotopes of uranium are separated. Standard procedure. But it lasts for hours. Well, or minutes, tens of minutes.



There is a completely different direction - short so-called shock loads. In animal studies, extremely favorable results were obtained. The rat pups in the amniotic (amniotic) fluid, which do not naturally have air in their lungs before birth, suffered a shock overload of a fraction of a second of 10,000 g. DP Morris et al., Experimenting on white mice, noted that animals, when immersed in water, transferred accelerations of 1300 g for 60 seconds. [Morris DP, DE Beischer, GG Zariello. Studies of the verbal tolerance and small vertebrates while immersed. J. Avait. Med., 29, 6, 438-443, 1958.]



But this does not mean that they would withstand this acceleration of a minute or tens of minutes.



From the sixties, gun launch was considered as an alternative to rocket launch. It so happened that they went with a rocket launch, but the gun launch is more economical. I think that there is a chance to return to the gun-electromagnet start. This is one of the issues on which I work. There was some support, including at RSC Energia, specialists from other organizations.



Are similar developments for protection against liquid respiration overload already underway? Or is it some distant future?



No, why? After all, a lot of aspects that need to be addressed. You know, all developments are being carried out on overloads in microtechnology. A modern smartphone must withstand a fall on the marble floor, if it is not glass, of course, knocks. And this is an estimated 100-1000 g.



Technique is developing, other directions are developing. The problem with animals is that if in America 60,000 experiments are conducted on dogs, then in Russia, believe me, and close to this number there are no experiments. And this is due to the powerful propaganda that people have launched, we will tell the truth, with the money of the same pharmaceutical cosmetology firms that are interested in, so that we do not have such developments. By the way, and the military too. Because everything needs to be checked on animals, and the base was diligently destroyed. Simply removed competitors for innovative drugs, cosmetics, implantable devices.



Lungs will be filled to improve portability overload. How many units will improve? I have seen such an estimate that it will be possible to increase from 20 g to hundreds and thousands.



Let's do this: I don’t promise thousands, but 180 g maybe a few seconds.



I even specially passed the flight commission at the institute in Zhukovsky in order to have a chance on the centrifuge to spin with liquid breathing. But it did not work out a number of questions to my spine.



Why call this number? Because it allows you to implement the so-called electromagnetic start . The term I proposed in 2005. One of the graduate students offered in English launch, launch. But it seems to me that start is clearer to everyone. It hurts a lot already started ... Electromagnetic start already lives its own separate life: articles by authors unfamiliar to me appear, where it is proved that it is possible. First of all, it is necessary for launching non-living objects into orbit - nano- and microsatellites, then barrels with fuel and water.



When filling the lungs will not somehow interfere with the difference in the density of tissues, the difference in the density of the fluid in the suit, the difference in the density of the fluid in the lungs?



Of course it will interfere. Imagine that a stroke lasts for hundredths, thousandths of a second. Will he have time to influence? There is no time for a change, there is not enough energy, when the difference in density differs little. Where is she important? When we have the density differences in three orders: water and air. That's where the density difference is. When the difference is three orders of magnitude, then gaps occur.



Quite right: all the boundaries of the rupture of blood vessels pass where there is air. Here on this surface there will be gaps. We remove the air - there are no ruptures of blood vessels at certain levels of acceleration. Of course, if you increase, as you say, to many thousands of g, then I am sure that they will appear.



Yes, but if the air can be removed from the lungs, you can, of course, try to remove it from the stomach, then other parts of the digestive system can not be freed from gases.



Come on, what are these? Usually far from biology they say that it is impossible to remove from bones. I speak about technicians, not about physicians. Doctors know that there is no air in the bones. We have birds, we haven't.



But everything is cleaned in the digestive system. There are drugs for this, and they are different espumizans, and even if something arises there, then by God, it is not so bad. When a football player gets in the stomach, there are no such terrible wounds. Yes, there are troubles in one degree or another, but not much. I'm talking about areas where there is air. The liver, the gall bladder usually suffers, there are tears. He himself repeatedly observed when he was engaged in surgical practice.



But back from heaven to earth. Counter overload suits are important not only for astronautics, but also for aviation, which is much closer.



You know, you're right, closer. But here we must look, because in cosmonautics every gram costs a lot of money, in aviation it is not so. Yes, grams are appreciated there. Due to this, in 2014, three-meter models of demonstrators, which were made for testing in the Crimea, could be transported by plane. If the shipbuilders had done, they would have weighed a few hundred kilograms. Aviation officers made them easy.



In aviation for military supersonic aircraft there is an aspect when it can be useful: bailout The question is whether the pilot will be able to use it. For passengers of liners need to escape not a parachute, not liquid breathing, but it is necessary that the plane sat on the airfield.



Frequent use of such technology for pilots is not expected? For example, fighter planes of future generations.



From my point of view, it can be useful, but we need to work. There is a very hard work of the brain. We discussed with the Italians, I gave a brief review of their liquid breathing project, spoke as an expert at the European Space Agency in Noordwijk (the Netherlands). They described the aspect of operator activity in great detail.



You know, it's too early to talk about it. We have not really learned how to do fluid breathing, and already the work of a fighter is already the height of professional skill. No wonder the cost of the machine and the cost of preparing a modern fighter pilot are comparable things. One third is considered for aircraft, that is, millions of dollars.

Liquid breath in the world

If you look now, are there any developments being conducted abroad on the topic of liquid breathing?



Of course being. The only question is that anti-pioneers won not only in Russia, when well-functioning institutions collapsed, and there was no stone unturned in them. They did a lot in the States. A bunch of development stopped. We know what their missile program problems are. And now this fun with the return of the steps of Ilona Mask should have been made in the seventies and eighties. All this could have been done then - the same satellites sat on the moon gently without the current electronics and GPS system. Well, that didn't work out.



How many times have the Bushes said that the USA will fly to Mars?



Specifically, Bush promised to fly to the moon.



[Plans for a gradual return to Mars did indeed appear under Bush Sr. and Bush Jr., but according to the later adopted Constellation program as a reference point, this first needed to create a base on the moon - approx. Ed.]



Well, yes, but nothing has been done. Since 1990, all programs fail. And they did nothing. From my point of view, the United States failed as a scientific and technological society. All hope for Ilona Mask.



Do weak. Do badly. Individual teams are known to me. I do not have all the information, because now I do not belong to the cohort that receives confidential information. When I worked in the 40th scientific research institute, yes, I received such. And then there was little use from them, and, I think, now. Well, someone works.



Well, honestly, reports and articles - I have no confidence in them until I see a specific person in the work, because the matter is in the details. And success in such complex things is also in the details. Slightly changed something - nothing will turn out. An analysis of the causes of accidents in aviation and missile technology makes this clear.



Are there any separate teams, are there any individual schools working on this area?



Yes, yes.



What are their differences?



There are differences. First, it all starts with a difference in liquids. These liquids are very few, which have come close to man.



For example, he repeatedly talked with scientists from Alliance Pharmaceutical Corporation. This is an American corporation in which Schaefer worked - one of the American leaders with whom he competed. They did including "Liquive" for ventilation of the lungs. It was slow, long and tedious for them. There were breakthroughs: when they showed that fluid ventilation is safer for patients than mechanical air. It was a very interesting result. But the devices were quickly improved, and the liquid was never released for medicine.



Now they have disconnected [from Oleg’s mechanical ventilation] Tabakov. Why strive to disconnect from a mechanical fan as quickly as possible? Yes, it is not safe for the lungs when the lungs are mechanically pumped for a long time. That is, we cannot even use air - modern medicine does not allow for a long time and without harm for humans to ventilate with air. Liquid for a person must also learn how to do it. Therefore, being a doctor, he didn’t even take mechanical fans as a basis - he took independent ventilation.



For space, for shock overload, rather than short-term, for the free ascent of the submariners need short periods of liquid breathing. Long-term - only for divers and for long-distance flights in space, when astronauts are in anabiosis. But this is another aspect, it is far from the topic.



Is it possible to pin hopes on China?



And who else is working in this world? Only Chinese. I do not see success in other countries, judging by the rate of increase in the cost of science and technology (R & D), they will soon overtake the leader of the United States. Japan has already overtaken.



Periodically I look at Chinese patents. Very fast progress. At the meeting on electromagnetic weapons from Russia came a few people. I asked myself escorts from Baumanka and Mozhayka, but we have no money for business trips. And Chinese graduate students occupied the first few rows. It was 2006, Potsdam, Germany. It was a rare case when the military institute of advanced military technologies of the USA holds a retreat in Europe. Of course, it was necessary for everyone to tear in there - that's all, such are not in the States to go. However, even in Germany did not go. There were reports on weapons, the electromagnetic gun was analyzed in detail. As a civilian, I performed with an electromagnetic start, where the length of the trunk is 7 km. The military sighed and called to her to figure out ...



So China is the youth of the world. And the Communist Party very skillfully taxis science, just envy take.



There is an observation in the Western media that China is buying up Western scientists for work, inviting them to work, giving out money. Are you watching this?



Of course.I know how we traveled, for example, from St. Petersburg Marine Technical University.



But they are doing business there. In many American laboratories there are completely Russian laboratories. There are no foreigners at all. There are seminars in Russian. But sometimes such nonsense is done (in their opinion), which is not in China. In China, only a significant result is needed.



Therefore, the Chinese, according to my data (I haven’t looked through for a long time), received more output by thermonuad than they pumped energy. It was the best result, neither the Americans nor we have this. They are working on the result, and not to unsubscribe, create a bunch of papers and get a bunch of some unnecessary references to Hirsch or something like that. Who cares? No one.I do not know such scientists for whom this is important.



We have technologies of offshore oil production, there is a rescue of submariners, protection against overloads. Liquid breathing is important for all this. Suppose a certain person appears who is trying to commercialize it. About how Ilon Musk - Tesla appeared from nowhere, which did not create new technologies, but commercialized existing ones. What would liquid breath commercialization look like?



Well, let's make a reservation right away: it will not be me. I would not want to be Ilon Mask in a nightmare. It is necessary to go all the time and “drink” with the right people, because Musk works in a very tight bond with the state and other structures. This is the face of America, and I am very glad that America has put forth a decent face.



The most massively may require, oddly enough, medicine. I, as a pulmonologist, see that the difficulties of lung disease grow very quickly. The whole world is flying fast on airplanes. Viruses and all sorts of other nasty things are transferred instantly. Pandemic is extremely dangerous.



The second task is to go into space. I have already expressed my skepticism about robotics, although I really like it, and I am friends with the Institute of Robotics in St. Petersburg. But the movement behind this is small. Rather, they are not robots, but automatic. But automata are not robotics, where intelligence is comparable to human intelligence.



For breathing space into other planets, liquid breathing may be required. There, every gram of saving water, oxygen, food is too expensive. The European Space Agency counted a huge amount of saving the weight of the Martian mission when using anabiosis and liquid breathing. We counted in tons, and all this must be multiplied by the removal of these tons into space. The total savings per launch can reach $ 150 million. It turns out that the one who implements this correctly will become the Vanderbilt of the 21st century.



I express my gratitude to A. Filippenko for the materials provided.