Knowledge of what happens in the body immediately after trauma—the “bad physiology”—is still opaque. This is not for want of trying. I lose count of the number of journals devoted to care that is critical, emergency, resuscitative, trauma. But it is difficult to carry out good, robust research on a just-injured body: How can you ask for patient consent to do randomized control studies on a person who has just hit a wall at eighty miles per hour? Trauma doctors in Maryland want to study whether inducing hypothermia in trauma patients, and lowering metabolism, can give doctors more time. A
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