The line between life and death

Researchers from Yale University successfully revived the organs and cells of pigs who had been clinically dead, according to a new paper published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

💉🐷 A deeper dive… The researchers’ work began a few years ago, when they first started experimenting with brains from dead pigs. Four hours after the pigs died, the group pumped a solution containing multiple medications, called BrainEx, into their bodies, and saw brain cells that should’ve been dead were able to be revived.

In their next procedure, the scientists injected dead pigs with another type of restorative fluid, called OrganEx, geared toward promoting cellular health and suppressing inflammation. And here’s where the debate starts…

• The pigs had been lying dead in the lab for an hour — no blood was circulating in their bodies, their hearts were still, their brain waves flat.
• Upon injecting the previously mentioned restorative fluid, their hearts resumed beating, plus limited function was restored to their brains, lungs, livers, kidneys, and pancreases, though the animals weren’t considered conscious in any way.

📸 Big picture: According to transplant experts, organs need to be harvested quickly and preserved due to rapid postmortem decay. But during this process, organs sometimes undergo damage, becoming unusable – and OrganEx, if it ever becomes clinically applicable, could mean they wouldn’t have to be tossed out.

• More than 100,000 people in the US are on the national waiting list for kidneys, livers, hearts, and other organs, and more than 6,000 die every year.