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Science

A 'Reversible' Form of Death? Scientists Revive Cells in Dead Pigs' Organs. (nytimes.com) 48

Posted by msmash from the breakthrough dept.
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. Then a group of Yale scientists pumped a custom-made solution into the dead pigs' bodies with a device similar to a heart-lung machine. From a report: What happened next adds questions to what science considers the wall between life and death. Although the pigs were not considered conscious in any way, their seemingly dead cells revived. Their hearts began to beat as the solution, which the scientists called OrganEx, circulated in veins and arteries. Cells in their organs, including the heart, liver, kidneys and brain, were functioning again, and the animals never got stiff like a typical dead pig. Other pigs, dead for an hour, were treated with ECMO, a machine that pumped blood through their bodies. They became stiff, their organs swelled and became damaged, their blood vessels collapsed, and they had purple spots on their backs where blood pooled. The group reported its results Wednesday in Nature. The researchers say their goals are to one day increase the supply of human organs for transplant by allowing doctors to obtain viable organs long after death. And, they say, they hope their technology might also be used to prevent severe damage to hearts after a devastating heart attack or brains after a major stroke.
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A 'Reversible' Form of Death? Scientists Revive Cells in Dead Pigs' Organs. More

A 'Reversible' Form of Death? Scientists Revive Cells in Dead Pigs' Organs.

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  • Can we grow bacon with this?

  • Joking aside, supposedly after a heart attack, part of the heart muscle "dies". I wonder if this stuff can revive that heart muscle tissue.

  • The worst distopic and terror movies are becoming reality
  • If the steak in my fridge can be relived then eating meat gets a very complex philosophical twist

    • You mean it gets a very delicious culinary twist? Doesn't get any fresher than still alive.

    • Not really. Without a functioning brain it's just tissue. You eat live plants all the time. Think of the horrible life of a radish. Ripped from the ground, decapitated, root chopped off, salt dumped on the open wounds, then finely crushed and sent into an acid bath.

      Or those poor basil plants in the garden. Even though they have minimal nutritional value I'm going to chop off large numbers of their leaves and dry them just because I like the flavor.

      • Brain doesn't matter.

        Being broken is how many many plants have reproduced traditionally. Inflicting this "pain" cannot be taken to be anywhere near as immoral as typical animals face (especially mammals). It could even be said that the plants "enjoy" it, if they have anything like enjoyment. This is because the species would only progress if many individual plants face the right kind of mutilation, and for radish the kind you mentioned would lead to reproduction. The traditional well-being of the species ca

    • UNHAND ME, FOOLISH MORTAL! https://archives.sluggy.com/bo... [sluggy.com]

  • This is how we get the undead. They do realise that don't they? I mean, they must've watched ReAnimator to even come up with this crazy idea.

  • Do you want Zombies? (Score:4, Informative)

    by midnightauto ( 7067001 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @04:39PM (#62760402)
    Cause this is how you get Zombies

  • In HHGTG - Restaurant at the End of the Universe (TV Show) they actual get to Meet the Meat (Played by Peter Davidson - aka Dr. Who) It's a talking pig/cow on a plate and you get to meet it before you eat it and it gives you permission to eat it. So it's really not that complex of a philosophical issue.

  • Wonder if they used the same formula in Re-Animator, a 1985 American comedy horror film which used a reagent that can re-animate deceased bodies?

  • Probably Not Thiis (Score:5, Informative)

    by crunchygranola ( 1954152 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @05:16PM (#62760520)

    their seemingly dead cells revived

    The Nature article is paywalled, and not even SciHub will bring it up, so I don't know what the article actually claims. The abstract says:

    After 1h of warm ischaemia, OrganEx application preserved tissue integrity, decreased cell death and restored selected molecular and cellular processes across multiple vital organs. Commensurately, single-nucleus transcriptomic analysis revealed organ- and cell-type-specific gene expression patterns that are reflective of specific molecular and cellular repair processes.

    "Decreased cell death" is a little ambiguous but it most likely means "decreased the rate of cells dying". The cells that exhibited repair processes were damaged, not dead. Ischaemia is a little ambiguous too since it can mean blood supply cut off, but can also mean blood supply severely restricted - not sure whether the pig had no blood flowing or only a little. But cells don't die instantly, and restoring access to oxygen and nutrients (but no blood) certainly should help cells that are still alive. So this looks like it is stablizing the condition of organs in the dead animal, but not bringing anything dead back to life.

    • Re:Probably Not Thiis (Score:5, Interesting)

      by RhettLivingston ( 544140 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @08:50PM (#62760944) Journal
      Looks like this is the same group that created BrainEx [quantamagazine.org] a few years ago. This is another application of similar tech. This area of research is being pursued in other organizations too with the hopes of eventually being able to revive sudden death patients an hour or more after death. The key is that the cells don't really die until they get oxygen again. The hope is to get a solution of some sort to the cells before the oxygen that will stop processes like apoptosis that essentially use the first burst of oxygen to commit cellular suicide. Oddly, if this field of study ever fully pans out, the new wisdom would be to never perform CPR. Getting oxygen to the cells before the solution is circulated through would start cell death.

      • Oddly, if this field of study ever fully pans out, the new wisdom would be to never perform CPR. Getting oxygen to the cells before the solution is circulated through would start cell death.

        I remember reading about Ischaemia-Reperfusion injury decades ago, and questions about whether putting heart attack and stroke patients on supplemental oxygen caused more damage than it prevented.

        Seems pretty fucking game-changing if there's something they can pump into you to stop that process.

  • Hibernation (Score:4, Interesting)

    by theshowmecanuck ( 703852 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @06:18PM (#62760660) Journal

    I wonder if this could be adapted to allow hibernation on space voyages. Water expands when it crystalizes, ripping apart cell walls. I wonder if this could allow the replacement of water with something that can be supercooled and keep us sort of alive until we are warmed up. Good for scifi if nothing else.

  • ...where police forensic technicians use various techniques to bring a recent murder victim back to life long enough for them to try to get them to identify their attacker.
    • They did that in an episode of Torchwood. They had a glove that would bring someone back for a few, tried to ask them questions, but most of the people got stuck on the fact they died and didnt tell them anything.
  • We're going to need to figure out some new low-bar ideas of what creepy evil is, so we can sleep at night.
  • It's only mostly dead.
  • if they can still wrest a little productivity from your broken body

  • The pig was only mostly dead (Score:3)

    by Albinoman ( 584294 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2022 @09:01PM (#62760970)
    Take it from Miracle Max, there's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead. Unfortunately the only thing pig had to live for was "to blave".

  • And as the liquid began coursing through their bodies, the cells in the organs shuddering back to life, they seemed to shudder and convulse, and a sound emanated from them, synchronized to the pumps...so as if in unison the air was filled with a squealing song that sounded like this:

    Yo Way Yo, Home Va-Ray,
    Yo Ay-Rah, Jerhume Bacon-G
    Yo Way Yo, Home Va-Ray,
    Yo Ay-Rah, Jerhume Bacon-G
    Yo Ay-Rah, Jerhume Bacon-G.

  • The order of events seems peculiar in this sentence:
    "Their hearts began to beat as the solution, which the scientists called OrganEx, circulated in veins and arteries."

    So tell me, how exactly did the OrganEx "circulate" in veins and arteries BEFORE the pig heart was beating?

    (Ok, so maybe this is just a case of the Slashdot broken telephone effect, or maybe they were using blood pumps.)

    • On that topic, if blood killed the cell and organEx revived it, what happens when they reintroduce the organ to blood, as in i e a transplant recipient?

  • This has Zombie Apocalypse written all over it.

  • Tleilax in the "Dune" series? Let's revive Duncan Idaho for crying out loud!

  • They're pigs. Stop the hand-wringing and test whether it works on their brains.

    Saving human lives is more important than this philosophical narcissism.

  • Are we going to have Morbius style vampire pigs running around now?

  • There's a big difference between mostly dead and all dead
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

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