Scientists Successfully Revive Dead Pig Organs For Organ Transplants

Scientists have restored blood circulation and other cell functions in pigs an hour after their death using new technology that delivers cell-protective fluid to organs and tissues.

The findings, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, could help extend the health of human organs during surgery and also make more transplants possible.

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Hours after pumping synthetic fluids through the bodies of dead pigs, a team of researchers from Yale University observed their hearts beginning to beat faintly. Blood circulation was restored, and some cellular functions were revived in vital organs such as the heart and liver.

This 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.

According to the Nature article, the Yale research team used the OrganEx system — consisting of a device similar to the heart-lung machines used in surgery and the experimental mixture of fluids that promotes cellular health and reduces inflammation — on pigs one hour after they no longer had a pulse.

Another group of dead pigs was put on ECMO, a life-support measure that oxygenates the blood outside of the body.

By the end of the six-hour trial, the scientists found that the OrganEx technology was capable of delivering “adequate levels of oxygen” to the pigs’ whole bodies, which restored certain key cellular functions in organs such as the heart, liver and kidneys.

“Under the microscope, it was difficult to tell the difference between a healthy organ and one which had been treated with OrganEx technology after death,” Zvonimir Vrselja, a neuroscientist at the Yale School of Medicine who took part in the study, said in a news release.

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.

But the findings are just a first step, said Stephen Latham, a bioethicist at Yale University who worked closely with the group. The technology, he emphasized, is “very far away from use in humans.”

During the experiment, pretty much all of the OrganEx pigs made powerful movements with their head and neck, said Stephen Latham, a Yale ethicist and study co-author.

"It was quite startling for the people in the room," he told journalists.

He emphasised that while it was not known what caused the movement, at no point was any electrical activity recorded in the pigs' brains, showing that they never regained consciousness after death.

While there was a "little burst" on the EEG machine measuring brain activity at the time of the movement, Latham said that was probably caused by the shifting of the head affecting the recording.

However Curtis said the movement was a "major concern" because recent neuroscience research has suggested that "conscious experience can continue even when electrical activity in the brain cannot be measured".

"So it is possible that this technique did in fact cause the subject pigs to suffer, and would cause human beings to suffer were it to be used on them," he added, calling for more research.

Researchers say the findings also pose ethical questions on when a person may be conclusively pronounced dead.

“There is a challenging ethical issue in determining when radical life support is just futile, and as technology advances we may find more ways of keeping bodies alive despite being unable to revive the person we actually care about,” Anders Sandberg, senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, said.

“Much work remains to find criteria for when further treatment is futile, and also in how to get people back from the brink,” he said.