The “resuscitation” of dead pigs, promise of progress and source of questions

Last Wednesday, August 3, American researchers returned pigs, who were cold as snow, to a life form, with their organic functions restored.

Already in 2019, these same scientists had amazed the medical world by restoring cell function in the brains of pigs, a few hours after their decapitation.

In his latest research, published in the magazine ‘Nature‘, the team went even further, extending the technique to the entire body of the animal. The scientists induced a heart attack in anesthetized pigs, which impeded blood circulation and deprived their cells of oxygen. Without oxygen, mammalian cells die.

Within an hour, the bodies were injected with a liquid containing the pigs’ blood (taken while they were alive) and a synthetic form of haemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying protein in red blood cells. As well as medications that protect cells and prevent the formation of blood clots.

Blood began to circulate again, and many cells returned to function, including in vital organs like the heart, liver, and kidneys, for the next six hours.

Enrich the bank of transplantable organs

This is good news for medicine: vital organs could be “reanimated” for transplantation. Because until now, after a few minutes of circulatory arrest, the organs are no longer suitable for transplantation, explains Dr. Jean-Etienne Bazin, head of the perioperative medicine unit at the Clermont-Ferrand University Hospital.

“However, the pig cells were working hours later, when they shouldn’t have been,” Nenad Sestan, lead author of the study and a researcher at Yale University, told a news conference.

OrganEx, the name of this technique, “could allow us to enrich the bank of transplantable organs”, says Jean-Etienne Bazin. This could save the lives of people waiting for a transplant.

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What is death?

For Sam Parnia, from the department of medicine at the same university, this “really remarkable” study also shows that “death is a treatable and reversible biological process hours later.”

So much so that the medical definition of death may need to be updated, according to Benjamin Curtis, an ethical philosopher at Britain’s Nottingham Trent University.

“Taking into account this study, many processes that we thought were irreversible may not be,” he told AFP.

“And, based on the current medical definition of death, a person may not be truly dead for hours,” since some processes continue for some time beyond the cessation of bodily functions.

Philippe Bizouarn, anesthetist and resuscitator at the University Hospital of Nantes, is not at all surprised: “The death of a person is not the death of his cells.”

Let’s say rather that we managed to restore his organs to their functions

In the Monts d’Arrée, where this Breton was during the fires that devastated the forests of his childhood, “a green grass appeared under the ashes”. Like the cells of an inanimate body, the seeds came back to life under the remains of completely burned vegetation,” explains the doctor in an effort to spread the word.

Too early for philosophy?

However, Dr. Bizouarn warns that one must be “careful with fantasies”, for him these pigs were not “brought back to life”. “Let’s say rather that we managed to restore his organs to their functions.” In short, for the anesthesiologist, science does not resurrect the dead.

But “as usual, this experiment will be questioned by transhumanist groups like Google X Lab”, sighs Philippe Bizouarn.

Indeed, as soon as it was revealed to the public, the experiment raised a number of ethical and even philosophical dilemmas.

Although science fiction helps “to ask ourselves the right bioethical questions”, these have no place for the doctor in this case: among those who fuel these controversies, many have, according to him, “no idea of ​​what happens in medical reality “.

“Extraordinary”

However, far from sensationalism, one of the reactions observed during the pig experiment raises more questions than answers: the vast majority of the animals made strong head and neck movements, according to Stephen Latham, one of the study’s authors. “It was quite surprising for the people who were in the room,” he told reporters.

Although the origin of these movements remains unknown, the scientist assured that at no time was electrical activity recorded in the pigs’ brains, which rules out, in principle, the recovery of consciousness.

These head movements are, however, “of great concern,” says Benjamin Curtis, as recent neuroscientific research has suggested that “conscious experience can continue even when electrical activity in the brain cannot be measured.”

Dr. Jean-Etienne Bazin explains another variable: during the experiment, anesthesia or hypothermia in the animals could have inhibited electrical activity and thus alter the diagnosis.

This raises an unresolved question, continues the doctor-professor: how to interpret the movements of these pigs? Was it “simply” the result of the motor stimuli that the spinal cord sends “automatically”, or was it the conscious commands of their brains, which would have been aroused? For this scientist, not being able to absolutely invalidate this last possibility is “extraordinary”.

His colleague, Philippe Bizouarn, understands the hope that such potentiality can generate, but “deep down, it is good that death is part of life, otherwise we would not know how to live,” the doctor philosophizes.

To be reborn or not to be reborn? Maybe that’s not the issue.

This article was adapted from its French original