FRANKENSWINE
Dead pig’s brain ‘brought back to life’ by scientists FOUR HOURS later
The researchers believe their work could be built upon to one day help stroke patients
A DEAD pig's brain had some of its functions restored hours after it had been removed from the animal.
Scientists were able to restore some circulation and cellular activity to the brain four hours after the pig's death, challenging long held assumptions about the timing and supposed irreversible nature of brain death.
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The pig's brain was taken from a meat packing factory to a laboratory where it had a special chemical solution called BrainEx technology circulated through it.
During this process, many basic cellular functions, which were thought to stop and never return after death, were restored.
Senior author of the research Professor Nenad Sestan said: "The intact brain of a large mammal retains a previously underappreciated capacity for restoration of circulation and certain molecular and cellular activities multiple hours after circulatory arrest."
However, the researchers did stress that the brain did not give off any signals that were close to implying normal brain function or consciousness.
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This is why the brain can only be referred to as a 'cellularly active' brain and not a living one.
Brain cells begin to die when oxygen to the brain is cut off for a long period of time and this process has long been considered irreversible.
The new findings could help scientists study the brain in a much more in depth way and the researchers believe their work could be built upon to one day help stroke patients or enable tests for new brain therapies.
What happens to your body when you die?
These are the processes that the human body goes through when it's no longer alive...
- Immediately after death, all of the muscles in the human body relax into a state called primary flaccidity, which can result in open eyelids, dilated pupils and floppy limbs
- When the heart has stopped beating for a few minutes, blood starts to drain from the smaller veins in the skin and the body can look paler
- The body temperature also starts to decrease slowly, starting with two degrees in the first hour and one degree less there after
- Livor mortis occurs when the blood drains to parts of the body closest to the ground and creates bruises sometimes referred to as the "postmortem stain"
- In approximately the third hour after death, rigor mortis sets in and all the body muscles stiffen into the position they are in
The research was largely funded by the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) BRAIN Initiative.
Andrea Beckel-Mitchener, chief of functional neurogenomics at the NIH's National Institute of Mental Health, said: "This line of research holds hope for advancing understanding and treatment of brain disorders and could lead to a whole new way of studying the postmortem human brain."
The scientists said they are not yet sure whether their technique could be applied to a dead human brain because the chemical solution they used for the pig lacks the necessary human components, such as blood cells.
They also stressed that any future human experimentation will be done following strict ethical guidelines and that restoring consciousness after death was not the initial goal of the project.
Despite this, the scientists had anaesthetic and temperature-reducing tools to hand whilst they conducted the experiment just in case consciousness was restored and they needed to ethically stop the subject's brain from coming back to life if it began showing signs of organised electrical activity.
Unsurprisingly, the experiment was drawn flak from animal rights campaigners.
"Reviving brain activity in pigs raises serious ethical concerns, which is why so many bioethicists are alarmed by this hideous experiment," Dr Julia Baines, PETA's Science Policy Advisor, told The Sun.
"Pigs are intelligent, sensitive, and emotionally sophisticated beings. Neither in life nor in death should they be cut apart or manipulated in Frankenstein-style experiments.
"To understand human disorders and diseases, the world's most forward-thinking scientists have developed and use animal-free methods that are actually relevant to human health and superior to the crude use of animals."
Dr. Sam Parnia, author of ‘Erasing Death’ explains science behind the near-death experiences
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