By Lauren Burgess
While creatures coming back from the dead used to be the stuff of Hollywood horror movies, researchers at Yale University’s School of Medicine are seeking to change that. They were able to restore brain function to pig brains.
They used 32 pig brains, killed four hours before in a Department of Agriculture slaughterhouse. Researchers hooked the brains up to BrainEx, an artificial perfusion system that takes control over the functions that the brain normally regulates.
The system pumped an experimental solution to mimic blood flow, providing nutrients and oxygen to the brain tissue.
Soon after the experiment began, the brain cells began to react, metabolizing sugars and responding to certain drugs, and some neural samples were able to carry an electric signal. The longest amount of time researchers were able to keep the brains alive was 36 hours.
“It is conceivable we are just preventing the inevitable, and the brain won’t be able to recover,” said Nenad Sestan, Yale neuroscientist and the lead researcher. Researchers do not know how long BrainEx could have been used to keep the brains alive.
Before discussing the ethical and moral challenges of such experiments, it is important to note that none of the 32 brains ever reached the level of neural activity considered near consciousness. The solution had specific chemicals included in it to prevent neurons from firing, and an anesthetic at the ready.
Such technology is a breakthrough in medical research, paving the way for new treatments of brain disorders and injuries, such as Alzheimer’s and other neurodegenerative diseases.
“This is an extraordinary and very promising breakthrough for neuroscience,” said Nita Farahany,a professor at the Duke University School of Law “It immediately offers a much better model for studying the human brain, which is extraordinarily important, given the vast amount of human suffering from diseases of the mind [and] brain.”
However, such progress may come at a great cost, and lawmakers may not be ready to face the dilemma of medical ethics. Animal testing on dead animals has always been approved for other studies and medical research. But if a brain, while it is not conscious, is partially alive and cellularly active, then the area between morals and the pursuit of progress grows murkier.
“This is wild,” said Jonathan Moreno, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania. “If ever there was an issue that merited big public deliberation on the ethics of science and medicine, this is one.”
