London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Saturday, Aug 23, 2025

Scientists Restore Blood Flow, Revive Cells, Organs In Dead Pigs

Scientists Restore Blood Flow, Revive Cells, Organs In Dead Pigs

The cells were functioning hours after they should not have been, this tell us that the demise of cells can be halted, a researcher at Yale University said.

Scientists announced Wednesday they have restored blood flow and cell function throughout the bodies of pigs that were dead for an hour, in a breakthrough experts say could mean we need to update the definition of death itself.

The discovery raised hopes for a range of future medical uses in humans, the most immediate being that it could help organs last longer, potentially saving the lives of thousands of people worldwide in need of transplants.

However it could also spur debate about the ethics of such procedures -- particularly after some of the ostensibly dead pigs startled the scientists by making sudden head movements during the experiment.

The US-based team stunned the scientific community in 2019 by managing to restore cell function in the brains of pigs hours after they had been decapitated.

For the latest research, published in the journal Nature, the team sought to expand this technique to the entire body.

They induced a heart attack in the anaesthetised pigs, which stopped blood flowing through the bodies.

This deprives the body's cells of oxygen -- and without oxygen, cells in mammals die.

The pigs then sat dead for an hour.

Demise of cells can be halted


The scientists then pumped the bodies with a liquid containing the pigs' own blood, as well as a synthetic form of haemoglobin -- the protein that carries oxygen in red blood cells -- and drugs that protect cells and prevent blood clots.

Blood started circulating again and many cells began functioning including in vital organs such as the heart, liver and kidney, for the next six hours of the experiment.

"These cells were functioning hours after they should not have been -- what this tells us is that the demise of cells can be halted," Nenad Sestan, the study's senior author and a researcher at Yale University, told journalists.

Co-lead author David Andrijevic, also from Yale, told AFP the team hopes the technique, called OrganEx, "can be used to salvage organs".

OrganEx could also make new forms of surgery possible as it creates "more medical wiggle room in cases with no circulation to fix things," said Anders Sandberg of Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute.

The technique could potentially also be used to resuscitate people. However this could increase the risk of bringing back patients to a point where they are unable to live without life support -- trapped on what is called the "bridge to nowhere," Brendan Parent, a bioethicist at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said in a linked comment in Nature.

Could death be treatable?


Sam Parnia of the NYU Grossman School of Medicine said it was "a truly remarkable and incredibly significant study".

It showed that death was not black and white but rather a "biological process that remains treatable and reversible for hours after it has occurred", he said.

Benjamin Curtis, a philosopher focused on ethics at the UK's Nottingham Trent University, said the definition of death may need updating because it hinges on the concept of irreversibility.

"This research shows that many processes that we thought were irreversible are not in fact irreversible, and so on the current medical definition of death a person may not be truly dead until hours after their bodily functions have stopped," he told AFP.

"Indeed, there may be bodies lying in morgues right now that haven't yet 'died', if we take the current definition as valid."

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.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Bunkers, Billions and Apocalypse: The Secret Compounds of Zuckerberg and the Tech Giants
Ukraine Declares De Facto War on Hungary and Slovakia with Terror Drone Strikes on Their Gas Lifeline
Animated K-pop Musical ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Becomes Netflix’s Most-Watched Original Animated Film
New York Appeals Court Voids Nearly $500 Million Civil Fraud Penalty Against Trump While Upholding Fraud Liability
Elon Musk tweeted, “Europe is dying”
Far-Right Activist Convicted of Incitement Changes Gender and Demands: "Send Me to a Women’s Prison" | The Storm in Germany
Hungary Criticizes Ukraine: "Violating Our Sovereignty"
Will this be the first country to return to negative interest rates?
Child-free hotels spark controversy
North Korea is where this 95-year-old wants to die. South Korea won’t let him go. Is this our ally or a human rights enemy?
Hong Kong Launches Regulatory Regime and Trials for HKD-Backed Stablecoins
China rehearses September 3 Victory Day parade as imagery points to ‘loyal wingman’ FH-97 family presence
Trump Called Viktor Orbán: "Why Are You Using the Veto"
Horror in the Skies: Plane Engine Exploded, Passengers Sent Farewell Messages
MSNBC Rebrands as MS NOW Amid Comcast’s Cable Spin-Off
AI in Policing: Draft One Helps Speed Up Reports but Raises Legal and Ethical Concerns
Shame in Norway: Crown Princess’s Son Accused of Four Rapes
Apple Begins Simultaneous iPhone 17 Production in India and China
A Robot to Give Birth: The Chinese Announcement That Shakes the World
Finnish MP Dies by Suicide in Parliament Building
Outrage in the Tennis World After Jannik Sinner’s Withdrawal Storm
William and Kate Are Moving House – and the New Neighbors Were Evicted
Class Action Lawsuit Against Volkswagen: Steering Wheel Switches Cause Accidents
Taylor Swift on the Way to the Super Bowl? All the Clues Stirring Up Fans
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Apple Expands Social Media Presence in China With RedNote Account Ahead of iPhone 17 Launch
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Cambridge Dictionary Adds 'Skibidi,' 'Delulu,' and 'Tradwife' Amid Surge of Online Slang
Bill Barr Testifies No Evidence Implicated Trump in Epstein Case; DOJ Set to Release Records
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
The CEO Who Replaced 80% of Employees for the AI Revolution: "I Would Do It Again"
Emails Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Character.ai Bets on Future of AI Companionship
China Ramps Up Tax Crackdown on Overseas Investments
Japanese Office Furniture Maker Expands into Bomb Shelter Market
Intel Shares Surge on Possible U.S. Government Investment
Hurricane Erin Threatens U.S. East Coast with Dangerous Surf
EU Blocks Trade Statement Over Digital Rule Dispute
EU Sends Record Aid as Spain Battles Wildfires
JPMorgan Plans New Canary Wharf Tower
Zelenskyy and his allies say they will press Trump on security guarantees
Beijing is moving into gold and other assets, diversifying away from the dollar
Escalating Clashes in Serbia as Anti-Government Protests Spread Nationwide
The Drought in Britain and the Strange Request from the Government to Delete Old Emails
Category 5 Hurricane in the Caribbean: 'Catastrophic Storm' with Winds of 255 km/h
"No, Thanks": The Mathematical Genius Who Turned Down 1.5 Billion Dollars from Zuckerberg
The surprising hero, the ugly incident, and the criticism despite victory: "Liverpool’s defense exposed in full"
Digital Humans Move Beyond Sci-Fi: From Virtual DJs to AI Customer Agents
YouTube will start using AI to guess your age. If it’s wrong, you’ll have to prove it
×