T ransplant medicine could take a giant leap forward if donor organs could soak up oxygen for longer and decay delayed. A technology called OrganEx, described in Nature from a team at Yale, promises to do just that. The researchers stopped the hearts of pigs and an hour later used OrganEx, then cataloged the return of bodily functions. The new approach far exceeded the ability of existing technology to prolong organ viability.
Pigs have long been a popular animal model of human disease because they are about our size and their hearts and blood vessels are quite similar. They have also had fictional roles in medicine.
In the Twilight Zone episode Eye of the Beholder, Janet Tyler has undergone multiple procedures to replace the “pitiful twisted lump of flesh” that is her face with something more acceptable. At the end, as the bandages are slowly unrolled from yet another failed procedure, we see that she naturally looks like us, considered hideous in her world where most people, including the nurse and doctor, have pig faces. Janet and others like her are sent to live among themselves.
Comments are closed.