PIGS have been partly brought back to life an hour after their hearts stopped in an “incredibly significant” breakthrough.
The technique could revolutionise transplantation by giving doctors extra time to harvest organs, experts say.
Pigs have been partly brought back to life an hour after their hearts stopped in an ‘incredibly significant’ breakthrough[/caption]
And it could help bring back people who have died from drowning or cardiac arrest — but some doctors have raised ethical concerns over the idea.
The OrganEx technique, reported in Nature, involved Yale researchers pumping a cocktail of synthetic blood and drugs into pigs that had been dead for an hour.
Six hours later, organs, including the heart, were partly revived.
Dr Sam Parnia, from New York University Grossman School of Medicine, said: “This is a truly remarkable and incredibly significant study.”
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An NHS Blood and Transplant spokesperson said the research had “potentially far-reaching applications”.
But Dr Anders Sandberg, from Oxford University, said: “There is a risk that it mainly prevents people from dying rather than making them recover.”
