Bring Back the Dead?

Dr. Lance Becker at the University of Pennsylvania is reported as saying that periods of one hour or greater after cardiac death, when cell cultures are taken of the oxygen starved tissue, the cells are found to be healthy and living. Why then can the patient not be revived? Apparently it is because cell death occurs at the moment of oxygen reperfusion. The mitochondria in the cell sense this sudden increase in oxygen and initiate apoptosis for not yet understood reasons.

So perhaps the current resuscitation procedurs for heart attack patients is actually the worst possible thing to do, attempting to reoxygenate these deoxygenated tissues as fast as possible when actually a slow reperfusion might be what the tissue ordered. In fact this is what has happened: in a study where 34 patients where reperfused slowly, the discharge rate was 80% as opposed to traditional therapy's rate of 15%. Obviously more research needs to be done in this area, imagine being able to resuscitate people from the 'dead' hours after their heart stopped beating?

Human + Sheep = Chimera

Professor Zanjani, of the University of Nevada, has announced the breeding of sheep which are 15% human by cell count. In the process Dr. Zanjani injects adult human stem cells (derived from the bone marrow) into the peritoneum of the developing sheep fetus. The cells do not fuse, but the human stem cells divide and eventually specialize into the sheep's organs. Most notably the liver, heart, lungs, and brain.

These organs can be matched to the transplant patient and the idea is to improve the human to sheep ratio to improve the incompatibility of the organ. Animal rights activists have expressed concern over the possibility of the human and sheep cells fusing to create some kind of chimera hybrid, but Dr. Zanjani asserts that this is not possible in this method.