ORGANS KEPT ALIVE

Taranaki Daily News, 22 June 1935, Page 7

ORGANS KEPT ALIVE

ISOLATION FROM BODY

APPARATUS PERFECTED

AMERICAN EXPERIMENTS

AID TO MEDICAL SCIENCE

By Telegraph-Press Assn.-Copyright. Rec. 7.15 p.m. New York, June 21. Apparatus and technique capable of keeping human organs alive outside the body have been perfected by Dr. Alexis Carrell and Colonel Lindbergh, working under the auspices of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research. This announcement is regarded as one of the most sensational in the annals of medicine and science. . . , . , According to a report jointly signed by Dr. Carrel and Colonel Lindbergh they created an “artificial heart and a man-made blood stream,’ enabling science for the first time to keep the vital organs alive and functioning indefinitely in what was described as a “chamber of eternal life.” Their methods, as perfected with the organs of animals, “consists of the transplantation of an organ or of any part of the body into a sterile chamber, and of its artificial feeding with nutrient fluid through arteries.” They pointed out that the process was not a substitute for the well known tissue culture, but through the employment of complex mechanical and surgical procedures the whole organs were enabled to live isolated from the body. "Tissue culture deals with cells as units in a structure,” they say. “Our method deals with cellular societies as ~n organic whole. The method makes possible the carrying on of important experimentation with human organs. Heart disease, kidney disorders, hardening of the arteries, diabetes, tuberculosis, cancer and other dread diseases can now be studied closely under controlled conditions.”

Dr. Carrel and Colonel Lindbergh revealed that 26 experiments had been performed since the latest model of their chamber was constructed. Adult fowls or cats were generally used. Dr. Carrel is a past winner of the Nobel Prize and is one of the discoverers of the so-called Carrel Dakin solution, which saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Allied soldiers in the Great Colonel Lindbergh is the famous American aviator.