Resuscitation specialist Sam Parnia reflects in his new book, Lucid Dying (Hachette, August 6, 2024), on the recent discovery that brains can be resuscitated hours after death.

From the sample pages offered at the book’s Amazon site, we learn that in 2019, a writer at prominent science journal Nature sent Parnia a copy of the embargoed results of a study of pig brains from a slaughterhouse, kept alive for hours after death. 

“I was left totally stunned and speechless,” he recounts:

For at least a decade, I had tried to draw attention to the fact that our concept of life and death should be redefined. Death should no longer be viewed as a specific black-and-white moment. Instead, it should be understood as a medically treatable event for many hours after it has taken place. (page 16)

A Contemporary Source

Both the study and the article about it are still embargoed at Nature but from a contemporary source, Vox, we learn that Yale neuroscientist Nenad Sestan and colleagues partially revived disembodied pig brains after many hours of death:

First, the researchers took 32 brains from pigs slaughtered for food and waited four hours. Then they hooked them up for six hours to a system called BrainEx, which pumped those brains full of oxygen, nutrients, and protective chemicals.

At the end of the 10 hours, the scientists found that the tissue of the pig brains was largely intact, compared to controls. Individual brain cells were up and running, performing their basic duties of taking up oxygen and producing carbon dioxide. 

BRIAN RESNICK, “SCIENTISTS: WE KEPT PIG BRAINS ALIVE 10 HOURS AFTER DEATH,” VOX, APRIL 17, 2019

The pigs could not have been conscious, we are told, because the tested brain tissues were not communicating. For one thing, the cells had been treated with chemicals to prevent them from functioning under stress and thus sustaining damage. But curiously, they remained able to communicate in principle: “When the brains were dissected and the neural activity blocker was washed away, the researchers found the neurons retained their ability to communicate with one another. That means the cells retained the function they had when the body was alive.” (Vox)

A subsequent Nature article in 2022 reported revival of both hearts and brains, noting, “The research challenges the idea that cardiac death — which occurs when blood circulation and oxygenation stops — is irreversible, and raises ethical questions about the definition of death.”

Discovery Was Made in a Human Brain

Pigs are considered useful biomedical models for humans so the implications of such studies sent waves through the field of resuscitation — and bioethics. In the sample pages, Parnia offers some thoughts about what it means for people with brain damage that is now deemed irreversible.

For one thing, he says, the original brain that got Sestan thinking was actually a human brain, donated by a deceased person for research. It was accidentally shipped refrigerated for 48 hours, rather than frozen, as expected. Not wanting to waste a “very generous gift” but assuming that the brain was too damaged to be usable, Sestan gave it to graduate student Andre Sousa to practice on, using a new research tool.

Two and a half weeks later, Andre ran over to Sestan in the laboratory and excitedly said, “I need to show you something.” Sestan looked through a microscope at a petri dish and saw clusters of human brain cells growing healthily. “The cells looked as good as those we had grown from fresh pieces of brain obtained straight after surgery.” (page 20)

At first, Sestan thought that the student was playing a joke on him. But apparently not. Placed in a suitable medium, the human brain cells continued to grow in a normal way for weeks. Later, processes were tested and refined for pig brains.

Help for “Hopeless Cases”?

Parnia thinks that these findings might help develop new therapies:

The studies by Yale University scientists demonstrate that the line between what we may consider life and death is far more blurred than we might care to imagine. As a scientist, I am concerned with how this knowledge will help us develop new treatments to revive and restore life to people well beyond death. (page 32)

Last year, he talked to Scientific American about the implications of that:

It could be, Parnia says, that some people who have conventionally been thought to be beyond the point of saving could in fact be revived. “The traditional thinking among doctors is that the brain, once deprived of oxygen for five to 10 minutes, dies,” he says. “We were able to show that the brain is quite robust in terms of its ability to resist oxygen deprivation for prolonged periods of time, which opens up new pathways for finding treatments for brain damage in the future.”

RACHEL NUWER, “SOME PATIENTS WHO ‘DIED’ BUT SURVIVED REPORT LUCID ‘NEAR-DEATH EXPERIENCES,’ A NEW STUDY SHOWS,” SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, SEPTEMBER 14, 2023

The best outcome from all this would be good news more often from the emergency room and from the brain damage research. At any rate, many people will be watching for Lucid Dying next month.

Cross-posted at Mind Matters News.