Opinion: Test Brain-Reviving Technology in Infants First

If a system tested in decapitated pigs ever gets to human clinical trials, neuroscientific and ethical reasons point to testing babies before adults.

Written byJohn D. Loike and Alan Kadish
| 3 min read
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A recent Nature paper describing an artificial blood perfusion used in an attempt to restore brain function after pigs were decapitated has generated great discussions in the medical, scientific, and bioethical academic arenas. Although the study’s results showed marked improvement and restoration in many cellular and molecular functions within the brain, the artificial blood perfusion system, called BrainEx, failed to restore global brain activity associated with awareness, perception, or other higher-order brain functions whose absence are intrinsic to defining death.

Before such a system were to be applied to, say, revive brain activity in stroke patients, there are three scientific questions that remain to be addressed from the researchers’ study. First is whether their failure to restore global brain activity was due to the fact that the researchers waited up to four hours after decapitation before hooking up their system to the decapitated pigs. In ...

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Meet the Author

  • John Loike

    John Loike serves as the interim director of bioethics at New York Medical College and as a professor of biology at Touro University. He served previously as the codirector for graduate studies in the Department of Physiology Cellular Biophysics and director of Special Programs in the Center for Bioethics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons. His biomedical research focuses on how human white blood cells combat infections and cancer. Loike lectures internationally on emerging topics in bioethics, organizes international conferences, and has published more than 150 papers and abstracts in the areas of immunology, cancer, and bioethics. He earned his Ph.D. from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

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  • Alan Kadish

    Alan Kadish is president of the Touro University System, the largest Jewish-sponsored educational institution in the United States. Before becoming Touro’s second president in March 2010, Kadish distinguished himself as a cardiologist, teacher, researcher, and administrator. A graduate of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, he received postdoctoral training at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, an affiliate of Harvard Medical School, and at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a fellow in cardiology. He is board certified in internal medicine, cardiovascular disease, and cardiac electrophysiology.

    Prior to joining Touro in 2009 as senior provost and chief operating officer, Kadish taught at the University of Michigan and held a 19-year tenure at Northwestern University. He served Northwestern as the Chester and Deborah Cooley Professor of Medicine, the senior associate chief of the cardiology division, and director of the Cardiovascular Clinical Trials unit, and sat on the finance and investment committees of the Northwestern clinical practice plan. He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers; received numerous grants, including from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation; and contributed to several textbooks.

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