By Antonio Regalado – MIT Technology Review –
Why brain-dead bodies are now sought after for cross-species organ experiments
Hooked up to a ventilation machine, a person can be dead in the eyes of the law, medical professionals, and loved ones, yet still alive enough to be useful for medical research. Such brain-dead people are often used for organ donation, but they are also of increasing importance to the biotech world.
This week, we reported how surgeons at the University of Pennsylvania connected a pig liver to a brain-dead person in an experiment that lasted for three days.
