This purports to be an old Soviet scientific video. It is introduced by J.D.S. Haldane, and shows Soviet scientists lead by Dr. S.S. Bryukhonenko at the Institute of Experimental Physiology and Therapy keeping a heart and lungs “alive” outside of a body. But what seems really questionable is what they do next, namely keep a severed dog head “conscious”.
The video can be found in multiple formats here:
What do you guys think? Is it real?
My own research has brought up this Time Magazine article from 1943, and this site with information on the experiments, which I can’t read because I’m not fluent in German.
I remember seeing that, awhile back. As far as I know, it’s real—and indeed, similar experiments have been done in the U.S by a Dr. Robert White. (Though he was focusing on transplanting heads from one body to another, as I remember, he also kept an isolated brain alive on an artifical life support system for awhile…though I might just be thinking of when he kept an isolated dog brain alive by grafting it’s blood vessels to the neck of another dog.)
It’s important to remember, though, that the animals being experimented on weren’t just dug out of a graveyard, already dead. They were alive when they went on the operating table, and they didn’t die (well, the heads/brains didn’t die) until the experiment was completed. It’s not bringing back the dead, it’s just maintaining life through artificial means, in an unusual situation.
Hmmm, just thinking; suppose a bloke gets his nogging chopped and plugged to a machine that circulates blood and stuff, like with that dog; wouldn´t the change (or abscense) of the vict… eh, pacient hormonal and enzimatic balance of his former body affect the personality or brain function?