OCR Text |
Show Test Tube 'Doubles' for Living Body in Medical Study Tissue Is Kept Alive Long Time in Glass Jar THE lifeless test tube has finally become an adequate substitute for the living body at the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research, at least for purposes of certain scientific studies. Whole pieces of tissue from adult bodies, instead of cells or bits of embryos, can now, for the first time', be made to live on for long periods and to function normally in a glass jar just as they do in the body. How this long-attempted scientific scien-tific feat has been accomplished is described by Dr. Raymond C. Parker of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in New York, in a report to the journal, Science. Offers Big Field. This method of keeping adult tissue alive and functioning in a glass flask is expected to "provide a means of studying a great variety vari-ety of physiological problems that could not be approached" by other oth-er means. Doctor Parker and Dr. K. Landsteiner, the Rockefeller scientist whose researches on blood groups won him the Nobel prize, have already succeeded by this method in studying the formation for-mation in these tissue bits of the important disease-fighting substances sub-stances known as antibodies. Another noted Rockefeller institute insti-tute scientist, Dr. Alexis Carrel, long ago succeeded in keeping living liv-ing tissue alive outside the body and other scientists have done so since then. Doctor Carrel played a part In the research reported by designing the peculiarly shaped flask that substitutes for the body in these latest experiments. Use Adult Bodies Life in the test tube reported, however, differs in certain important impor-tant respects from that achieved by other methods. The famous chicken heart tissue which Doctor Carrel has kept alive for 24 years, for example, did not come from an adult body, but from an unborn embryo. The test tube life of this famous tissue and of others similarly simi-larly cultured have not been natural nat-ural ones. Instead of just existing exist-ing and performing its natural functions, Doctor Carrel's chicken heart has kept on growing, new cells being formed apparently indefinitely. in-definitely. The bits of tissue kept alive by Doctor Parker's method were taken tak-en from the spleen of adult animals. ani-mals. They do not grow, they just live, as tissue in a grown person's body lives without growing. "Functional "Func-tional survival" is the term used by Doctor Parker to describe this existence of the tissue in his flasks. |