Evening star., 1951-10-24
Skin From Dead Persons
Kept Alive for l85 Duys
Successful Tissue Bonk Seen
As Result Of Navy Experiments
By Thomos R. Henry

Dead mems skin has been kept alive
for as long as. 185 days by technique
developed at the Naval Medical Re-
search Institute in collaboration with
the tissue bank of the Naval Medical
School.
This makes possible for the first time
potentially successful skin bank
essentially equivalent to blood plasma.
bone and blood vessel banks already in
successful operation.
Stored skin can be used in treatment
Of severely burned persons or victims
of blast accidents with severe tissue
loss.
A mans skin remains alive for some
time, perhaps as much as IA hours,
after the man himself stops breathing
and is officially dead" That is, accord
ing to the tissue bank research doctors,
the skin cells retain what is the ultimate
criterion of being alive-the ability to
reproduce themselves There is some
reason to believe that certain other
body tissues remain alive for some time
after the death Of the individual. Com
plete death of the body is a long proc
eSs.
Skin Must Be Kept Alive.
The skin bank problem has been to
keep the skin alive in storage for a
long period. For skin CRAFTS must be
alive in order to take In this way they
differ from blood plasma bone and blood
vessel gratis. Bone and blood vessel
gratis need not be alive At the best
they only act as lattice" upon which
the body builds up fresh bone and blood
vessels OF its own. 1t is doubtful if blood
plasma ever is, in the strict sense of
the word, alive. 1t is suspension of
various organic molecules in water.
Ihere is no evidence that the molecules
have the power to reproduce themselves
like other elements of the body.
The problem Of preserving these
dead" materials is relatively simple.
They are 'freeze-dried. Bones and
blood vessels are taken from a dead
person and are rapidly frozen in dry
ice at low temperatures. approximately
1O80 below zero Fahrenheit.
This usually would kill these tissues
II they were not already dead. Then the
moisture in the tissues is removed in a
vacuum chamber and they are sealed
IN vacuum tube and stored at room
temperature. Theoretically, they should
last for several years. This is in con-
trast to bones and blood vessels which
have been stored in the ordinary deep
freeze, but which tend to deteriorate
after six months to a year and then
usually are discarded. The reasons for
this deterioration are much the same as
those which make a chicken tasteless
and non-edible if kept in cold storage
too long.
Blood Plasma and Salt Used.
Treating skin in this way probably
would kill it. Under the method devei-
oped by the Naval Medical Research
Institute and Naval Medical School
tissue bank scientists. the skin is re-
moved from the body and placed as
soon as possible in solution of blood
plasma and variety Of salts. including
ordinary table salt. which supply the
necessary nutriment to keep it alive. It
is stored in an ordinary icebox at a
temperature just above freezing. The
practice in the past has been to wrap
a sheet Of skin in moist cellophane or
gauze wrapping and keep it in an
icebox. Its maximum life has been re-
ported to be about three weeks, using
this technique
The Naval tissue bank now keeps
available enough skin to cover several
large burned areas on an individual. In
case Of disaster this technique could be
applied on much more extensive scale.
Skin grating remains q somewhat
mysterious procedure. An individuals
own skin can be taken from one part
OF the body and grated on another; for
example. skin from the chest can be
transferred to burned leg and the
graft will live indefinitely. becoming
indistinguishable from the rest of the
leg skin. Crafts with the skin of an
other person, such as would be obtained
from the skin bank, will live only four
or five weeks. By that time, usually, the
wound has started to heal and new skin
to grow. The dead graft could be re-
placed by still another graft, but it
would have to be with skin from a
different individual than the one who
supplied the first graft.
The great value of living skin gratis Is
that they act as extraordinarily fine
dressings while the body's normal proc
esses OF restoration are getting UNDER
way. They are of value in cases Of severe
burns covering large areas where they
prevent loss of blood and tissue fluids.
They also ease the unbearable pain,
often beyond the control Of morphine,
which comes with severe blast injuries.
First Skin Grated in 1882.
Actually. it has been found, the prac-
tice of grating with skin taken from q
dead man dates back to 1882, when DR..
E. P. Brewer in England removed skin
from a man who had just died of
tuberculosis and grated it on a victim
of severe ulcers. DR. Brewer know moth
ing about the principle involved, but by
some miracle the graft took and tenn
porarily accomplished its purpose.
It would be much more convenient
to use the freeze-dried method with
skin as is now used with blood vessels
and bone. but this has not become
clinieally possible yet.
In recent experiments at one Ameri-
can university, not yet officially re-
ported, it has been possible to keep
human skin alive with extremely rapid
deep-freezing and equally rapid thaw-
ing. Theoretically, it could be kept in
a state of suspended animation fndefi-
nitely. 1t is possible however, only with
sections of skin about 5,000th of an
inch thick.
The Navy's bone and blood vessel bank
is now keeping on hand material to sup
ply the Naval Hospital at Bethesda and
other selected service hospitals for clini-
cal evaluation. The drawback at pres
ent is the seemingly great reluctance of
relatives to allow these tissues to be re-