A ‘Reversible’ Form of Death? Scientists Revive Cells in Dead Pigs’ Organs.

This was no tabloid headline. It was straight from a regular news story.* My inner unscientific journalist applauded the headline and the beginning of the article: “The pigs had been lying dead in the lab for an hour—no blood was circulating in their bodies, their hearts were still, the brain waves flat.” Who wouldn’t continue reading?

The author explained how a group of Yale scientists “pumped a custom-made solution into the dead pigs’ bodies” and though the pigs didn’t start wiggling and squealing, their “seemingly dead cells revived” including hearts, livers, kidneys and brains.

This research, though related to the viability of organ transplants long after a person’s death, did raise questions about “the definition of death,” according to a Duke University law professor who studies the ethical, legal and social implications of emerging technologies.

The law professor asked the question: “We presume death is a thing, it is a state of being . . . Are there forms of death that are reversible? Or not?”

Given my penchant for answering rhetorical questions, I automatically responded, “Yes!”

It’s the form of death the Apostle Paul described in Ephesians 2:1 as being dead in trespasses and sins, and just in case he wasn’t clear the first time, he repeats it in verse five: “even when we were dead in our trespasses.” We were as dead and helpless as those pigs lying in that lab.

My husband chimed in a bit too eagerly, “It’s like we’re Zombies, the walking dead.” Though I'm no fan of horror movies, I must admit that his description is apt.

Ironically, there are Walking Dead fans of fatalism. Everything is fixed in advance, and they are powerless to change these cosmic events, or change themselves. Dead is dead and there’s no room for improvement there.

Other Zombies attempt to mimic life. Like the rich fool in Matthew 12, they build bigger homes, bigger investments and bigger names for themselves. They and the rich fool take this so-called life easy: eat, drink and be merry. The dead live. Sadly, theirs is a second death as they store up things on earth, and wind up paying the wages of sin.

As it is, there are days I forget to consider myself dead to sin and see how close I can get to the Zombies—only the nice ones though, the Zombies that are most like me, not those others, those Walking Dead ones.

But dead is dead no matter how fatalistic or rich or Christian we are. When God’s custom-made solution that flowed from Immanuel’s veins has been pumped into our veins, our hearts, our souls, we are made alive with Christ. Our inner Zombies no longer exist.

English poet and hymnwriter William Cowper—a classic Walking Dead—shared the formula for the custom-made solution when he wrote:

There is a fountain filled with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains:
Lose all their guilty stains,
Lose all their guilty stains;
And sinners plunged beneath that flood
Lose all their guilty stains.

And that is why this little former Zombie goes joyfully, joyfully, joyfully all the way home.

*From an August 3, 2022, New York Times article, "A 'Reversible' Form of Death? Scientists Revive Cells in Dead Pigs' Organs" by Gina Kolata.