National Geographic's The Future Of Medicine Series: Ancient Remedies Changing Modern Medicine

by Peter Gwin

IN MY HAND I’m holding a warm, beating heart. About the size

of a softball, it’s a luminous globe of scarlet, pink, and white tissue.

I can feel its chambers contracting and hear the whoosh of the

fluid it’s still pumping. It’s slimy and gives off a slightly pungent odor.

The organ is alive almost eight hours after I watched Paul Iaizzo remove

it from a sedated pig in a basement lab, connect it to tubes

simulating arteries and veins, and spark it back into rhythm

with an electric jolt, as a paramedic would shock a human

heart back to life. Although it’s outside the pig’s body,

the heart flexes and lurches on its own, driven by some unseen,

unexplained, primordial force. More than grotesque,

I find it hypnotic and beautiful.