Premature Babies

Environmental & Science Education
STEM
Medicine
Health
Edward Hessler

At first blush that there is a connection between slaughter houses and premature babies seems a stretch. What?

Preemies sometimes have difficulty breathing and this is where slaughterhouses enter the picture.

"Every week, foam extractors make the trip to an Ontario slaughterhouse to siphon an off-white liquid out of cow lungs. The foam is purified and shipped across the globe, where it is shot into the lungs of struggling premature infants. Their lungs, like the rest of a premature infant's body, aren't quite ready for birth and haven't started producing this foam called pulmonary surfactant themselves. Experts say arrival of surfactants in the neonatal ICU in the 1980s was a groundbreaking development. STAT's Eric Boodman visited a slaughterhouse in Canada to trace how surfactant goes from the roar of the slaughterhouse to the sterile hush of the NICU."

To read Boodman's story and also to view a very good animation on this therapy click here.