492 
HEMATOLOGY 
lung program indicate any tendency towards 
hypercoagulability. But because of the human 
information, Dr. Gazewski felt that a statement 
like that should be included. 
Questioner : I'm from the Naval Hospital at 
Bethesda. I have a question regarding your hep- 
arinization of sheep. Have you encountered GI 
hemorrhage when you're heparinizing for the 
membrane lung studies ? 
Dr. Povar: We've had absolutely no hemor- 
rhaging whatsoever, much to our surprise. This 
is especially the case when very large doses 
were used which we found later were not neces- 
sary. The 2 mg. per kilogram was more than ad- 
equate and the 10 mg. per kilogram was just 
run as an experiment. In most of these studies 
the animals are not permitted to survive. 
They're on the artificial lung machine anywhere 
from six to twenty-four hours and then sacri- 
ficed under anesthesia. So from that standpoint, 
there is no answer. However, over a period of 
two years we have permitted about ten animals 
to recover and they've been absolutely unevent- 
ful. 
Questioner : You say 2 mg. per kilogram as 
a loading dose or as a maintenance dose ? 
Dr. Povar : That was a loading dose. 
Questioner: And this is for any type of 
membrane lung ? 
Dr. Povar : For any membrane lung that we 
have used, yes. 
Questioner: Another question. Have you 
been able to obtain sheep that are completely 
free of intestinal parasitic disease ? 
Dr. Povar: In the report that will be given 
tomorrow, we discuss this a little bit. We 
brought in sheep to the University of Rhode Is- 
land which had a farm that we could use. The 
sheep were conditioned for a period of several 
months, during which time their parasite load 
was reduced to practically nil by normal detec- 
tion tests. They were checked repeatedly there- 
after, and the parasite load was considered 
negligible. 
Questioner: In terms of your comment 
about hypercoagulability, I'd also like to point 
out that perhaps these high levels of factor 8 
and 5 are probably counteracted by the low lev- 
els of prothrombin or factor 2. These are the 
same order of magnitude levels that I obtained 
at Washington State University some years 
ago on sheep. You might say from that stand- 
point that they're hypo. 
Dr. Povar: It seems to work out that they 
are essentially normal. We just use the expres- 
sion "tendency toward." 
Chairman Seegers: Let's put it this way. 
I'm normal, but every other human being isn't. 
Sheep heparin is one of the weakest heparins 
that can be isolated or has ever been isolated. 
I'd like to start a discussion on hyper- and hy- 
pocoagulability of the blood. I don't get very 
much of anjrthing out of that except a big wal- 
lop. What impresses me is that I isolate the 
prothrombin complex, add it two times, three 
times ; even twenty times higher than normal ; 
then I ask does that give a hypercoagulability in 
your test tube ? No. It begins to inhibit as soon 
as you have more than is normally there. It sim- 
ply inhibits. Yet all this talk that goes around, 
though perfectly adorable and wonderfully con- 
fusing, irritates me when people say that the 
pill raises the clotting factor by 10%. There- 
fore, watch out. Be very, very careful. Then the 
Food and Drug Administration says, "We can't 
tolerate that." Oh for hell's bells, for a few mol- 
ecules extra they want to get the world excited. 
I don't believe it. I really don't. 
