LAIKA 2, SOVIET SPACE DOG REBORN I told John McCallister, the base veterinarian, that I wanted to validate a picture of a Soviet space research dog I had seen in my then secret “White Stork data. The dog had a curious device on the side of its neck and when added to other bits and pieces of information suggested the possibility that may have been recording blood pressure. I thought it was a metal cylinder wrapped around an exteriorized carotid artery and asked John what he knew about this surgical procedure. “I have never even heard of this before,” he responded, “but I can see no reason why it could not be done. The long neck of this type of dog and short hair are perfect for bringing out a loop of carotid. We can wrap skin around it… yeh…definitely possible.” Before returning to our quarters that afternoon we agreed to pursue this. We would select a dog and the two of us would perform the surgery. We had no reason to discuss our project with anyone and simply selected a time and date for the procedure. During this wonderful era, we were limited only by our imagination. The shackles that securely bind researchers of today - the peer review, animal control and research guidelines that make projects like this almost impossible were not in existence then. Our creative minds were not tied to a committee mentality. One was not linked, Siamese twin fashion, to the judgment of his peers. If one had the intellect and imagination to conceive a project such as this, all it took was energy to do it in the incredible research environment of the AeroMed Lab at Wright-Patterson AFB. Following the surgery and skin grafting, only a few weeks were required before our little Beagle was healed and were ready for the next stage. We worried about the possibility that hind leg scratching of the neck and ears, so common with dogs, might interfere with healing but fortunately this was not the case. The very reason the Soviets chose canines rather than primates, was ease of handling. A primate might have reached curious fingers under the carotid and inadvertently tore it free but not a dog. We called our dog Sputnik. I then went to Ed Correl, an electrical engineer, whose bioelectronics office was also in my building, gave him my measurements of the dog’s exteriorized carotid and told him what I thought was needed to make this work – a hinged metal cylinder containing a tiny inflatable bladder on which was placed a piezoelectric crystal. When wrapped around the carotid artery of our dog, it would take blood pressure just like the time honored way of a doctor wrapping a blood pressure cuff about one’s arm and hearing the sounds by stethoscope. I could see Ed’s head nodding up and down long before I finished my explanation. He was way ahead of me. That’s the way it was at the Aeromed Lab – I was surrounded by extraordinarily capable people. Within just a few weeks the machinists had fabricated the metal cylinder and Ed had installed the miniature plethysmograph and we were in business. This was how our Soviet counterparts were recording arterial pressures on their “space dogs”. All it took was an air-filled syringe with its plunger connected to a motor that caused the plunger to move in and out slowly, simulating the doctor pumping up the air in the blood pressure cuff and releasing the pressure. It worked like a charm, completely validating my original assessment. I was now a “hero” in the confines of our little group but of course we could not talk about it. Just to see the huge grins of all the people who worked on it was satisfaction enough.
Posted on: Sat, 08 Jun 2013 20:42:23 +0000
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