ELECTRIC EELS

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 10, Issue 66, 23 December 1946, Page 6

ELECTRIC EELS

CURIOUS PROPERTIES

USE AS MEDICAL CURE ■ Medical research scientists have discovered an invaluable new ally in the man-killing electric eel. These slippery- high-voltage fish are being used in strange experiments to solve the mystery of epilepsy and other human disorders, writes a New York correspondent. During the war, electric eels helped in the development of a lethal gas which can completely destroy or paralyse man’s nerve system. Hundreds of vicious eels were flown alive from the head waters of the Amazon River, Brazil, to closelyguarded Army laboratories in New York. There U.S. chemical warfare officers and civilian chemists used the curious properties of electric eels to perfect the deadly new gas. Fortunately it did not become necessary to use the gas which experts say, might have proved even more effective in some respects than the atomic bomb.

Known as D.F.P. (di-isopropylflu-oro-phosphate), the gas kills instantly if administered in concentrated form. Diluted, it numbs the nerves, particularly those leading to the eyes, and reduces the pupils to pinpoints.

The Army planned to drop D.F.P. bombs from planes flying at 25,000 feet, above the range of most antiaircraft guns. This gas attack would have immobilised a large area for a week or 10 days, permitting invading troops wearing protective coverings to take over without opposition,. The victims would have regained their sight and have no lasting ill-effects after the gas was dispersed.

Electric eels were indispensable to the development of D.F.P. since they are the best-known source of choline esterase, which is needed to test the effects of the new gas. The same chemical appears in all living nerve tissue, but electric eels yield it in infinitely more powerful form than the next best source—the human brain.

D.F.P. gas knocks out choline esterase, the essential biological chemical which causes human nerves to produce electricity, and thereby paralyses the nerves.

It was dangerous work extracting concentrated choline esterase from 6ft and 7ft electric eels. Only the most ferocious eels were used in the experiments.

A lightning-fast guillotine was set up to chop off their heads. The process had to be quick so that the eel’s electric organ could be removed promptly and treated with preservatives before the tissue started to die.

An eel’s shock can easily kill a human being. It can generate voltages as high as 600, which is almost three times the ordinary house current voltage.

A different method is followed in carrying on the peacetime experiments with the electric eels.

They are specially trained by Dr. Christopher Coates, aquarium curator at Bronx Zoo, for tests which have provided the first insight into

the intricate working of the. human nervous system. By coaxing and teasing his eels Coates can regulate the rate at which they discharge current. When a shipment of untamed eels arrives from South America, Coates puts each through a fortnight’s training course. They are periodically lifted from their dark storage tank and placed in a trough where Coates strokes them and talks soothingly to them until they are at their ease. Then each eel is laid in an insulated trough, where the tiny sliver that is its electric organ, is sliced off and thrown into liquid nitrogen to freeze before deterioration starts.

The eels are not bothered by this operation ,and it can be repeated many times over a period of months. The eel’s value in epilepsy and other nerve research is due to the fact that its electrical organ operates on exactly the same principle as the nerves of the human body. Thus, for the first time, medical science has practically an unlimited source of tissue needed to determine why man’s nervous system sometimes gets out of order.