Healthy Lungs Make Healthy Blood

Guest: Mark Looney, MD, Pulmonologist, Professor of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco The heart pumps blood, the stomach digests food and the lungs bring oxygen into the body. These basic organ functions we learned in grade school turn out to be much too simplified. The body is a complex and finely-tuned collection of processes. But researchers have recently discovered something that surprised even them – the lungs are also a major blood-making factory in the body, churning out at least half of the platelet cells that are critical for blood clotting. This discovery was made in mice, but it could provide important clues about human lungs, too.