Sealed for Science

From a sealed chamber like the cabin of a rocket ship, and from space-helmeted human guinea pigs who live in it, medical researchers at the National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, Md. hope to learn answers to some fundamental questions about the body's consumption of fuel and oxygen. So far, only fragmentary data, e.g., resting (basal) and a few other metabolic rates, have been recorded. But N.I.H. scientists expect to find out how much oxygen a man uses and how many calories he burns in walking a mile, solving a brain-twisting problem or performing some of the everyday activities of living.

The first round-the-clock volunteer for the special chamber at the National Institute of Arthritis and Metabolic Diseases at Bethesda, Md. was Jerry Duerksen, a stocky young (20) Mennonite and conscientious objector from Mountain Lake, Minn. Volunteering for two years in lieu of military service, Duerksen donned a plastic space helmet with aluminum frame and lived for 24 hours in the chamber. Air, all its component gases carefully measured in advance, flowed under an apron at the bottom of the helmet. When Duerksen exhaled, his spent breath passed through a tube set in the top of the helmet to continuous gas analyzers outside. Recording pens showed how much oxygen he burned, and how much carbon dioxide he produced with each change of activity.

The test chamber contained most of the comforts of home--though some in sharply modified form. There was a bed, a work-top desk, a phonograph (with Duerksen's choice of rock-'n'-roll records), a treadmill, a refrigerator and a commode. The refrigerator contained precisely measured liquid formula containing 2,207.5 calories, which Duerksen drank with a sipper passed through an "elephant's trunk" attached to the helmet. He also used the trunk for access to his face while brushing his teeth and shaving.

A picture window on one side of the chamber for the observers and technicians running the experiment deprived Duerksen of all privacy, except when he wanted to use the commode; then he could draw a screen. He carefully stored urine and feces in a second refrigerated compartment; like every drop of water he used, they had to be weighed and analyzed for clues to metabolic processes. Duerksen proved to be a restless sleeper: one of the investigating doctors' first surprises was to see how much energy he used just in turning over or thrashing around in bed. Also he used more than expected in brushing his teeth.

Eventually, after testing a wide range of human subjects, both ailing and well, the doctors hope to solve such physiological puzzles as why one man may be slothful and a heavy eater, yet stay thin as a rail, while another, who eats less, piles on pounds.

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