Should animal organs and tissues be used for human transplants?
Introduction to the media issue
Video clip at right: On January 12, 2022, ITV News televised a report on surgeons in the United States performing the first transplant of a genetically-modified pig's heart into a human being.What they said...
'Animal-to-human transplants are unethical, dangerous, and a tremendous waste of resources that could be used to fund research that might actually help humans'
Statement from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals)
'If human organs are imagined as the fossil fuel of the organ supply, then pig kidneys are the wind and solar: sustainable and unlimited'
Robert Montgomery, head of the Transplant Institute at New York University Langone Medical Center
The issue at a glance
On January 11, 2022, it was reported that a patient in the United States was doing well three days after becoming the first recipient of a genetically modified pig's heart.
Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center said the transplant showed a heart from a genetically modified animal could function in a human body without immediate rejection. Prior attempts at such transplants - or xenotransplantation - have failed, largely because patients' bodies have rapidly rejected the animal organs.
On October 20, 2021, surgeons in the United States attached a pig kidney to a pair of large blood vessels outside the body of a deceased recipient kept on life support so they could observe the kidney's function for two days. The kidney continued to filter waste and produce urine and did not trigger rejection.
These developments have renewed worldwide debate around the practical and ethical issues raised by transplanting animal organs into human beings.