Xenotransplantation is the science of the future. By taking animal organs and putting them into humans, we eliminate the loss of life due to scarcity of human organ donations. No longer should the sick have to wait for their new organ because of the scarcity of human organs available to be transplanted.
Xenotransplantation has a greater depth than just taking an organ from one thing and tossing it into another. It is a very delicate and tricky process. The doctor has to find an animal that has a matching blood type as the recipient, and the animal also has to have the proper size organs as well. At first scientists and doctors turned to chimpanzees and our primate relatives for the organs. They had the perfect size organs for humans, and it was believed to be a good animal to test on. It was later discovered that
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It is within the realm of capability of science to transfer the organs of one species to another. There have been tests and trials for the safety of xenotransplantation, and in one case a girl with heart problems received a baboon heart. She survived for twenty-one more days because the transplant was supposed to be temporary but there wasn’t an available human heart for her to receive. The heart was also the wrong blood type because type O blood type is rare for baboons. If she had gotten a heart with the correct ABO blood type, then the results would have been different. Even with the wrong heart, she could have survived if the wait list for the heart she was meant to get wasn’t so long. “A worldwide shortage of organs for clinical implantation causes about 20–35% of patients who need replacement organs to die on the waiting list”. With xenotransplantation, the wait list of organs would not be nearly as long, and less people would die from organ failure without a
Therapeutic cloning is the process whereby parts of a human body are grown independently from a body from STEM cells collected from embryos for the purpose of using these parts to replace dysfunctional ones in living humans. Therapeutic Cloning is an important contemporary issue as the technology required to conduct Therapeutic Cloning is coming, with cloning having been successfully conducted on Dolly the sheep. This process is controversial as in the process of collecting STEM cells from an embryo, the embryo will be killed. Many groups, institutions and religions see this as completely unacceptable, as they see the embryo as a human life. Whereas other groups believe that this is acceptable as they do not believe that the embryo is a human life, as well as the fact that this process will greatly benefit a large number of people. In this essay I will compare the view of Christianity who are against Therapeutic Cloning with Utilitarianism who are in favour of Therapeutic Cloning.
Thesis: I will explain the history of organ transplants, starting with ancient ideas before modern science until the 21st century.
Many ailments can be cured or at least ameliorated by the replacement of an organ and the progression of medical science has increasingly allowed more types of organs to be successfully transplanted. Doctors’ ability to transplant is thwarted, however, by the disproportionate number of patients in need of such life-saving treatment relative to the number of donor organs available. Due to a variety of circumstances there just aren’t enough spare organs to go around. In light of this situation and the ever increasing number of people who die every year while waiting for an organ donor, xenotransplantation has become a very attractive alternative to human transplants, for obvious reasons. While there may be a shortage of human organ donors, we can easily envision animals being bred for their organs and providing an almost unlimited supply.
The medical procedure of Xenotransplantation, (transplanting animal organs into humans) has been happening for many years, this medical practice was proceeding mixed results and mixed views regarding the procedure. In the year 1984, a baby girl whom was named Baby Fae by medical staff, became known world wide for the medical procedure she endured. Baby Fae had a potentially fatal heart problem, she was suffering from Hypoplastic left heart syndrome which is a fatal disease if not treated by surgery, (Time Magazine, 1984). The only way to save her was to replace her failing heart with a healthy seven month old baboon heart. The medical professionals that were working on Baby Fae were excited to be able to perform this Xenotransplantation on the infant. After the procedure Baby Fae was acting like any normal healthy infant would. But unfortunately, the replacement heart surgery wasn’t a true success story as the medical staff had hoped. Baby Fae died 20 days after her surgery because her tiny body rejected the baboons heart, which then went on to cause other fatal damage such as kidney...
In the world we’re living in today, many kinds of diseases, infections, and viruses are continuously arising. At the same time, scientists are untiringly researching about how we can prevent or cure them. Unfortunately, millions of people have been affected and sick that some of their organs fail that results to the need of organ replacement. Many people have died because no organs have been available to provide the need of organ replacements. The shortage of organ replacement has been a bioethical issue since then and it seems like no solution has been available. However, due to the studies scientists have been conducting, they found the most possible answer to this issue – Xenotransplantation. It hasn’t become very popular all over the
In America, there are currently 122,198 candidates on the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network (OPTN) waiting list (“OPTN”). Due to a lack of available organ donors, around 18 waiting list candidates will die every day (“OPTN”). This has prompted the development and investigation of xenotransplantation—the transplantation of animal tissue and organs to potential human candidates. Currently in its early phases of development and study, xenotransplantation is controversial for its high failure rate, with only a few cases successful. This is attributed to the human immune system rejecting those animal donated organs, thereby potentially causing immediate death to the human candidate. On the one hand, pre-clinical trials have broadened the understanding of the human immune system, as well as furthered xenotransplantation research. However, because xenotransplantation has achieved little success, opponents of the procedure argue that it is unethical to continue its practice. It is also important to note that trials often use baboons in place of humans, which presents several variables to be examined before further human trials can begin. Moreover, the potential acquisition of zoonotic infection is a serious risk that cannot be fully determined without the use of human subjects. Thus, not only will xenotransplantation require more extensive study, it will also require hundreds of animal lives, all in an effort to create nothing more than a last resort.
Currently more than 118,617 men, women, and children are waiting for a transplant. With this high demand of organ transplants there is a need of supply. According to the OPTN Annual report of 2008, the median national waiting time for a heart transplant is 113 days, 141 days for lungs, 361 days for livers, 1219 days for kidneys, 260 days for pancreas, 159 days for any part of the intestine. With this world of diseases and conditions, we are in desperate desideratum of organs. Organ transplants followed by blood into a donating organ transfusions, are ways medical procedures are helping better the lives of the patients.
Currently 70,000 Americans are on the organ waiting list and fewer than 20,000 of these people can hope to have their lives saved by human organ transplantation.1 As a result of this shortage, there has been a tremendous demand for research in alternative methods of organ transplantation. Private companies are racing to develop these technologies with an estimated market of six billion dollars.2 Xenotransplantation, or cross-species organ transplantation, appears to be the most likely solution in the near future, and cloned pigs are the main candidates. Pigs and humans have remarkable similarities in physiology, which along with cloning makes pigs strong possibilities for organ donors. A controversial alternative method involves the use of genetically altered headless human beings as organ donors. Although this method may not be developed for some years, scientists are already discussing the necessary technologies. Whether the solution is the cloning of a pig or a human, organ farms may provide us with a solution to our ever-increasing need for donors.
One single organ donor can save the lives of eight people and that same donor can help to improve health conditions of fifty other people as said by an article on facts about donation. Organ donation is when a living or deceased person's organs are taken out by medical physicians and surgically inserted into another person's body to help improve their health condition. The receiver and donor of the organ are not the only people affected by the transplant. Families of the donor will often become relieved knowing that their loved one will be continuing to help needy people even after they are gone and the families of the receiver will also sleep better knowing that there is still a chance that someone could help the medical status of their loved one. Organ transplant has also overcome many scientific challenges. Jekyll’s actions in Dr.
Ethical issues also play a role in the selection of the solutions. Most patients perceive xenotransplantation as an acceptable alternative to transplantation of human organs in life-threatening situations provided the potential benefits outweigh any likely adverse effects on the animals. Xenotransplantation of organs from chimpanzees and baboons has been avoided, because of ethical concerns as chimpanzees are listed as endangered species and the fear of transmission of deadly viruses. Pigs are plentiful, quick to mature, breed well in captivity, have large litters, and have vital organs roughly comparable in size to those of humans. Further there are physiologic similarities between their antibodies to human antibodies, and also since they are already being used in the consumer market, organs have been mainly harvested from pigs. Humans have had prolonged and close contact with pigs, their use for the purpose of xenotransplantation is believed to be less likely to introduce any new infectious agents. Porcine islet cells of Langerhans have been injected into patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus. Porcine skin has been grafted onto burn patients, and pig neuronal cells have been transplanted into patients with Parkinson’s disease and Huntington’s disease.
Organ Transplants: A Brief History (21 February, 2012) Retrieved from History in the Headlines Website: http://www.history.com/news/organ-transplants-a-brief-history
“Transplanting animal organs into humans is feasible.” USA Today. November 1999: 54-55. Gehlsen, Gale M., Ganion, Larry R. and Robert Helfst.
Many patients in hospitals are waiting for transplants and many of them are dying because they are not receiving the needed organs. To solve this problem, scientists have been using embryonic stem cells to produce organs or tissues to repair or replace damaged ones (Human Cloning). Skin for burn victims, brain cells for the brain damaged, hearts, lungs, livers, and kidneys can all be produced. By combining the technology of stem cell research and human cloning, it will be possible to produce the needed tissues and organs for patients in desperate need of a transplant (Human Cloning). The waiting list for transplants will become a lot shorter and a lot less people will have to suffer and die just because they are in great need of a transplant....
Cloning is another new medical advance that allows for many great possibilites. Exact organ matches for organ transplants could be made through cloning. Animal...
What are the principle, ethical issues and experimental procedures used in genetic engineering and cloning? Should Cloning be allowed to continue?