Xenotransplantation The waiting list for heart transplants is ever growing, while less hearts are becoming available. Lives are going to waste as the number of usable, available hearts for transplants decreases. Xenotransplantation is a new discovery and the quantity of patients willing to consider this alternative will have a huge effect on the waiting list. Is this the alternative that thousands of helpless patients have been waiting for? Alternative routes for heart transplantation have long been debated but much controversy and hazy moral ground surround the other possible solutions. Could Xenotransplantation be the future of heart surgery? Xenotransplantation involves the transplantation of either live cells, tissues, or organs from an animal into the body of a human. The animal organs replace our own doing the same job and hopefully keeping someone alive. But xenotransplantation isnβt just for organs, itβs other uses include grafting skin cells to grow on the human body and repair skin after burns or using pig islets to help patients with diabetes. Xenotransplantation is most common between humans and pigs. The first time a humanβs body part was replaced with an animalβs was in 1838 when Richard Kissam replaced a human cornea with one of a pig. This operation went about with no ethical debate, but instead brought about an admiration for this new way of saving lives. The bible states that βThe eye is the lamp of the body. So, if your eye is healthy, your whole body will be full of light,β [Matthew 6:22] and so replacing that would be as though to cover your soul with the view of a pig. If society can accept cornea xenotransplantation, saving a life using a pigβs heart is an amazing discovery that could change thousands of lives. On the other hand, your cornea doesnβt support blood flow, and therefore, doesnβt feed through any other part of your body and is almost as simple as a contact lens. Whereas your heart is central to your life and every organ and cell relies on its work. You could argue that life is the most valuable gift of all, and if you rely on a new organ to live, then you should exhaust all options before giving up, including using a pigβs organ. So ethically, it would make sense, if possible, to save a life, even if it would give you βthe view of a pig.β More than 5000 heart transplants take place every year but 50,000 people are on the waitlist, and that number keeps growing. Usable hearts are a very limited resource and less people agree to donate every year, yet more and more people have begun to trust science and are willing to have a heart transplant. Only 27% of hearts from donors after brain stem death are eventually accepted for transplantation. This means we are left with the devastating inability to save lives and must stand by watching people die saying that we have done all we can with the limited resources available when the possibility of xenotransplantation could save the lives of hundreds more. Ethics bodies and religions such as Judaism also promote xenotransplantation to prolong or save the life of a human being who is ill or dying from organ failure. Surely a person couldnβt argue that we stop the progress of future transplantation and let people die, just because it doesnβt fit their exact moral views? However, itβs not just a fact of life or death. Pigs are bred and genetically modified and then brought to slaughter solely for human benefit. The RSPCA states
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