Opinion on Ethics and xenotransplantation

The considerable interest in xenotransplantation at present is linked to the persisting imbalance between the need for organ substitutes and their availability, which has no chance of being righted in view of the growing scarcity of so-called " brain deaths " which represent less than 1% of hospital deaths. Because of progress achieved by modern medicine and biology, techniques for transplanting human organs have become routine and have now amply demonstrated their life-saving and quality-of-life improvement value. The limit which constricts the use of these techniques in all the countries in which they are practised is the shortage of organs for transplantation.