This paper considers the ethical issues raised by xenotransplantation under four headings: interfering with nature; effects on the recipient; effects on other humans; and effects on donor animals. The first two issues raise no insuperable problems: charges of unnaturalness are misguided, and the risks that xenotransplantation carries for the recipient are a matter for properly informed consent....

The ongoing shortage of human donor organs for transplantation has catalyzed new interest in the application of pig organs (xenotransplantation). One of the biggest concerns about the transplantation of porcine grafts into humans is the transmission of pig endogenous retroviruses (PERV) to the recipients or even to other members of the community. Although nonhuman primate models are excellently...

The major problem in the field of renal transplantation is currently the shortage of available kidneys. However, the use of animals as a source of kidneys, i.e., xenotransplantation, is increasingly being viewed as a potential solution to this problem. One preeminent hurdle to xenotransplantation is the immune response of the recipient against the graft; other hurdles include the physiologic li...

Xenotransplantation--moving organs or cells from one species to another--is currently being actively researched as a possible contribution to the problem of a global shortage of human organs for transplants. Should xenotransplantation be encouraged, permitted, frowned upon or forbidden? I attempt to outline the main areas of debate that would need to be addressed before this question could conf...

Dr. Serge Voronoff visited Brazil during the Jornadas Médicas of 1928, where he demonstrated his xenotransplantation technique to the local medical community. The present article uses newspaper clippings from that time to illustrate how this controversial surgery and Voronoff's alleged miraculous preservation of good health and longevity was viewed in the popular imagination. Voronoff's initiat...

THE ROLE of the endothelium in mediating rejection in discordant xenotransplantation is currently being defined. The literature has focused on cardiac and renal models of xenotransplantation, and the aortic endothelial cell (AEC) has become the prototypical cell for in vitro studies. The assumption that all EC behave similarly has never been validated. A recent study demonstrated that although ...

This paper situates the public debate over the use of living animal organs and tissue for human therapies within the history of experimental islet transplantation. Specifically, the paper compares and contrasts the Canadian and Australian responses on xenotransplantation to consider what lessons can be learnt about the regulation of a complex and controversial biotechnology. Sobbrio and Jorqui ...

In this lecture xenotransplantation is considered from the point of view of animal ethics. The main point is to show that a specific cluster of arguments commonly used in favour of xenotransplantation, simplifies the ethical questions involved. This simplification may be favourable for political reasons in a short time perspective, but may at the same time be disastrous from an ethical point of...

The continual critical shortage of organs and cells from deceased human donors has stimulated research in the field of cross-species transplantation (xenotransplantation), with the pig selected as the most suitable potential source of organs. Since the US Food and Drug Administration concluded a comprehensive review of xenotransplantation in 2003, considerable progress has been made in the expe...

Two baboon liver xenografts transplanted to patients with B virus hepatitis supported life for 70 and 26 days but did not function optimally despite minimum or no histopathologic findings of overt humoral or cellular rejection in serial biopsies. However, there was evidence of complement activation in both cases, which in retrospect was thought to explain the unsatisfactory outcome. Strategies ...