Nutriovia

More than 100,000 Americans are on waiting lists for donor organs, most of them need a kidney. Only 25,000 kidneys of human donors become available each year. Twelve Americans On the list of kidneys, die on average every day.

Scientists first transplanted pork organs genetically modified in other animals, then to human -dead human patients. In 2022, the researchers received authorization to transplant the organs into a few seriously ill patients, then, last year, to healthy people.

Now, for the first time, a formal clinical study of the procedure is launched.

“Imagine, you have a kidney disease and know that your kidneys will fail, and you have a pork kidney awaiting you – and you never see dialysis,” said Mike Curtis, President and Chief Executive Officer at Egenesis.

It provides for a future in which genetic engineering will make the pork organs so compatible with humans that patients will not have to take powerful drugs that prevent rejection but make them vulnerable to infections and cancer.

Babies born with serious cardiac malformations could temporarily receive the heart of a pork while waiting for a heart of human donor. The liver of a pork could potentially serve as a bridge for those who need a human liver.

Some scientists argue that there is a moral imperative to move forward.

“Is it ethical to let thousands of people die every year on a waiting list when we have something that could possibly save their lives?” Asked Dr. David KC Cooper, who studies xenotransplantation at Harvard and is a consultant of Engenesis.

“I think it starts to be ethically unacceptable to let people die when there is an alternative therapy that seems quite encouraging.”

But criticisms say that xenotransplantation is a company in Arie in the sky aimed at solving an organ shortage with technology when there is a simpler solution: widening the supply of human organs by encouraging more donation.

And xenotransplantation is transported with unanswered questions.

Pigs can transport pathogens that can find their way to humans. If a deadly virus, for example, was to emerge in transplanted patients, it could spread with catastrophic consequences.

It can be years or even decades, before the observation of symptoms, warned Christopher Bobier, a bioethician of the central Michigan University College of Medicine.

“A potential zoonotic transfer could occur at any time after a transplant-in perpetuity,” he said. The risk is considered small, he added, “but it is not zero.”

More than 100,000 Americans are on waiting lists for donor organs, most of them need a kidney. Only 25,000 kidneys of human donors become available each year. Twelve Americans On the list of kidneys, die on average every day.

Scientists first transplanted pork organs genetically modified in other animals, then to human -dead human patients. In 2022, the researchers received authorization to transplant the organs into a few seriously ill patients, then, last year, to healthy people.

Now, for the first time, a formal clinical study of the procedure is launched.

“Imagine, you have a kidney disease and know that your kidneys will fail, and you have a pork kidney awaiting you – and you never see dialysis,” said Mike Curtis, President and Chief Executive Officer at Egenesis.

It provides for a future in which genetic engineering will make the pork organs so compatible with humans that patients will not have to take powerful drugs that prevent rejection but make them vulnerable to infections and cancer.

Babies born with serious cardiac malformations could temporarily receive the heart of a pork while waiting for a heart of human donor. The liver of a pork could potentially serve as a bridge for those who need a human liver.

Some scientists argue that there is a moral imperative to move forward.

“Is it ethical to let thousands of people die every year on a waiting list when we have something that could possibly save their lives?” Asked Dr. David KC Cooper, who studies xenotransplantation at Harvard and is a consultant of Engenesis.

“I think it starts to be ethically unacceptable to let people die when there is an alternative therapy that seems quite encouraging.”

But criticisms say that xenotransplantation is a company in Arie in the sky aimed at solving an organ shortage with technology when there is a simpler solution: widening the supply of human organs by encouraging more donation.

And xenotransplantation is transported with unanswered questions.

Pigs can transport pathogens that can find their way to humans. If a deadly virus, for example, was to emerge in transplanted patients, it could spread with catastrophic consequences.

It can be years or even decades, before the observation of symptoms, warned Christopher Bobier, a bioethician of the central Michigan University College of Medicine.

“A potential zoonotic transfer could occur at any time after a transplant-in perpetuity,” he said. The risk is considered small, he added, “but it is not zero.”

More than 100,000 Americans are on waiting lists for donor organs, most of them need a kidney. Only 25,000 kidneys of human donors become available each year. Twelve Americans On the list of kidneys, die on average every day.

Scientists first transplanted pork organs genetically modified in other animals, then to human -dead human patients. In 2022, the researchers received authorization to transplant the organs into a few seriously ill patients, then, last year, to healthy people.

Now, for the first time, a formal clinical study of the procedure is launched.

“Imagine, you have a kidney disease and know that your kidneys will fail, and you have a pork kidney awaiting you – and you never see dialysis,” said Mike Curtis, President and Chief Executive Officer at Egenesis.

It provides for a future in which genetic engineering will make the pork organs so compatible with humans that patients will not have to take powerful drugs that prevent rejection but make them vulnerable to infections and cancer.

Babies born with serious cardiac malformations could temporarily receive the heart of a pork while waiting for a heart of human donor. The liver of a pork could potentially serve as a bridge for those who need a human liver.

Some scientists argue that there is a moral imperative to move forward.

“Is it ethical to let thousands of people die every year on a waiting list when we have something that could possibly save their lives?” Asked Dr. David KC Cooper, who studies xenotransplantation at Harvard and is a consultant of Engenesis.

“I think it starts to be ethically unacceptable to let people die when there is an alternative therapy that seems quite encouraging.”

But criticisms say that xenotransplantation is a company in Arie in the sky aimed at solving an organ shortage with technology when there is a simpler solution: widening the supply of human organs by encouraging more donation.

And xenotransplantation is transported with unanswered questions.

Pigs can transport pathogens that can find their way to humans. If a deadly virus, for example, was to emerge in transplanted patients, it could spread with catastrophic consequences.

It can be years or even decades, before the observation of symptoms, warned Christopher Bobier, a bioethician of the central Michigan University College of Medicine.

“A potential zoonotic transfer could occur at any time after a transplant-in perpetuity,” he said. The risk is considered small, he added, “but it is not zero.”