Persuasive Essay On Xenotransplantation

“The world-wide, critical shortage of human organs available for transplantation and advances in genetic engineering and in the immunology and biology of organ tissue rejection have renewed scientists’ interest in investigating xenotransplantation as potentially promising means to treat a wide range of human disorders” (UNESCO Courier). Ever since the early 1900’s, xenotransplantation, “animal to human transplant” (Mail Online), is still debatable to this day. Many patients vote they would not allow this procedure to take place, but there is still a very minuscule percentage that is willing to take on this drastic procedure. It is never known when an organ suitable for a patient will be available, especially with “at least 180 000 people around
Since there are thousands of people who wait days for a specific organ there is just not enough to supply. The numbers of recipients keep rising, while the amount of donors is unfortunately stationary. There are many theories that are brought up that could potentially resolve this issue, one where surgeons intend to temporarily connect the pig’s liver to a patient’s circulation system outside the human body until a human liver becomes available (Globe and Mail). In addition, to avoid shortage of organs, researchers and scientists have done some intensive investigating to try and prevent patients from worrying about whether they will receive an organ or not. Dr. Warrens reports: “Despite the risks, xenotransplantation may be the best hope we have for dealing with the current transplant shortage” (Imperial College London). Nevertheless, this procedure is overall risky not only for patients, but for “fears of creating new infections (Baylor University Medical Center Proceedings (UMCP)). No person is perfect and undeniably Albert Einstein made mistakes. So these scientists and researchers could make a minor error and release an apocalyptic epidemic, causing chaos. Likewise, a warning is given out to patients prior to xenotransplantation clarifying some things they may have to give up or beware of. “[Patients would
At one point in recent history there were endless reports of the swine influenza outbreak. As this epidemic was also known as pig influenza and notorious throughout the pig population globally, “In terms of its genetic makeup, this virus did come from pigs… What we [cannot] say with any certainty, however, is that this virus transmitted directly from pigs into humans (ABC News). Following through with xenotransplantation, it may cause yet another outbreak as the organ is a transport directly from the internal pig to the human body. Aside from pigs, apes and monkey’s also share similar resemblance to “humans anatomically and physiologically” (BUMCP). However, these primates have their flaws as well if they were suitable candidates for xenotransplantation: “Some monkey viruses-for example, herpes 8- are deadly to humans in a matter of days” (BUCMP). Doctors cannot attempt to save lives of their patients by potentially transmitting a modern contamination. These lethal diseases should be a caveat for researchers and scientists to discontinue any further research on this topic; it provides pandemonium from the