Xenotransplantation
Xenotransplantation Case Study
Ross Goglia
Matthew Henry
Robert Lawrence
STS 200R
Gorman
The Situation
Organ failure is undeniably one of the most significant health problems in today’s world. Heart, kidney, lung, liver, and other organ failures are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Heart failure, for instance, claims an especially high number of lives. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported in 1996 that heart failure kills four times as many people as does HIV infection. Organ transplantation has proved to be the most efficient and cost-effective solution to organ failures. In almost all cases, continual medical treatment for affected patients is appreciably more expensive than organ transplants. It is estimated that the cost of treatment for heart failure patients ranges from 8 to 35 billion dollars per year. However, if xenotransplantation (later defined) became a viable permanent option, a potential six billion dollar market, a cost significantly less than the afore mentioned treatment cost, would emerge. Though organ transplantation is clearly the single most viable option to treat organ failures, there exist certain complications in the very system of organ donation. The essence of the problem is that the demand for organs far exceeds the supply. Dr. Anthony Warrens of Imperial College London estimates that for every human organ that is donated, there are five people on the waiting list who could benefit from it. Furthermore, the gap is not closing. Transplant surgeons only expect the organ shortage to grow. The issue of sparse organ donations is rooted in the fact that the potential donor pool is not large at all. Many people approve of organ transplants but refuse to donate. Only twenty percent of families actually permit their deceased loved ones to become organ donors. So even though transplantation has great promise as a method for treating organ failure, it has been kept from reaching
Ross Goglia
Matthew Henry
Robert Lawrence
STS 200R
Gorman
The Situation
Organ failure is undeniably one of the most significant health problems in today’s world. Heart, kidney, lung, liver, and other organ failures are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths each year. Heart failure, for instance, claims an especially high number of lives. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) reported in 1996 that heart failure kills four times as many people as does HIV infection. Organ transplantation has proved to be the most efficient and cost-effective solution to organ failures. In almost all cases, continual medical treatment for affected patients is appreciably more expensive than organ transplants. It is estimated that the cost of treatment for heart failure patients ranges from 8 to 35 billion dollars per year. However, if xenotransplantation (later defined) became a viable permanent option, a potential six billion dollar market, a cost significantly less than the afore mentioned treatment cost, would emerge. Though organ transplantation is clearly the single most viable option to treat organ failures, there exist certain complications in the very system of organ donation. The essence of the problem is that the demand for organs far exceeds the supply. Dr. Anthony Warrens of Imperial College London estimates that for every human organ that is donated, there are five people on the waiting list who could benefit from it. Furthermore, the gap is not closing. Transplant surgeons only expect the organ shortage to grow. The issue of sparse organ donations is rooted in the fact that the potential donor pool is not large at all. Many people approve of organ transplants but refuse to donate. Only twenty percent of families actually permit their deceased loved ones to become organ donors. So even though transplantation has great promise as a method for treating organ failure, it has been kept from reaching