Pig heart transplant - is it ethical?

Eckhard Wolf of the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, announced that his team has begun preparations to set up a farm for Auckland Island pigs to be transplanted by 2025. During the first operation of this type, a team of American doctors transplanted a terminally ill man with a pig heart with ten modifications. The patient has responded well so far, although there is still a risk of infection and organ rejection.

"Our concept is to use a simpler model, namely the five genetic modifications," said Wolf, whose plans sparked a heated debate in the country about one of the lowest organ donation rates in Europe and a clear animal rights movement.

Wolf, who has been researching animal-to-human organ transplants for 20 years - known as xenografts - said his team would use the still ineffective cloning technology to generate so-called "Founder animals" from which future genetically identical generations would arise. The first generation should arrive this year, and their hearts will be tested on baboons before the team seeks approval for a human clinical trial in two or three years' time.

There were around 8,500 people on the waiting list in Germany at the end of 2021, according to the national Foundation for Organ Transplantation, waiting for a transplant. Wolf supporters say transplanting organs from animals may help shorten this list, but opponents say the technology breaks animal rights. In February 2019, a petition from the German group Doctors Against Animal Experiments demanding a ban on research on xenotransplantation collected over 57,000 signatures of its supporters. Kristina Berchtold, spokeswoman for the Munich branch of the German Animal Protection Association, called the practice of such transplants extremely ethically questionable.

Source: Reuters