Ethical Consent In Xenotransplantation

Heart transplant have grown to be a therapeutic strategies for patients with heart failure, and respectively offers improved quality life and survival. Many various techniques have been used to ensure safety and survival of pediatric patients, however in the case of rejection, death rate have enormously been reviewed. This process whereby recipient’s immune system attacks the transplanted organ is quite harmful as substances like antigens coats organ surface, therefore, immune system respond by attacking the transplanted organ as it detects it to be foreign (virus or bacteria).37

Rejection can't be totally avoided; nonetheless, a level of safe resilience to the transplant develops. A few ideas have been proposed to clarify the advancement of halfway resistance. They incorporate clonal erasure and the advancement of anergy in benefactor particular lymphocytes, improvement of silencer lymphocytes, or variables that down-direct the insusceptible reaction against the join. Different speculations incorporate the steadiness of benefactor determined dendritic cells in the beneficiary that advance an immunologically interceded chimeric state between the beneficiary and the transplanted

     The first attempts of xenotrantransplantation in the U.S. did not occur until the 1960’s. During this time, scientists tried to transplant baboon and chimpanzee organs to humans. These transplants failed due to rejection by the human immune system (Baker, 643). The most well known xenotransplantation attempt, known as Baby Fae, occurred in 1985 at the Coma Linda University Medical Center in California. During this surgery, Dr. Leonard Bailey completed the first human neonatal cardiac xenotransplantation by placing the heart of a baboon into an infant. Fae, the infant, suffered from hypo-plastic left heart syndrome, or simply an incomplete heart. The heart functioned for twenty days until stopping, killing Baby Fae (Clark, 1085). This attempt raised difficult ethical and policy issues, which have not yet been answered.

He claims “Xenotransplantation should still be given serious thought because of its potential to alleviate the organ shortage crisis and ultimately improve the human condition” (Sharma 25). However, Sharma also gives some insight as to why doctors should be cautious when taking Xeno to the next step. He states that “Violent immune responses have been known to occur in individuals where an incompatible organ has been placed in a host, with death being known to occur in a matter of hours”(27). Sharma’s statement raises thought of the possible risks associated with transplantation. One of the risks is hyper-acute rejection, where the recipient’s immune system quickly identifies the animal organ as a foreign entity and attacks it (27). Despite the risks being great, people considering xenotransplantation often have no other

In addition to chimpanzees, pigs have also benefited humans with medical research. According to Dr. Michael Swindell, author of “Swine in the Laboratory”, pigs’ organ systems are 80 to 90 percent similar to humans, which indicates that they can be used to replace human organs also known as Xenotransplantation. But to find out the solutions for humans, animals undergo the painful experience such as being blind, burn, force feeding, and much more. However, animal transplants are unsuccessful on humans because diseases get transmitted from animal to patients. “For example, in 1985, Leonard Bailey

Xenotransplantation is something we don’t hear everyday. Xenotransplantation is a process where animal organs, tissues and cells are transplanted into humans for medical reasons. The most common animal to transplant organs into humans, with the most success, is a pig. It is a personal opinion whether or not xenotransplantation can help or hurt you. Before deciding whether to do the operation or not you will have to look at the pros and cons that are listed

Xenotranplantation is the controversial procedure that involves the transplantation of an animal's live cells, tissues, body fluids, or organs

The main concerns of the Commentary perspective were that although there are a lot of new strategies for cross-breeding; a pressing example would be a live organ donation which links the exchanges between extended families with recipient family members, live donation is only possible for paired organs like a kidney transplant. Beginning the search for other sources of replacement organs has expanded. The main concerns of the Attitudes toward Death perspective was the recognition that all living beings understand that both birth and death and may perhaps serve to relativize the request and/ or need for more organ replacements and that may help us to see what is at stake: on the one hand, there is a possibility of an additional lifespan for a given individual who has a lower quality of life and on the other hand, some intervention in the environment is necessary for all other living beings as well. The main concerns of the Animal Organs perspective were that the companies involved in the development of xenotransplants insisted that they are raising and willing to raise the animals in environments that were sterile as possible. Individual animals are then inspected and went through periods of quarantine before admission to the factory herd. The main concerns of the Risk Assessment perspective were that there may be a slight risk to present and future generations, or there might be tremendous risk to present and future generations, but it is rather hard to determine. The main concerns of the Religious Perspectives paragraph highlighted how successful xenotransplants would be about ensuring the quality of life that they give to recipients, how much human DNA is transferred to the animals and vice versa, and to what degree of suffering the process is understood to entail for all the animals

Xenotransplantation is a procedure involving the transplantation of live cells, organs and tissues from nonhumans into humans. It provides an alternative way to treat serious and fatal diseases such as Alzheimer 's, diabetes and Parkinson 's disease. It also poses as a solution for the ongoing problem of organ shortage. Generally, Xenotransplantation is a reoccurring ethical issue as this specific procedure utilises organs from animals, such as pigs and nonhuman primates. Individuals who go through Xenotransplantation may experience difficulties with their identity and accepting the fact that a part of them is not entirely human. Ethical issues within Xenotransplantation include whether we have the right to use animals for human life, whether we should cross animals and humans together and whether it is acceptable in many religious traditions. Religions often contribute a lot of insight into issues such as these as their teachings, traditions and holy scriptures are always taken into consideration.

The number of patients requiring a lifesaving transplant constantly over-exceeds the number of organs available for donations and Regenerative Medicine has the potential ability to solve this shortage problem.

A number of factors could greatly magnify the risk of spreading serious disease. At least it could theoretically, you can’t know for sure until they have put an organ into a human body. On a different note the process is not very nice to animals. To some people this doesn’t seem like a big deal but to others it is a huge deal. The question is, do we have the right (morally) to use animals like this. The animals may suffer from the necessary conditions they have to be raised in. The animals have to be delivered by cesarean and kept isolated, causing emotional suffering in social animals like pigs. Some people are okay with that because they think that animals were meant to help us survive, which is why we eat them and use them for other necessities such as clothes. But others think that it is wrong to genetically modify them and to make them suffer for our own well being. Whatever your opinion is, that’s all it is. There is no fact saying if it is, or isn’t okay to use animals like that. That has been a controversial issue for a very long time.

Advancements in medicine have allowed for the ability to transplant organs from a cadaver to a living patient. Immunosuppressive drugs have been developed to block the bodily rejection of organs from the deceased making transplantation possible. When an individual dies The Uniform Anatomical Gift Act allows for tissue and organs of the cadaver to be used for transplantation (Garrett, Baillie, & Garrett, 2001). This document is a set model or regulations and laws concerning organ donation that all 50 states have passed in some measure. Organs such as the kidneys, heart,

Organ transplants between humans have been around since the 1950’s, and amazingly enough, scientists have been working on animal-human transplants for the same amount of time. “In the '60s, Keith Reemtsma experimented with transplanting chimpanzee kidneys into humans.” Now most of them failed within a few weeks, but the study managed to keep one woman alive for 9 months. Other xenotransplantations have had the same failure and success rate, especially with heart and lungs. “In 1984, in one of the most famous cross-species transplantations, Leonard Bailey transplanted a baboon heart into a infant, Baby Fae.” The transplant only was successful for 20 days but it was opening the door for the first human-human heart transplant. (Hansman,

Today’s modern biotechnology requires a lot of transplantation of cells, tissues, and organs. This is known as Xenotransplantation. In Atwood's novel we see “pigoons” whose purpose was to grow human organs and tissues. Pigoons are

The patient died nine days later. Another experiment conducted in 1984 attempted to use a baboon’s heart to save a newborn baby; the baby only lived for twenty days. The longest time a patient has lived with an animal organ is nine months, where the recipient received a chimpanzee kidney. The early failures of xenotransplantation, however, led many to believe that animal organs are too different from human organs. The recipient’s immune system recognizes the foreign organ and rejects it in spite of immunosuppressive drugs. Powerful immunosuppressive drugs are given to any patient receiving an organ, human or animal, in order to suppress the body’s reaction to the foreign organ. Without the immunosuppressive drugs, the body will reject the organ within a few hours after surgery (Natural Life 23).