Essay on Is Xenotransplantation an Ethical Solution or Disaster?

The medical practice of organ transplantation has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 50 years. Each year the medical profession takes more risk with decisions regarding transplants, how to allocate for organs, and most recently conducting transplants on children with adult organs. “An organ transplantation is a surgical operation where a failing or damaged organ in the human body is removed and replaced with a new one” (Caplan, 2009). Not all organs can be transplanted. The term “organ transplant” typically refers to transplants of solid organs: heart, kidneys, liver, pancreas, and intestines. There are two ways of receiving an organ transplant: from a living human or an organ from a

Today we are in great need of a solution to solve the problem of the shortage of human organs available for transplant. The website for Donate Life America estimates that in the United States over 100 people per day are added to the current list of over 100,000 men, women, and children that are waiting for life-saving transplants. Sadly enough, approximately 18 people a day on that list die just because they cannot outlive the wait for the organ that they so desperately need to survive. James Burdick, director of the Division of Transplantation for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services confirms, “The need for organ transplants continues to grow and this demand continues to outpace the supply of transplantable organs”. The

Imagine having a child and when she is born she has heart failure and if you do not do anything about it she will die. One day the nurse from the hospital tells you that they can do Xenotransplantation where they use a chimpanzee heart in this case instead of a human heart. At first, you are nervous because it is a heart from a chimpanzee not a human but they reassure you that it is sterile and free of infection and disease and it could save her life. After telling you that, they tell you that after the last chimpanzee heart transplant the baby only lived 20 days which is longer than she would live without it because there are no human hearts available for her. If you knew that she may not live for long but in the time, she is living a human heart could become available but if she survives she will have to be on anti-rejection medication for the rest of her life would you continue with the procedure and give your child a chimpanzee heart? (Thesis Statement)

Now that organ transplantation has become a popular medical solution to end-stage organ failure, about every 10 minutes another person in need of an

In December of 1954, the first human organ transplant was performed in the United States between identical twin brothers. In the past sixty years, organ transplantation has become the gold standard in the treatment of organ failure from a number of underlying causes with dramatic improvements to recipients’ health and quality of life (Kaserman, 2007). From the first kidney transplant in 1954 to the late 1980’s, one of the biggest advancements was the use of cadaver organs. Organ rejection was the primary concern from the transplant team who knew that the use of cadaver organs posed higher risks of failure.

The 21st century however forecasts an astonishing increase in innovation in another direction. While previously overshadowed by its larger cousins, physics and chemistry, it seems likely that the biological sciences will steal the limelight in the future. Mapping the genome, reversing the aging process, and finding a cure for terminal illnesses, all represent primary objectives for science. Unfortunately, the ethical questions posed by innovations in biomedicine are far greater than those posed by advances in the physical sciences. Reproductive cloning is one of these innovations, and one that arguably poses the greatest threat to the world as we know it. The universal truth, blindly accepted by man for millennia, held that a human could only be born through the sexual union of a male and a female, to be exact, of an egg and a sperm. By cloning, however, a human life can be created in the laboratory. This is done by taking human DNA and inserting it into an egg cell, sans genetic material. The resultant cell is identical to the original, and can then be inserted into a uterus, either a human or an animal one, and be grown to term, to produce a baby, while circumventing nature’s means of reproduction.

The medical industry had been achieving more in the stage of medical advancements, though they are still in the early phase. Artificial organs have been one of those achievements. Although they have achieved such, artificial organs are not perfect. Most doctors as well as patients would prefer to replace a dying organ with a compatible human organ, rather than with an artificial or animal organ. Yet due to a there being less organs donated than recipients, artificial and animal organs are becoming more common in transplants. Most of this issue is because people are unaware of how organ donation works, the organs that can be donated, how many people are in need, and the advancements that have happened in the field. Organ donation saves hundreds of lives every year, but many lives are recklessly lost due to a shortage of organ donors.

Available became controversial. While the question of the dialysis machine is still controversial, the health system was caught in another ethical dilemma regarding organ transplantation. Organ transplantation is closely linked to the issue of cleanliness because patients with kidney failure can get an organ transplant as an alternative to hemodialysis. The issue is complicated by the fact Medicare is financed by organ transplant, and there are those who believe that the distribution of rare transplant is not right. There are thousands of terminal patients whose lives can be saved by organ transplantation, but there are no formulas of work that can be used to determine which of the thousands of patients will be given priority. It is left to the discretion of medical officers to decide who is worth saving. The ability to keep someone alive by replacing one or more of their major organs is a splendid achievement of medicine of the 20th century.

Global organ shortage causes thousands of unwanted deaths because of a want for a kidney. Some people are not as lucky as Satel, who received one from a friend. Many organ sales are illicit due to corrupt brokers. Many donors are deceived because of the corrupt brokers. They may cheat patients of payment and or ignore the post-surgical needs.

In a world where life expectancy has increased tremendously over the last century because of new technology and medical procedures, we find humanity ever pushing the boundaries on what it can do to prevent loss of life where possible. One example is the area of organ donation and transplantation. However, unlike many other technologies or procedures which can be built, manufactured, or learned, organ transplantation requires one thing that we can’t create yet: an organ itself. Because our increased life span causes more people to require a replacement organ when theirs starts to fail, the demand has far outrun the supply and the future only looks to get worse. “Between the years 1988 and 2006 the number of transplants doubled, but the

However many people believe this is ethically wrong and bad for the human. In order for these transplants to work animals have to be kept in a quarantined place. This is interpreted as being unethical to the animal since they have to be kept in a room that does not allow the animal to feel like it is in their “natural habitat” and safe. Even if the animal is being treated correctly and the outcome of this is for a good cause, “esthetics believe it is still inhumane” (Manesh). Another group of people believe animal to human transplantation is bad for the humans, causing multiple diseases. One researcher against animal to human transplant states, "It is expected that about animals’ organ transplantation into human' body, the possibility of viruses and micro-organisms transmitted increases, as well" (Manesh). Animals who have had diseases could very well transfer them into the humans, this could let humans receive diseases that are not likely for us to get. However with this complaint floating around the world surgeons can use this and quarantine the animals before they decide to use the organs in humans. Even though this goes against the ethics of being ‘humane’ surgeons are going to do what is best for the human rather than the animal. This leads into advanced technology methods to find new techniques in making sure the human doesn’t get a

Early examples of tissue transplants can be dated back to 2500CE by Hundu text (Howard, Cornell, and Cochran, 2012). Fast forward a couple of millennia and we see the first successful animal to human transplant. “The book “The Transplantation of Tissue” written by Dr. Harold Neuhof was totally devoted to explaining how to perform organ transplants”, in addition, the first human kidney transplant was performed in 1936 by a Russian surgeon, the donor had been dead for six hours. At this time blood testing and screening were not performed, therefore the kidney never function and the recipient died two days later (Howard, Cornell, and Cochran, 2012). The pioneers in early transplants ere key in making organ donation and transplants common place today. The lessons that they learned early on proved the was in the development of strategies in preserving organs, matching donors and recipients, and the development of immounesuppressive drugs that helped decrease organ rejection rates.

People are naturally afraid of what they don't know or understand and suspicious of anything that's unfamiliar or strange, such as xenotransplantation. Nevertheless xenotransplantation has been around for a long time and is not such a

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).

As of November 30th, 2017, 116,080 people formed the organ transplant waiting list. On average, twenty people on this list will die today. The number of people that need an organ transplant continues to grow; every ten minutes a new name is added to the list. According to the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, “only 3 in 1,000 people die in a way that allows for organ donation” (“Organ Donation Statistics”). In order for a deceased person to give organs, the organs must still be alive to donate. Organ transplantation improved greatly over the last century, but with an insufficient amount of organs available, it limits breakthroughs. In essence, new methods need to replace the unavailable organs. These methods drastically improve the process of organ transplantation, and in the future, the overall humans well-being.