–
US surgeons have succeeded for the first time in transplanting a pig kidney to a human without immediately rejecting it. According to experts, that may be good news for people waiting for a donor organ.
–
The experiment with the kidney, which has been genetically modified so that it no longer contains a molecule that triggers a rejection response, took place on a brain-dead patient with kidney failure at a New York hospital. Her family agreed to the experiment before she was taken off the ventilator.
–
The kidney was attached to the patient’s blood vessels and kept outside her body so that the surgeons could monitor everything closely. For 54 hours, the kidney worked “pretty much normally” and produced as much urine as a human kidney. The patient was then stopped on a ventilator and she died.
–
The experiment is a breakthrough in the world of transplant surgeons, who have been researching for years whether it is possible to transplant animal organs in humans. Until now, they always encountered a fierce rejection reaction.
–
Logical donor
Failure to do so may open the door to the transplantation of pig hearts, livers and other organs. Experts emphasize that the technique is still in its infancy, that the experiment was limited in time and that it was not yet checked by peers.
–
Pigs seem like a logical donor because their organs are almost the same size as human organs. In addition, it would be more widely accepted that pigs are used as organ donors, because they are already massively processed in the meat industry.
–
This would be more sensitive for monkeys, which are genetically even closer to humans. Animal rights organizations are nevertheless unhappy about the experiment. “Animals are not spare parts,” says the international activist group PETA.
–
–
