A breathtaking transplant
Aporcine heart transplant carried out in the United States from a genetically modified pig is a breathtaking breakthrough in medical science. The challenges ahead may be plenty in such harvesting but so are opportunities for the human race itself if there is further progress in xenotransplantation procedures, which can give a renewed lease of life to patients on long waiting lists for transplants of vital organs and very few willing donors like in India.
The marvels of science may be working wonders for the advancement of medicine and surgery where the efforts of pioneers like the doctors who carried out the Maryland transplant last week will be best remembered. There are no stigmas or ethical considerations to be overcome in such experiments, particularly as this heart from a pig with 10 genetic modifications to help the human body retain the organ, and which was made smaller to fit the right dimensions and weight for a body to accept, is a humanised heart.
The history of modern porcine xenotransplantation may go back 184 years when a New York ophthalmologist cut out an opaque cornea from a brave patient and replaced it with that of a pig, only to see the transplanted cornea cloud up again in weeks. An experimental surgery with a pig’s heart carried out in India by a surgeon from Assam 25 years ago had the least desirable result with the doctor being arrested and vilified for flouting procedures and had the pedantic Indian law book thrown at him.
Scientists believe that non-human primates may be the best for xenotransplantation but they may be endangered species thus raising ethical concerns. On the contrary, pigs breed quicker and plentifully and appear to be the best donors of humanised organs from genetic manipulation. What the Maryland transplantation represents is the crossing of a frontier. Researchers are said to be also working on skin, blood and islet cells of pigs for use in humans. Ultimately, they may build artificial organs in the lab to further this fascinating adventure into conquest of science to let people live longer.