Is this op that’ll change transplants for ever?
surgeon at the Royal Papworth Hospital near Cambridge, suggested it was too early to declare the operation a success.
‘Although the early function of the heart is vital, it is the mid- and long-term that matters the most,’ he said.
‘As yet, there is no data on this and we wait with interest to learn how this courageous patient progresses.’
The hurdles ahead aren’t only scientific, of course. Animal rights group Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) immediately condemned the transplant. ‘Animal-to-human transplants are unethical, dangerous, and a tremendous waste of resources that could be used to fund research that might actually help humans,’ it said in a statement.
‘Animals aren’t toolsheds to be raided but complex, intelligent beings. It would be better for them and healthier for humans to leave them alone and seek cures using modern science.’
Yet xenotransplantation from animals to humans has a surprisingly long history. Throughout the 19th century, doctors treated wounds with skin grafts from various animals, often frogs.
In the 1920s, French surgeon Serge Voronoff developed a procedure for transplanting slices of chimpanzee testicles into older men whose ‘zest for life’ was deteriorating.
HE CLAIMED that the hormones produced by the testes would rejuvenate his patients, enhancing not only libido but eyesight and memory. His transplant became enormously popular among millionaires, prompting Voronoff to set up a monkey farm to keep up with demand and develop a monkey ovary transplant after women requested their own version of the treatment.
In the 1960s, scientists transplanted chimpanzee kidneys into 13 patients, one of whom returned to work for almost nine months before suddenly dying from what was believed to be an ‘electrolyte disturbance’.
In 1964, the first heart transplant in a human was performed using a chimpanzee heart, but the patient died within two hours. In October 2021, surgeons notched up a ‘first’ when they attached a kidney grown in a genetically modified pig to a brain-dead human patient. The kidney functioned properly for a 54-hour observation period.
Countries such as the UK and U.S. tightly regulate xenotransplants but other countries do not, a fact that has already prompted researchers to conduct trials in places such as mexico.
The World Health Organisation has expressed fears of so-called ‘xenotourism’, in which desperate transplant patients resort to going to countries that impose no limits on operations.
A new era may have dawned but, as with other scientific breakthroughs, the future may not be entirely rosy.