If you think of science fiction, you might think of Victor Frankenstein. Originally from Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein, the creature and its lore has been modified over the centuries, but the general idea has remained quite the same. The story follows an ambitious student of natural sciences, Victor Frankenstein, who creates artificial life from pieces of corpses. Now, most people assume the creature is named Frankenstein, although that is the name of the scientist who created it and the monster itself is just known as Frankenstein’s monster. When you think of the monster, you probably imagine some stitched up humanoid creature, with nuts and bolts and different colored body parts, pale gray or even a light blue/green shade. But you get the idea: it’s a creature composed of body parts from several different corpses. What if I told you that there is an actual science relating to what Frankenstein did? It’s not exactly creating artificial life from human body parts, but it’s transplanting living cells, tissue, or even organs from one species to another. While it sounds like a concept straight out of a science fiction novel, it is in fact a real scientific concept that has been used in the past and present, and it is known as xenotransplantation.Â
Why is this even a concept? Frankly, it sounds impossible. But it is an important subject, and it is a very heavily debated one. In the USA currently, there is a long list of patients waiting to receive an organ transplant. There aren’t enough organ donors to meet the demand, and as a result, 17 people die daily waiting for a transplant. When there’s such a shortage of donors, we need to turn to science to help us find a solution. One proposed solution has been xenotransplantation, which is not a new concept in medicine, but very heavily debated, and hasn’t had much success proving itself as a viable option. The biggest concern with xenotransplantation right now is success. Every trial of it has ended in the death of the patient, largely due to infections and complications with the body accepting a foreign organ. The first recorded case of heart xenotransplantation was in 1964, when Dr. James Hardy transplanted a chimpanzee heart into a semi-comatose patient experiencing a vascular disease. The transplant was only successful for a couple of hours, before the patient passed away due to the chimpanzee heart not being large enough to support the blood circulation.Â
Potential animal donors include pigs, chimpanzees, and baboons; primates being the most common due to their compatibility with humans. Currently, there is a lot of research going into genetically modifying these organs to be compatible with the human body. A more recent case of xenotransplantation was a kidney transplant in September of 2021. While the donor recipient was technically deceased and placed on a ventilator, the point of the transplant was to study the function of the kidney and watch for signs of rejection. In this case, the kidney was a genetically modified pig kidney. Throughout the period of study, which lasted 54 hours, no signs of rejection were detected and key indicators of a properly functioning kidney were present. This is a huge step towards the implementation of xenotransplantation in the future, but much more research remains to be done.Â
Ethical concerns are also brought up in discussion of xenotransplantation. There is a public health risk associated with cross-species transplantation; we do not know how interactions with the donor recipient and the general public will go and if there is risk of disease transmission. Therefore, the question is brought up: can we allow xenotransplantation if it will affect people outside the recipient and how do we gauge that level of consent? Aside from public health, animal rights are also brought into question. Animals cannot speak for themselves and therefore do not have a say in what happens to them. Is it ethical to use animals like chimpanzees and pigs solely for their organs, and if not, what makes it different from raising animals to kill them for their meat? Is killing a primate more serious than killing a pig due to its proximity to humans? What actually lets us determine if it is or isn’t ethical to raise and kill animals for the purpose of using their organs? What are our limits, as human beings? These are only a couple of questions raised when debating the ethics of xenotransplantation.Â
Until the risk of transmission of animal pathogens is eradicated, and researchers actually find a way for cross-species transplants to be successful, xenotransplantation remains out of the question as a solution to the organ donor shortage. We cannot think of xenotransplantation until we make a medical breakthrough that would allow it to be a success, and have recorded success. The ethical debates surrounding it also can only be considered when progress is made. Regardless of the chance of success, it is still an interesting topic to think about. The implications of xenotransplantation affect subjects just beyond organ donors; cross-species medicine could be the future. While it isn’t the same science as Frankenstein, the intersection of science and science fiction is truly amazing to see.Â
Sources:Â
https://www.fda.gov/vaccines-blood-biologics/xenotransplantationÂ
https://www.organdonor.gov/learn/organ-donation-statisticsÂ
