Essay On Xenotransplantation

Xenotransplantation is the process of transplanting or grafting organs and tissue between different species. As you’re transplanting a foreign organ not from the same species as you, this has many social and biological implications. Including the fact that there’s could be new viruses and pathogens passed over between species with the potential to cause a mass epidemic and kill of many members of a species. Also this procedure although been around for a long time it hasn’t had a very high success rate and can be very costly. There are many ethical issues in transplanting an organ from another species into a human and some people do not agree with this.
Process and Biological Concepts
There are 2 main types of xenotransplantation that can occur: Solid organ and Cell and Tissue transplantation. Solid organ as the name suggests is when an animal organ e.g. kidney or heart is transplanted into the human body. Cell and Tissue is when cells and tissues are …show more content…
Even research institutes that just want to test the theory of xenotransplantation although say they take care of the pigs and that they’re well looked after at the end of the day the pigs will be going through a number of different trials and be subjected to many injections and chemicals along with surgical procedures that cannot be good for the pig. And aside from this these pigs will essentially be bought up to have their organs harvested for humans. This is a major ethical issue on its own as do humans as just another species on earth have the right to treat animals this way and modify them as they please for the sole reason of using them to save other humans. However this is also not as issue as In a way we breed pigs and farm them for their meat and to eat them so to use them for organ harvesting vs eating them is really the same thing as in both cases the pig down die. And for years humans have been okay with eating