PETA India
Feb 3, 20223 min
Animals aren’t toolsheds to be raided – they’re complex, intelligent individuals.
Reports regarding the first transplants of hearts and kidneys from genetically altered pigs into – and onto – humans should serve as a reminder that animal-to-human transplants are unethical, dangerous, and a tremendous waste of resources that could instead be used to fund research that might actually help humans.
The risk of transmitting unknown viruses during such procedures is real and, in the context of a pandemic, should be enough to end these studies forever. Animals aren’t toolsheds to be raided – they’re complex, intelligent individuals. Pigs, for example, communicate using specific oinks, grunts, or squeals when trying to woo a mate or express hunger.
Mother pigs sing to their babies while nursing, just as many human mothers do. The only right thing to do – and the healthiest and safest option for humans – is to leave pigs and other living, feeling beings alone and seek cures using modern science. As for patients in desperate need of organs, presumed consent laws would make human organs far more available.
Humans have no right to steal other sentient beings’ organs for our benefit – nor do we need to.
What is xenotransplantation and just how bad is it for humans and other animals?
Xenotransplantation, the Frankenscience of transplanting organs from one species to another, is nothing more than a vanity project that seeks to grab sensational headlines.
News stories about the latest pig kidney xenotransplantation stunt often leave readers in the dark about this “transplant” procedure.
Experimenters used a brain-dead patient who was being kept alive by a ventilator, not a person with kidney disease. And the pig’s kidney was attached via blood vessels to the outside of the patient’s body, where it stayed for only 54 hours.
Pigs and other animals used for xenotransplantation are genetically engineered and subjected to a lifetime of confinement and unspeakably painful procedures before they are killed – all without their consent.
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, public health experts, including a researcher from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others from the World Health Organization, had raised concerns about the potential of xenotransplantation to spread zoonotic and other infectious pathogens. Their warning? These transplants are dangerous to humans, as animals carry viruses and other infectious pathogens that could be introduced into human populations.
When it comes to addressing the shortage of donated organs, experts point out that making simple policy changes aimed at increasing organ donations carry zero public health risk, while the risk associated with using organs from other species is high.
From an ethical perspective, PETA entities, including PETA India, have always been opposed to the use of animals as warehouses for spare parts.
However, these concerns were brought into sharp relief after a whistleblower from the University of Alabama–Birmingham shared troubling reports that baboons were being subjected to agonising kidney and heart transplants using pigs’ organs.
Another whistleblower leaked protocols to PETA US from Columbia University, which documented that baboons and macaques were being caged alone, subjected to multiple major survival surgeries, numerous biopsies, and repeated blood draws.
In some experiments at Columbia, the animals were kept alive for up to 360 days following transplantation and then finally killed. The experimenters listed the following potential side effects of these procedures: severe gastrointestinal symptoms, severe diarrhoea, abdominal pain, nausea, vomiting, anaemia, weight loss, untreatable viral disease, bacteremia, severe infection, unrelieved pain, uncontrollable bleeding, and maculopapular rash.
Ultimately, these and all other animal-to-human organ transplants have failed.
Human organs remain the best hope, and presumed consent laws would make enough of them available to help those in need of a transplant.
Source: Peta India
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