Meet Beanie, one of IPPL's
Sanctuary Gibbons
COALITION SEEKS BAN ON ANIMAL TRANSPLANTS
by Alix Fano, Director, Medical Research Modernization Committee
Since 1905, some 55 to 60 humans have received tissues and organs from baboons, pigs, goats and other animals. All have died from infections and complications related to hyperacute rejection.
Despite this poor track record, biotechnology companies like the Swiss multinational Novartis and the US-based companies Alexion and DNX, are breeding herds of transgenic pigs with human genes, so that their organs can be harvested and transplanted into humans.
The companies are motivated by the desire to solve the chronic shortage of human organs.
Though a conventional pig heart put into a human will turn black and stop beating in fifteen minutes, it is hoped that these "humanized" pig organs, which allegedly produce human proteins, will not be rejected.
Others, like Leonard Bailey at Loma Linda University, who transplanted a baboon heart into the infant "Baby Fae" in 1984, leading to the baby's death, are hoping to use "genetically clean" baboons as donors in animal-to-human organ transplants or xenotransplants. Loma Linda has a baboon colony "in house."
Prominent physicians and scientists have openly voiced their concerns about the risks of transferring infectious animal viruses to humans through end oxenotransplants.
Virologists like Jonathan Allan of the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research have appealed to public health agencies to, at the very least, exclude nonhuman primates as organ donors, as they harbor numerous lethal endogenous retroviruses.
But officials at the US Centers for Disease Control, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the National Institutes of Health (which continues to fund xenotransplant research with baboons) have denied such requests, and have refused to consider a moratorium on clinical trials with animal organs.
But evidence mounts that xenotransplantation should be banned outright. Instances of human infection and death from animal viruses that are harmless to their animal hosts are on the rise. In December 1997, a laboratory worker at the Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center in Atlanta died after she was splashed with body fluids from a rhesus monkey infected with the deadly herpes B virus.
The pathogenic potential of simian foamy viruses, already found in the bloodstream of several laboratory workers in the US, may only become known after they become well established in the human population. Some scientists theorize that the worldwide spread of HIV infection was caused by a virus that jumped from monkeys to humans.
Pigs are no less of a concern. There are already 25 known diseases that can be acquired from pigs, including leptospirosis and influenza.
The swine flu of 1918 killed 20 million people worldwide; and both the Asian flu of 1957 and the Hong Kong flu virus of 1967 mutated in pigs.
Ann Tibell, a researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden, who is using pig cells in experimental diabetes treatments, has detected swine flu antibodies in ten patients, and porcine parcovirus in five.
Within the last year, scientists have discovered several new viruses in pigs, including pig endogenous retroviruses (PERVs) that infect human cells in vitro.
British virologist Robin Weiss theorizes that the use of genetically modified pigs as organ donors may increase the transfer of dangerous viruses to humans.
Experts admit that surveillance systems to guard against new and emerging infectious diseases are inadequate.
The US General Accounting Office, a government "watchdog" agency, recently faulted the FDA for failing to track patients who may have received human tissues infected with HIV and other viruses.
It is doubtful that FDA could adequately monitor animal tissues transplanted into humans. Moreover, the latest "bird flu" outbreak in Hong Kong, the result of a virus that jumped directly from chickens to humans, revealed that public health agencies are ill-prepared to deal with global viral epidemics.
The Campaign for Responsible Transplantation (CRT), a coalition of health, consumer advocacy and public interest groups, was formed in January 1998 to halt xenotransplantation because the technology is dangerous, costly and unproven.
In April, CRT initiated a petition campaign to broaden public support for a ban on xenotransplants. Over 40 organizations representing more than 1.5 million people from around the world have already joined the campaign.
CRT is enlisting corporations, non-profits and religious groups to join the growing coalition and aims to collect 100,000 signatures on the petition by the end of the summer.
Of Pigs, Primates and Plagues: A Layperson's Guide to the Problems With
Animal-to-Human Organ Transplants (a fully referenced 24-page report, with
a 4-page summary) is available for $5 (US) from the Medical Research Modernization
Committee, PO Box 2751, New York NY, 10163-2751, USA.
Meet Beanie, one of IPPL's
Sanctuary Gibbons