First pig organ transplants set to get approval

Jonathan Leake and Lois Rogers
August 6 2000 BRITAIN, The Sunday Times UK

THE use of pig organs for transplants to humans is poised to win government approval after a report from scientific advisers suggesting the technology could save hundreds of lives a year. Such operations are banned but the study proposes a regulatory framework to allow them under tight controls. These would include setting up emergency teams to deal with any outbreaks of animal illnesses in transplant patients or people in contact with them.

Organ recipients would have to sign contracts accepting lifetime monitoring, banning them from donating blood or having children and agreeing never to have sex without barrier contraception to avoid passing on viruses.

At least three research firms have drawn up proposals and it is expected the first requests to provide lungs, livers, kidneys and other animal organs - known as xenotransplantation - will be made next year.

Initially, the most likely donor animals will be pigs, which have been the subject of intensive research. Britain already has a herd of pigs modified with human genes to reduce the risk of rejection when their organs are transplanted into humans.

The recommendations are contained in a report for the United Kingdom Xenotransplantation Interim Regulatory Authority, which was set up three years ago to monitor research and examine whether animal transplants were morally and scientifically justified.

Among the most crucial issues is the risk that some of the many viruses known to be harboured by pigs could be passed to humans. Some fear that, if activated, such viruses could cause and spread untreatable disease.

George Griffin, professor of infectious diseases at St George's hospital, London, who chairs the authority's infection surveillance group, said he believed the operations could go ahead, subject to safeguards.

"The initial group of patients will be carefully chosen and watched. They are likely to be past the age of reproduction, so having children will not be an issue."

The report follows pressure from the biotechnology industry for xenotransplants to be allowed. Companies such as Imutran in Cambridge have wanted to start clinical trials since 1995.

They say there are more than 5,000 patients in Britain waiting for transplants but the lack of donors means only about 900 operations can take place each year. They argue that the recipients of animal organs would die without them and have little to lose.

The government has said it will accept the findings of the transplant authority. This weekend ministers were un-willing to comment but the health department said trials in humans will go ahead when "we are fully satisfied that the risks are acceptable".

Animal rights groups reacted furiously. They said that using animals as "grow-bags" was morally wrong.

The British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection said that inserting a genetically modified pig organ into a human was fraught with risks. "Pigs contain many latent viruses. No one knows how they will behave in the human body."