# Reasons against pig organ transplants **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 18, 2000, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-against-pig-organ-transplants/29877 "2000-08-18T17:56:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 2\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Triskadecamus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b19c9b/32.png) [@Triskadecamus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Triskadecamus)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2000, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-against-pig-organ-transplants/29877/21 "2000-08-23T14:28:02Z")
A recent experiment has demonstrated a possible source of xenoses in transplant technology, although the specific virus examined has not been shown to be a threat of any identified pathology. That is a limited assurance in my opinion, since the virus does travel to the new host species during transplantation, and does become active thereafter. While the mice seem unaffected in this case, the method of transfer of the virus is demonstrated quite well. > [@](#): > > The team injected pig islet cells under the kidneys of mice that lacked a functioning immune system. These so-called NOD/SCID mice accept pig tissue as their own (as do transplant patients receiving immunosuppressant drugs). When the team tested the islets for PERV activity over the next 7 weeks, they found signs of an active infection. Because the mice lived in a sterile environment, the transplantation procedure must have “woken up” the pig retrovirus. In addition, they found that the pig cells had scattered throughout the body in 17 of the 25 mice, and some of these wandering cells had infected nearby mouse cells. > ELIZABETH PENNISI – Science Now The question which we should examine is not whether we would accept an existing transplant to save our own lives, or the life of a loved one. What we should be asking is should we be investing millions of dollars to develop the technology, knowing that it has this potential to expose the species to new diseases of unknown virulence? Tris ---
**Author:** ![hawthorne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/c89c15/32.png) [@hawthorne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hawthorne)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2000, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-against-pig-organ-transplants/29877/22 "2000-08-23T14:29:08Z")
Agreed on all counts **casdave**. The upper-bound for CJD seems to have been coming down recently: we still don’t know if there is human to human transmission outside of surgery (IIRC there hasd been human-human transmission with corneal transplants and HRT using pituatry glands) but it now seems unlikely that it is going to kill us all! Hep-C has the potential to be pretty ugly, maybe uglier than HIV in industrialised countries. I agree that the risk of pig-human problems is very small, but how small does it have to be before it is acceptable and what degree of confidence do we need in risk estimates to proceed? picmr [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/reasons-against-pig-organ-transplants/29877.md?page=1)