From: Philip Howison (phowison@ihug.co.nz)
Date: Thu Feb 28 2002 - 21:30:52 MST
> Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 13:43:42 -0800 (PST)
> From: jeff davis <jrd1415@yahoo.com>
> Subject: I want to buy a bowel (was RE: organ donation)
>
> Friends,
> It occurs to me that this entire situation, with its
> powerful ethical concerns, intensity of emotion, and
> fierce social focus is likely to evaporate rather
> abruptly right before our eyes--become moot--, with
> the availability of alternatives to salvaged human
> organs.
>
> Replacement organs from pigs--
>
> http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002-02/shc-ibi022502.php
>
> could be close. When they become available, it will
> mean multiple organ systems in great abundance, with
> near zero ethical problems(there'll still be some
> religious conflicts and animal rights issues, but
> these will pale in comparision to questions relating
> to "carving up the dead/poor/clones/embryos").
>
> This will mark a first-generation solution to the
> desperate-human-suffering-driven demand for
> replacement organs, and will substantially reduce the
> social pressure surrounding the issue--take "the heat"
> off, as it were. After that breakthrough, I would be
> looking for extensions of this technology. Those same
> transgenic pigs might then be employed--would
> immunocompatibility work both ways do you think?-- as
> hosts for the growing of individual personal--ie "your
> own tissue"-- replacement parts using stem cell
> cloning techniques.
>
> Thence on to nano-organs and other surprises.
>
> -----------------------------
>
> Anyway, my point is, that I think the current
> intensity of emotion obscures the imminent calm after
> the storm, analogous to the radical change,
> improvement, and expansion in surgical practice
> brought about by the advent of anesthesia.
>
> Fix the problem. Enhance. Transcend.
>
> Best, Jeff Davis
Yes, but I am talking about problems right now, in the present, and a
possible
solution. I agree that salvaged human organs will become obsolete (well, I
hope so)
in the future, but people are dying right now, and will continue to do so
until
the new technologies are introduced. And I disagree that
xenotransplantation
would have less ethical concerns than human transplants (although probably
less
than selling organs). Imagine the highly emotional GE debate and multiply
the
emotion by a factor of at least 10, and I think you would be close.
Philip
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