THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 12, 1996 TAG: 9610120008
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: OPINION
SOURCE: By SUSAN PARIS
LENGTH: 83 lines
Despite years of the best public-service campaigns Madison Avenue can muster, human donors account for only 10 percent of the hearts, kidneys, livers and other organs needed for transplants.
Nearly 50,000 Americans are on a waiting list for organs. This year, the wait will prove too long for some and 3,000 people will die.
We now have the technology to save many of those lives by using animal-donors. Yet animal-rights activists are branding as ``Frankenstein science'' the field of animal-to-human transplants - xenotransplantation - and are vowing to do everything possible to derail it.
The use of animal organs and tissues has been a part of medicine for decades. For example, people with defective heart valves can have them replaced with valves from pigs. The polio vaccine our children receive is made with monkey-kidney cells. Until a synthetic was developed, diabetics used insulin manufactured from cows and pigs. Experiments implanting fetal pig cells into the brains of Parkinson's disease patients and calf cells into the spinal cord of terminal cancer patients to relieve pain are now being conducted.
Actual transplantation of animal organs into human patients is a logical extension of this research, given today's advances in anti-rejection technology. Xenotransplantation holds promise for effective treatments for a wide range of diseases.
In submitting proposed guidelines for animal-to-human transplants, Food and Drug Administration Commissioner David Kessler acknowledged that the situation is a ``tightrope.'' ``We are balancing a real need for treatment against some very real risks,'' he cautioned.
Caution is the byword of researchers who are working in the field.
Zoonosis, the transmission of animal diseases to humans, is a very real possibility in any animal-human interchange. However, the FDA guidelines would so closely regulate the conditions under which animal-to-human transplants may be conducted as to make that risk negligible. The animal donors, specially bred and raised for the purpose, would be closely monitored. A xenotransplant patient would be far less likely than a farmer, an animal-care worker or even a pet owner to contract a disease from an animal.
It's natural that as researchers probe deeper in this developing area of scientific inquiry we are concerned about what could go wrong. Animal-rights groups, by painting scare scenarios of out-of-control diseases, are preying on our trepidation and hoping that our fears will halt scientific advancement.
Research is not without risk. Scientists are working to reduce those risks. But without courage - the courage of scientists, doctors and patients - no medical progress could be achieved.
There's the courage of the parents of Baby Fae, who 12 years ago gave permission to doctors to implant a baboon heart into their newborn daughter born with a hopelessly underdeveloped heart. Baby Fae, her surgical and care teams and her family never contracted any animal viruses.
The child lived 20 days and greatly increased scientists' understanding of xenotransplants and organ rejection.
There's the courage of Dr. Thomas Starzl, who heads the Transplantation Institute of the University of Pittsburgh and pioneered baboon-to-human liver transplants. His staunch advocacy of xenotransplantation has made him a prime target of the wrath of the animal-rights movement.
There's the courage of Jeff Getty, who underwent a baboon bone-marrow transplant last December in an attempt to bolster his immune system in its 15-year battle with HIV. His doctors could not tell him with certainty what would happen when the marrow was infused into his bloodstream. He could have immediately died from shock. The experiment was a success because Getty proved that the procedure is safe. Today, nearly 10 months later, Getty is doing well, has not developed any baboon viruses and is feeling better than he has in years. Scientists will add to their knowledge as they monitor Getty and as the procedure is performed on subsequent AIDS patients.
Animal-rights activists who oppose the use of animal organs for transplants must be awfully confident that they and their loved ones will never be on a waiting list for an organ transplant. How else to explain their attempts to sabotage such a promising field of research?
Reacting to the release of the FDA's proposed guidelines, Dan Mathews of PETA called xenotransplantation ``cruel.'' The real cruelty is that scientists have given us the technology but opposition by groups such as PETA threaten to keep the benefits of animal-organ transplants from reaching those in need. MEMO: Susan Paris is president of the Alexandria-based Americans for
Medical Progress Educational Foundation, a nonprofit organization
supported by individuals, pharmaceutical and bio-tech companies and
academic institutions. by CNB