What Is Xenotransplantation? new form of genetic alteration

[Zorkaplex 0]

Xenotransplantation is basically modifying and animals DNA to grow a body part then after time the body part is surgically removed. This process is an exelent solution to organ harvesting from human clones! This does not affect the animal's life at all nor will it hurt the animal! For example:Bob is driving home from work and crashes into a stop sign and gets his ear ripped off. Bob is a model and needs to look pretty. So he goes to a Xenotransplantation lab and orders an ear.The scientists take Betty the perfect healthly nothing-wrong with rat. They get a bit of her DNA and modify it with Bobs DNA so the ear tissue will be accepted by Bobs body. They clone this ear Betty so she will grow an ear on her back! So the EarBetty is born and grows up the ear is then surgically removed and planced in place of Bobs missing ear.Bob lives on today happy and with two ears while betty the rat continiues to serve happy with lots of care while EarBetty is released into the wild to live a happy life.

[Plenoptic 0]

http://www.uncaged.co.uk/xeno.htm - My Resource

Well the only problem with Xenotransplantation is that it is very dangerous. Scientists don't really know too much about the DNA of other organisms like pigs and each of us have our own viruses. If we retrieve stuff from a pig and mix the DNA we are mixing viruses as well that they say could make entirely new organisms. If not then the viruses from the pig could be very harmful to your body. Your body might not even take the new organ because it hasn't seen anything like it before and it will try to destroy it because it could be harmful. There are many many possibilities that things could go terribly wrong.

[Zorkaplex 0]

Well it is a good solution to coling organ havesting and it does have some kinks to be worked out but once perfected it could be really usefull! Also modifying the DNA is quite hard. Not to mention it seems morally correct.

[amhso 0]

did you mean moralling incorrect?it's good for humankind but it's not the best way to treat animals.

[Plenoptic 0]

There are guys called I think biochemists or something like that. They mix DNA from different organisms to make new organisms. They hope to make resources like hydrogen available to power cars instead of using gas. Maybe they should help them lol They have to study these things more though before they go in and mess everything up. They need to know more about the animal they are taking DNA from because they could really mess things up for people. They would have to some how get rid of the viruses and then make sure the body won't destroy the new organ. It could take years to do this maybe decades. Once they do you will have to be a professional sports star or model to be able to afford it lol. Maybe not.

[Zorkaplex 0]

Well, i dont agree with it at all but to other people it would seem morally correct. What I have to say:This process doesn?t hurt the animal as well. You may think this idea is very wondrous but is very hazardous to all humans. They get these body parts by genetically modifying rats or other various animals so they will grow human body parts on their backs. Everyone would think that this seems fine but they don?t know the major risks involved in this process. Most people don?t realize what is happening with this transplant. We are basically taking a part of an animal and attaching it to us! This is a big mistake. It only takes one transmission from one baboon to one human to start an epidemic. There's no way you can make it safe. What if the animal is carrying a disease it could transfer to a human. This transplant could easily kill the human who received the body part.Approximately 6,000 people are on the waiting lists for human organs: does xenotransplantation offer them real hope, or might it be one of the greatest medical disasters of all time? The success rate for xenotransplantation is very low, there for we can?t really rely on this method for organ transplants. All transplanted organs are liable to rejection or the body?s own defense mechanisms will attempt to destroy the ?foreign? organ. To try to prevent this, the body?s defenses must be suppressed with large doses of very powerful and toxic immunosuppressant drugs or medifying the DNA to the recipiant's DNA which is dangerous and is unlikely to suceed.Nothing could be worse than if in trying to save our lives we inadvertently engineered a plague. It is well established that most new emerging human infectious diseases generally have their origins in other species. A direct method of establishing new infectious human disease would be to implant infected tissues from a nonhuman species into humans thus allowing virus?s direct access to human tissues, if ever have we had as much knowledge to prevent a future epidemic. "What is lacking is the wisdom to act upon that knowledge." says Dr Jon Allan, Virologist. They are quite right too, some viruses carried by pigs are impossible to eradicate or cure. Experiments also have shown that these viruses can infect human tissue. There have been many instances of diseases crossing between species with catastrophic results like HIV and the recent chicken flu epidemic in Hong Kong. Patients receiving xenotransplants will have to take immunosuppressant to prevent rejection and drugs that inhibit the very defenses that protect us against such diseases. That will increase the risk of infection of the transplant wound and that they would become ill of some ?present? that was with the organ or body part. The patient should know of xenotransplantation risks before surgery.Over all the whole operation and process is risky but beneficial if successful. The transplant could be life saving for the patient. Plus over time xenotransplantation will become more advanced and less risky. There also will be more stock of body parts and organs. The process does not hurt the animal either. Xenotransplantation is not entirely bad in essence.Xenotransplantation is dangerous and can have catastrophic affect on the patient and society, if it goes wrong. I believe that xenotransplantation is not right, morally and physically. We are not actually hurting the animals but we are actually HARVESTING their organs and body parts. Xenotransplantation should be used rarely and only when in a dire situation. I do not stand with xenotransplantation.

Notice from jlhaslip:

edit to insert double quote as reported

Edited December 3, 2005 by jlhaslip (see edit history)

[iGuest 3]

Well, for one, that is not xenotransplantation. Xenotransplantation is when they breed animals, preferably pigs, as they have the best success and compatibility rate. Recently, they have been inserting human DNA to help with compatibility, but the major thing is that they take the organ out of the grown pig, to be placed in a human, and this kills the pig. It doesn't grow an ear on it's back, it grows a lung or liver in it's own body, and they kill it before it gets taken out. It's inhumane, and if you ask me, humans grown for xenotransplantation would have a much higher success rate.

[sheepdog 10]

it grows a lung or liver in it's own body, and they kill it before it gets taken out. It's inhumane,

I fail to see the inhmane part of this. What's the difference between killing a pig for a lung or liver, than killing it for pork chops? What would be better still is if we could harvest the needed body parts for human transplant, and then eat the rest of the pig. But if the pigs dna had been changed to human's, then I suppose eating it would make people cannibals.

[fermin25 3]

Xenotransplantation is the use of DNA modified animals to make organs those will be used by humans. The are three types of transplantations. Autotransplantation like tissue located in the abdominal zone to a damaged part of the skin in any part of the body. Alotransplantation like the common tranfer of the organs from a healthy person to other diseased. And at last we have the Xenotransplantation using animals and DNA chains to produce organs. The incredibles advantages of the transplatation are based in the disponibility of the organs. Nowadays the main problem in the transplantation medicine is the low availability of organs. This is caused by numerous factors. The main is the resistence of the people to donate their organs. When an alotranplant is made there is some factors. The diseased people factor is good because he is obtaining a healthy and functional organ to his sick body. The healthy people from a medical point of view only receive harm to their bodies because an organ is being extracted. The donators are more exposed to develop a lot of diseases. Some related with the surgery and others related with the less-function of the organ extracted. So we don?t want to donate our organs at less it will be necessary to save to a familiar, friend or any important people in our lifes. The xenotransplantation is great but from the inmune point of view have a lot of dangers because is the transference from a specie to other. The reject response of the organism to the strange tissues and antigens can be more powerful than normal transplants and cause more cases of destruction of the organ transplanted. So once you are concious of this you can decide if you take the risk or not. The advances in the medical practice are great but the xenotransplantation is not used yet with the regularity that is going to be used in the future. There is some investigations to do first.