The long wait for organs threatens the ethics of transplant medicine, with some bioethicists calling for the end of the dead donor rule — allowing “death by organ donation” — while a few have gone so far as to argue that cloned fetuses be gestated in artificial wombs for that purpose when the technology is perfected.
But an ethical means of easing a very real problem is advancing exponentially — using genetically modified pig organs. Toward that end, early xenotransplantation experiments are already being conducted. A recent success saw a pig kidney last for 217 days in a man with kidney failure, which kept him alive until a human organ could be transplanted:
A man has been given a genetically modified pig kidney which enabled him to stay off dialysis for nine months in a world first.
Doctors said the animal organ was used as a temporary “bridge” while the man waited for a transplant from a human donor.
Tim Andrews, who had end-stage kidney disease, was 66 when he received the pig kidney in the US in January 2025.
He lived successfully with the genetically edited organ for 271 days before moving to short-term dialysis and receiving a donor human kidney.
It is the longest dialysis-free survival after a pig kidney transplant in a living human and the first transition from pig-to-human kidney transplantation, doctors have said.
The pigs are genetically engineered to reduce rejection. If this could be perfected — other organs such as hearts and livers are beginning to be used in xenotransplantation experiments — many human lives could be saved. There is little doubt that biotechnologists could raise enough pigs for the purpose.
Some might flinch. But animal parts, such as cow heart valves, are already used in some human therapies. Assuming all safety issues, such as making sure there is no danger in a porcine virus crossing the species barrier, who could object on ethical grounds other than PETA — a rat, is a pig, is a dog, is a boy — animal rights fanatics?