Xenotransplantation - How Bad Science and Big Business Put the World at Risk from Viral Pandemics

ISIS Sustainable Science Audit #2

Xenotransplantation:

How Bad Science and Big Business Put the World at Risk

from Viral Pandemics

by Mae-Wan Ho and Joe Cummins

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Summary

Xenotransplantation - the transplant of animal organs into human beings - is a multi-billion dollar business venture built on the

anticipated sale of patented techniques and organs, as well as drugs to overcome organ-rejection (1). It has received strong criticism

and opposition from scientists warning of the risks of new viruses crossing from animal organs to human subjects and from there to

infect the population at large. But regulators are adopting a permissive attitude for clinical trials to go ahead. Scientific reports of virus

crossing from pig to human cells (2) and of viral infections in humans subjects transplanted with baboon livers (3) are being ignored or

dismissed, while inconclusive, widely faulted papers are taken as evidence that no viruses are found in xenotransplant patients (4).