At some diseases the organ transplantation is the only hope for rescue of life of the patient. One of current problems of transplantology – the shortage of donor organs. To patients have to wait months and even years for operation. Many patients die, without having waited. The ksenotransplantation - temporary organ transplantation of animals to the person could become a solution.
It is not so simple to replace to the person body of an animal. The transplanted body has to correspond to age, a constitution and weight of the recipient, the genetic compatibility is necessary. Even the donor person is selected very carefully what to speak about a being of other look. Nevertheless, requirements of medical practice dictate the terms. It would be logical to assume that the being, closest to the person, – a chimpanzee will become the donor of bodies, but transplantologists turned looks on … a pig. People, far from science, even hurried to call in this regard into question origin of the person from a monkey and Darwin theory in general.
Ksenotransplantation: myths and reality
Reasonings on mass change of pork bodies to people are strongly exaggerated. Today the medicine did not step further transplantation of mechanically functional fabrics – heart valves, cartilages and tendons. Fabrics before change process special chemicals and ultrasound to destroy antigens and to avoid rejection of these fabrics an organism of the recipient. Even it is very easy to damage such transplants when processing, having made impractical what to speak about more difficult formations – heart, a kidney or a liver. Therefore the speech about change of the whole bodies of a pig to the person does not go yet. Certain hopes are laid on creation of genetically modified pigs. If by change of a genome to force cages of a pig to synthesize human glycoproteins on the surface, the immune system of the person will not apprehend such bodies as something others. But this method so far at a stage of laboratory researches, before mass application in medical practice it is still far.
Advantages of a pig as donor
The choice of a pig as the possible donor of bodies is explained not by so genetic proximity of this animal to the person. The genetically closest to animals after all remains to a chimpanzee. But the number of these monkeys is measured in the world by tens of thousands, for mass application in medicine it is obviously not enough. Pigs are slaughtered with millions every year. As for fabric compatibility, that is animals, closer to the person, are mice, but they do not approach by the size, and pigs in this plan are quite comparable to the person. People are engaged in cultivation of pigs long ago, these animals are well studied. It is improbable that they "will present" some unknown dreadful disease which can be infected at transplantation. Pigs well breed and quickly grow, and their cultivation and contents manages rather cheap. All this forces to prefer pigs, but not monkeys which use would turn operations on organ transplantation – already not cheap – into the service available only to billionaires.