I strongly support the idea of having transplant organ farms! Considering that over 10,000 North Americans die per year (that's 27 a day!!!) because of the severe shortage of human organs for transplantation, xenotransplantation* from pig to human seems to be the most realistic and reliable solution to this problem. The miniature pigs, that were bred by biotechnology companies such as Infigen, are ideal donors, since their organs" size is about the same as the humans". Because the keeping is fairly simple, the feed not too expensive, and only 0.000125% of all pigs slaughtered are going to be used for transplantation, this solution will be extremely cheap! In addition to that, those pigs can be infected by only little bacterial and viral diseases -- most of them which are not even malignant. And even if they are harmful to humans, those illnesses are easily preventable** and therefore don't pose too much danger of infecting the person who receive the organ. But not only that this solution would save thousands of people's lives, it would also stop the illegal purchase of organs of people from Asia, Africa and South America. In fact the "black organ market" will be most likely to disappear! Therefore because xenotransplantation saves lives, stops illegal business with organs and is at the same time easy, cheap and safe I fully support it and hope that it gains acceptance.
* Xenotransplantation is the process of transplanting an organ from one species into the other.
** Immerge Biotherapeutics Inc. published a study in February 2003, that stated that those diseases are not a problem anymore. However, not all of the effects of immune-suppressions and the compatibility of functions between the animal organ and the human organism have been discovered yet. Therefore it will still take a while (probably not before 2010) that xenotransplantations are 100% safe.
