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2. STRAYS AS ORGAN DONORS FOR PETS
An article in London's Daily Telegraph on April 19, 1999, began as follows: "Dogs and cats in animal shelters may be used to meet a growing demand for kidneys and other "spare parts" for sick pets."
The article described discussions by the ethics committee of the British Veterinarian Association. Whereas sick pets in the United States can receive organs from other animals, organ transplants are not yet performed for pets in England. But pet owners in England were lobbying for this option for their pets, so the British veterinarians were trying to develop reasonable policies for their country. Some veterinarians thought the idea was a good one; others did not.
In developing a national policy, the British veterinarians were looking for ways to protect all the animals that would be involved. For the pets, one important safeguard would be to limit transplants to those animals who could truly benefit. That means that certain older animals might not qualify, for example, if the major benefit of the transplant were merely to keep the owner happy while the aging animal continued to suffer. Other safeguards would be needed to ensure that no animals would be bred specifically for the purpose of providing spare parts of various sizes or tissue types. Individual veterinarians would have to be monitored, to make sure that they were not doing transplants solely to enhance their images, or to showcase their surgical skills, or to make money. Finally, animals must never be killed just so that their organs could be transplanted. The donors should be dogs and cats who were slated for death anyway. Currently in England, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals kills 12,000 sick dogs and 22,000 sick cats each year and another 800 dogs and 1800 cats that are strays for whom no homes can be found.
References
- The Daily Telegraph (London), 1999, April 19, 11.
- New Statesman, 1998, November 27, 4413(127):46.
Additional Resources
- Nature Medicine, 1996, January, 2(1):18-21.
- New York Times, 1998, February 3, F1, F6.
- The Human Use of Animals, F.B. Orlans, et al., Oxford U. Press, 1998.
Aims
Students should understand the following:
- Organ transplantation is not limited to human beings
- Different cultural bases for policies about transplantation and euthanasia of animals exist in different countries
- Technologic advances that make xenotransplants possible
- The problems?known and unknown?in doing xenotransplants
Suggested questions for discussion
- In the United States, the average cost for a transplant for a pet is $2200 for the surgery and an additional $220 per day for several weeks for post-operative care. Is it fair that only the rich can provide these options to their pets? How could resources be more fairly allocated?
- Pets obviously cannot give consent to surgery. Is it fair for their well-intentioned owners to expose pets to weeks or months of pain?
- If a pet owner accepts a transplant from an animal, what obligations, if any, does the pet owner have to the donor animal?
- When should veterinarians refuse to provide what they consider to be excessive treatments? What treatments are excessive?
- Is there a difference between killing animals to donate their organs to humans (xenotransplantation) and killing them to donate the organ for a pet?
- The proposal for doing transplants for pets places different values on pets and strays. The most highly valued animals are those that are owned (pets) and the expendable animals are those that are free (strays). This is exactly the opposite of the situation in humans. What accounts for this reversal?
- Why do people value pets so highly?
- Why is it legitimate to put animals "to sleep" when they are ill but not acceptable to do the same for humans?
- Xenotransplantation (xeno = Greek for strange or foreign) is of interest because human organs are scarce. What new approaches might our society take in order to increase the numbers of available human organs? (Some approaches that have been suggested are the following: waiving the fees for drivers' licenses for those who consent to be organ donors, having recipients or states pay funeral costs for donors, instituting a system of presumed consent by which all individuals would be presumed to be donors unless they officially declare that they are not, offering donors discounts on health insurance policies, giving preference for transplants to family members of those who are on donor lists.)
- What are some reasons why people do not sign organ donor cards? (Fear of death or fear of thinking about it, aversion to the idea of having one's organs in someone else's body, desire for an intact body at time of burial or cremation, inertia.)
- What are some reasons why they do? (Want to leave a legacy, don't want to waste the organs, have seen how organs have been of benefit to people they know.)
Topics for discussion/written assessment
- Should the veterinarians? association hammer out policy for all veterinarians or should individuals make their own decisions about ethical issues and about when a transplant is appropriate?
- Many fewer laws and regulations govern the activities of veterinarians who deal with pets than veterinarians who deal with animals in research. What regulations apply to research veterinarians? Who are the policymakers? Who monitors compliance?
- For several years, scientists and policymakers have discussed xenotransplantation as a solution to the problem of organ shortages. (Currently, half of all people in the U.S. who need organs die before they get them.) Most of the attention is on using the hearts of pigs for humans, because pig and human hearts are roughly the same size. In the past, some attempts were made to use baboon hearts in people. What ethical issues are raised by xenotransplants? What medical issues? What technological issues?
- What cultural and religious prohibitions might affect the willingness of some individuals to accept a xenotransplant?
- How sure can scientists be that a transplant from an animal will not introduce a new virus or other infectious agent into humans? How long might it take to determine if the estimate of safety was correct? (Note: HIV is a virus that appears to have entered the human population from chimpanzees shortly after World War II. It took 30 years to establish itself and create the AIDS epidemic. This epidemic remains totally out of control.)
- If xenotransplantation is a good idea, what animals should be considered donors? Which should not? (One suggestion is that animals now used as foods would be appropriate but those that are endangered would not.)
Topics for teacher preparation
- Xenotransplantion
- Code of conduct for veterinarians
- Institutional and federal guidelines for treating animals used in research
- Zoonoses (animal viruses that jump into humans)
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