Essay on Is Xenotransplantation an Ethical Solution or...

Is Xenotransplantation an ethical solution or disaster? nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp; nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;The audience for this paper is comprised of those readers looking to gain knowledge on the issue of xenotransplantation. This group of people is unaware of the dynamics of the ethical arguments surrounding this current issue. This audience does not have a specific age or belief, reflecting the varied positions of the argument. Due to this hunger for factual information, they do not wish to have someone else’s views imposed on them. Instead, they wish to define and establish a view of their own. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;†¦show more content†¦Next, in 1905, a French surgeon transplanted pieces of a rabbit’s kidney into a sixteen year old boy. The reason for this surgery being the boy was suffering from the final stage of kidney failure. He died two nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;1 weeks after the surgery had taken place (Shankarkumar, 318). nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;The first attempts of xenotrantransplantation in the U.S. did not occur until the 1960’s. During this time, scientists tried to transplant baboon and chimpanzee organs to humans. These transplants failed due to rejection by the human immune system (Baker, 643). The most well known xenotransplantation attempt, known as Baby Fae, occurred in 1985 at the Coma Linda University Medical Center in California. During this surgery, Dr. Leonard Bailey completed the first human neonatal cardiac xenotransplantation by placing the heart of a baboon into an infant. Fae, the infant, suffered from hypo-plastic left heart syndrome, or simply an incomplete heart. The heart functioned for twenty days until stopping, killing Baby Fae (Clark, 1085). This attempt raised difficult ethical and policy issues, which have not yet been answered. nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;Recently, the low numbers of human donor organs and short term mechanical â€Å"organ† replacements have given cause for