Growing human organs in animals

[Catherine]

It is still early in the research, so human organs cannot be made to order, but work is being done in that area.
The article is technical, but interesting.

http://news.google.ca/news/url?sr=1&ct2=...t=2&at=dt0



I think some researchers see the possibility of growing transplantable organs in pigs. They would use a persons own cells so there would be no problem of rejection. It sounds like a dream doesn't it. You need a new part you just grow it.

There are a lot of ethical issues that need to be considered. There would be a lot of animals used in the research and of course the pig that just grew a new organ is going to be sacrificed when you get the organ.

That doesn't even touch the issues of human animal hybrids. Do we really want to go there. We are not doing well coping with "normal" animals, how will we sort things out when we have created animals that are clearly part human.

I would never want to see all avenues of this research closed. Stem cells seem to be the hope for future medical treatments.
Not all uses of stem cells are wrong, nor are they all right. Some areas of research are problematic. Just because we can do something doesn't mean we should. Also I think we need to ask ourselves about the ethics of how some research is done.

There are probably ways organs can be grown in the lab from stem cells. Why would we want to grow organs in pigs?