The recent transplantation of pig hearts into humans is not a cause for celebration. It is a tragedy that casts a shadow over the existing and real strategies we have to help people suffering from heart failure. Xenotransplantation, or transplantation from animals to humans, involves serious medical and ethical concerns and is indefensible as a strategy to address heart disease.
Transplants, even organs from other humans, come with significant risks, including immunosuppression and infection. This term has become familiar to us during COVID-19. Research and development dollars should be invested in developing medicines with improved safety and efficacy profiles to help treat heart disease and prevent the need for transplants in the first place. A uniquely human approach heart on chipcan reliably model human heart tissue and advance the drug discovery and testing pipeline.
Additionally, by changing Americans’ diets from foods high in cholesterol and saturated fat to diets rich in plant-based foods, prevention and reversal of heart disease could be achieved for millions of patients. A low-fat, high-fiber diet, combined with regular exercise and a healthy lifestyle, can prevent, delay, and even reverse heart disease and other cardiovascular events.As a pioneer of Dr. Dean Ornish studyParticipants with moderate to severe heart disease improved blood flow to their hearts within a month after making simple dietary and lifestyle changes. After a year, even the severely occluded artery was reopened. Diet and lifestyle changes offer real solutions for most patients without falling into the ethical quagmire of xenotransplantation.
The lives of people with heart disease can be extended without resorting to heart transplants through interventions such as: surgical ventricular repairaimed at restoring the original shape and volume of the heart. cardiac regeneration therapy, using human pluripotent stem cells.or mechanical circulatory support etc. ventricular assist deviceis becoming less invasive.
Furthermore, while there are several ways to improve outcomes for patients waiting for organ transplants, the most obvious is changing to an opt-out organ donation system, which would greatly increase the number of human organs available for transplant. To do. By using “expanded criteria donors” (reducing donor heart requirements), limiting cold ischemia time (keeping the donor heart warm and beating until the time of transplantation), and improving the donor-recipient relationship, It may be possible to increase the number of eligible organs. Improving the matching process, diagnosis and management of organ rejection.
Transplant allocation policies could also be improved. In 2018, Unified network for organ sharing Donor heart allocation system implementedwhich probably led to the new annual setting record Applies to both donations and heart, kidney, and liver transplants. Researchers, clinicians, and organ procurement organizations must continue to investigate new ways to improve transplant allocation systems.
Animal organ transplantation not only presents a number of medically desirable options, but also raises significant ethical concerns, including how animals in organ farms are bred, cared for, and housed. Instead of wasting time and research funds on harming animals and toying with the dangerous and dystopian concept of xenotransplantation, we need to double down on these much better and much more achievable approaches. there is. We cannot let the novelty and shock value of transplanting animal organs into the human body distract us from using and improving known strategies to help people suffering from heart disease.
