Pig Organs in Humans: The Science Is Not Ready Yet, Says Ethicist

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

I'm Art Caplan at the Division of Medical Ethics. I'm at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine in New York City.

My school, NYU, has been working for some time to try to develop alternatives to human organs from cadavers to permit more transplants to take place in the United States. There is still an enormous gap between the number of people who need transplants and the number of people who donate organs upon death.

Some people donate kidneys when they're alive, but we still need hearts, livers, lungs, and in the emerging world of transplant, potentially other organs — such as fallopian tubes, uteruses, or other body parts — that might benefit those who have been born without them or underwent cancer treatment and had them removed. The bulk of attention is obviously on the lifesaving organs, and we're still very, very short in supply.

One idea is to use organs from animals. For those of you who have tracked the history, there were efforts way back in the 1980s to try to use primates — to use baboon hearts or chimp hearts — and sometimes in children, but they didn't work.