According to the website Organdonor.gov, since August 2017, there are over 116,000 men, women, and children on the national transplant waiting list. Every single day, 20 people die waiting for a transplant. Not everyone in need of lungs, a kidney, or heart is always so lucky that they get one as soon as they need it. If you take into consideration the number of tragedies in a day and the number of people waiting for a transplant, you can only imagine how high the demand of organs is. What if we did not limit transplant givers or recipients to humans? The medical field should be doing more research and practice procedures using Xenotransplantation for the sake of others lives that are in danger and cannot wait.
Xenotransplantation is the transplantation …show more content…
The pros of Xenotransplantation cover a variety of topics. The most common pro of this procedure is of course that it has the potential to be life saving. Essential research and progress has been made within the last 100 years. Going hand in hand with development, using xenotransplantation will open new research opportunities. If we keep using this method, it leaves more room for improvement and further in depth research to be found. If we used animal organs opposed to human organs, death would dramatically decrease because more organs would be readily available (“USA …show more content…
There have been real-life situations where Xenotransplantation has been successful for a period of time and has gone above and beyond the expectations. In 1963, seven patients went 60 days without organ failure living with baboon kidneys. In 1984, Stephanie Fae Beauclair, or more commonly known as “Baby Fae”, was the first semi-successful infant heart transplant recipient. Baby Fae was born three weeks premature with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, which is a defect where the left side of the heart is left underdeveloped. A transplant would fix the problem, but due to the lack of success with infant heart transplants prior, Baby Fae didn't have any hope for her condition. Her life expectancy was two weeks. The first human-human heart transplant was in 1967 and was left unsuccessful, as well as the operations after. Dr. Leonard Bailey, a pediatric cardiac surgeon at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, had spent many years studying and researching Xenotransplantation and xenografts itself. The first human-simian transplant was unsuccessfully performed in 1964, after having the patient die within hours after surgery. Dr. Bailey was willing to take the chance to perform surgery if Baby Fae’s parents gave consent. Bailey did receive confirmation of permission to operate. On October 26th, 1984, after Baby Fae’s condition began to worsen, the