The Pros And Cons Of Organ Transplantation

Prior to 1954, solid organ transplant surgeries were failed experiments and ethically controversial. Before allopathic surgeries were even fathomed, surgeons and scientists experimented with organs from goats and pigs. Similar to today, problems with transplant surgeries included a lack of suitable donor organs and the possibility of rejection. Since the first successful solid organ transplant, the technology and commonality of transplants has skyrocketed. The success of the first organ transplant provided a new hope for medicine that allowed for the further treatment and curing of people with diseases that could not be cured otherwise. The idea of organ transplantation has been around for thousands of years. Most ancient civilizations

However, is was not until much later that doctors realized there would be a difference in the outcome of autografts and homografts. Autografts are tissue grafts from one point to another on the same individual’s body. Homografts are tissue grafts from a donor of the same species of the recipient. Doctors refused to admit that homografts were unsuccessful. It was not until the twentieth century that scientific evidence and research were able to prove the unsuccess of homografts. This research assisted in discovering the fundamentals of immunology and the idea of transplant rejection. James B. Murphy was especially significant in immunology. He proved that resistance to homograft transplantations could be mostly attributed to the lymphoid system (citation). Although he was correct in his findings, most people in the medical field ignored his

Chimerism is a hybrid between two different species, which stems from ancient legends and myths. Recently, there has been success with chimeric pigs. Biologists have injected adult human skin and blood cells into pig embryos and manipulated them into being stem cells. Then, the biologists were able to figure out which types of cells best acted as stem cells. Scientists are hoping that chimeras could help humans create their own insulin for people with diabetes. In rats, biologists altered the genes of a rat to prevent them from developing a pancreas. Next, the biologists injected rats with stem cells from mice. The rats were normal, except their pancreases were made of mice cells. Islets were taken from the rat-mice, and they were transplanted into diabetic mice. The new islets in the mice were able to make enough insulin to keep the mouse’s glucose level normal for over a year. This is the first time in history that chimerism has successfully treated a medical