No pig in a poke

TRANSPLANTING organs brings life to the dying. But most donor organs are harvested from the dead. Shortfalls in the number of volunteer donors, the difficulty of gaining the consent of grieving relatives, and a reduction in most countries of the rate of fatal road accidents (the most reliable source of healthy organs), mean that there is a constant lack of them. Thousands die each year while on waiting lists for transplants. Researchers have, therefore, long sought ways to boost supply.

One idea is to harvest animal organs. That is less mad than it sounds. A liver, a kidney or a cornea does the same job, regardless of species. And it works. In 1984 an American child lived for three weeks after receiving a baboon heart intended as a stopgap until a human donor could be found (unfortunately, one was not found in time). Conversely, human organs have been transplanted into animals for the purpose of research. Earlier this year, for example, a paper in the American Journal of Transplantation described moving kidneys from human fetuses into rats.