NZ Herald - 30 August 2004

People get say on animal parts

30.08.2004
By SIMON COLLINS

Hearts and kidneys from pigs could be transplanted into people who cannot find human donors within the next few years, depending on the outcome of a public consultation launched on Friday.

The Bioethics Council, fresh from a national "dialogue" about putting human genes into animals, now wants the public's views on transplants in the opposite direction - from animals to people.

And the surgeon who did Jonah Lomu's kidney transplant last month, Professor Stephen Munn, said the first transplants of kidneys and hearts from pigs into humans could take place internationally within two years.

Professor Munn transplanted a pig's kidney into a baboon at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota in 1997. The baboon's immune system rejected the kidney and the ape died soon afterwards, but scientists have now genetically modified pigs so that the body does not recognise their organs as foreign.

"The biggest breakthrough is that pigs are able to be cloned. That means that not only is it possible to add genes, it's possible to delete genes," Mr Munn said.

"Deleting genes is the key to success because you get rid of the things that we have antibodies against."

He said 350 people here were waiting for kidney transplants and pig organs could be the answer.

"If it's successful overseas, I'd be interested," he said.

The Government banned animal-to-human transplants in 2001, unless specifically authorised by the Minister of Health, after Auckland company Diatranz sought approval to transplant insulin-producing cells from the pancreas of pigs into people with diabetes.

The Health Ministry's chief safety adviser, Dr Bob Boyd, said at the time that the transplants risked infecting the human population with pig "retroviruses" - viruses such as HIV that insert themselves into the genetic material in a patient's cells.

However, the ban will expire next June 30, and the Bioethics Council has written to about 1000 people to start a dialogue on what should happen next. Council chairwoman Jill White said the council would produce a final report about this time next year.

A working group comprising Ms White and council members Anne Dickinson, Waiora Port and Dr Martin Wilkinson has begun consultations with interested groups.

One of those consulted, Anthony Terry of Save Animals From Exploitation, said he had serious concerns for the animals that would be killed to provide either whole organs or pancreatic cells. "You are talking about animals which have to be pathogen-free, so they are in environments which are even more modified and sterile than any other laboratory, and they are just used for harvesting their organs."

The New Zealand managing director of Diatranz, now called Living Cell Technologies, Dr Paul Tan, confirmed that his company's pigs would be killed so that insulin-producing cells could be extracted from their pancreas, but he said they were treated "far more humanely" than pigs bred for bacon.

The company moved its head office to Adelaide last year because of the ban on pig cell transplants here, and is doing trials on monkeys in Singapore.

Dr Tan said the company hoped to get US Food and Drug Administration approval to start trials putting pig cells into humans in the US late next year.

"The US is clearly the place to go for xenotransplantation" although they would consider doing trials here.

Bioethics Council

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