More recently, a group of scientists from Tokio, Japan discovered that organs of a particular animal could be grown inside others without any problem; a happy finding for the ones who are awaiting an organ transplant, but the situation seems not to be that simple. The first step into the creation of new organs available for humans to be used in transplants, is the creation of an animal without organs. Mice have been the chosen ones for this new science experiment, with the use of rats 'embryos' that are injected in the mouse, creating a mouse with rat embryos.
Studies with pigs have revealed that pigs and humans share some similarities and particularly talking about internal organs there are some important things to say: they have almost the same size and texture; that is why, they have been used for many different studies in the transplant field.
Now that the experiments with rats and mice have drawn some good results, the cultivation of human organs in pigs' bodies might become true; moreover, pigs' bodies have been already managed to generate human blood in their bodies; it seems that it is just a matter of time and also a matter of legalizing this experiment.
This is really interesting, Miguel. I have always heard that some animals' organs were really similar to ours, but I had never imagined that science could do this. I think it is a good opportunity to compensate the lack of organs donors around the world, especially when it comes to heart, lungs, and liver transplants. However, it could bring a lot of problems, for example, what happens if an organ is not compatible with the human body? what if people, instead of getting better, develop certain infections, or more diseases because of this?
ReplyDeleteIt is a very sensitive topic, as Loreto said, nobody can prove that humans' orgarns are 100 % compatible with pigs' and its always risky to try with people as a experiment, given that it may cause severe consequences on them. Also, in ispite of being helpful to us, I found the experiment a bit gloomy because, according to me, it is unnatural to transplant aninmal organs to people, it seems almost zoophilic.
ReplyDeleteThe situation here is very different my dear classmates.
ReplyDeleteOsvaldo, you are right, it is a little bit risky to transplant animal organs to people. As I said before it is a little bit risky, but some experiments revealed that, "the first step into the creation of new organs available for humans to be used in transplants, is the creation of an animal without organs"
with the use of human 'embryos' that are injected in the pig, creating a pig with human embryos and organs.
a while ago a read that pig veins were similar to human veins, so in accidents, doctors use them in humans to replace damaged ones. The idea of creating a sort of "werepig"(like a werewolf) scare me. Where is the limit of science. Have humans the right of manipulating DNA and combinating with other species? In my opinion,questions like that should be answered before taking the next step. But, more important than that, If everybody donates their organs once they die, would be necessary to experiment with animals to replace human organs?
ReplyDeleteI would like to say I had no idea about this and I am glad learning such interesting topic.
ReplyDeleteAccording to what my classmates said before, I think this experiment is a risk scientists have to take, in order to make sure whether it will have well results or not. Of course, it must be dangerous, but there is no other way to prove it if they do not try it in humans. There have been several times in which human-human transplants have failed so, why do not we try it with animals´organs? It might work for all of us if we needed it.