Pig organs can be genetically modified to give human babies a new lease of life

British doctors will be the first to use cutting edge technology, transplanting pig organs to save newborn human babies suffering from oesophagus astresia.

PHOTO: THE SUN

LONDON, UK – Doctors have found a solution for an illness known as oesophagus atresia, where the baby’s gullet is disconnected from its stomach, causing difficulty in swallowing and may later lead to choking and pneumonia.

The treatment discovered by Surgeon Paolo De Coppi and his research team at Great Ormond Street Hospital in Londonuses uses ‘scaffolds’, or food pipes from pigs.

The food pipes are re-engineered with the child’s own stem cells just after birth. The tissue engineering takes about eight weeks, before it is reintroduced into the child’s body at about two to three months of age.

PHOTO: Dailymail

“This is completely new. Pigs have been used for heart valve replacement for many years, but nobody has received an organ developed from an ‘animal scaffold’ this way,”
– SURGEON PAOLO DE COPPI

The procedure costs around £100,000, at the moment, but, doctors are hoping to minimise the costs in the future while using this treatment on adults with oesophageal cancer.

PHOTO: Dailymail

There is controversy surrounding these unconventional, ‘Frankenscience’ medical methods including an experiment to use pigs to grow human organs. Embryos are implanted into female pigs where they are allowed to incubate for up to 28 days. Strict rules ensure that all hybrid animals are destroyed after 28 days and embryos cannot mature further.

The ethical backlash aside, this could mean saving thousands of lives in the United Kingdom every year if this genetic engineering method is allowed to advance and materialise as an alternative to organ transplants.