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Doctors voice virus fears over xenotransplants

At a meeting in London last week the pressure group Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible Medicine called for a long term moratorium on such preparatory research "in the interests of public health."

While transgenic baboons have been bred in the US, the Cambridge based company Imutran, founded 12 years ago, has now raised four generations of transgenic pigs-- the first animals most likely to become organ donors in Britain.

Alix Fano, media director of the doctors' and lawyers' pressure group, cites evidence of cross-species infection in recent reported cases of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD) and the Ebola and HIV viruses. "Pigs are no different," she said. "Leptospirosis causing liver and kidney damage and erysipelas giving rise to skin infections are specifically associated with pigs and may be passed to immunosuppressed humans."

Imutran maintains that it has compiled a comprehensive inventory of every pig pathogen along with a detailed risk assessment for transmission. "Each transgenic animal, and therefore each organ, has been grown in a carefully controlled environment. Science is leading this research, both here and in the US, with full cooperation and consultation with government advisory bodies," a spokeswoman for Imutran said.

David Shapiro, executive secretary of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics whose recent publication Animal to Human Transplant-- the Ethics of Xenotransplantation sought to provide a detailed review, called the pressure group "opportunistic."

"The possibility of viral infectivity is a real one, but not a new one. Unfortunately, there are no risk free procedures. Many transplant surgeons will admit that it is impossible to screen human organs for all possible pathogens. Cases of CJD, HIV, and hepatitis have all been recorded, but no scientist is unaware of the risks of transmission, and all are working to minimise them," Mr Shapiro said.

Transgenic programmes were developed specifically to overcome the human donor shortage. The Department of Health's advisory group, led by London University's Professor Ian Kennedy, will follow up the Nuffield group's report, and its findings due in the summer will lay the basis for legislation.

In 1994 in the UK alone, 5000 patients awaited transplantation. If the moratorium on transgenic transplantation is implemented, what should they do in the meantime? "They will have to wait," Alix Fano acknowledged.

The pressure group, which evolved from Doctors in Britain against Animal Experiments, would rather see government funding directed towards increasing the pool of human donors, as in the universal opt-in schemes operated in Belgium and Singapore. The human donor pool in Belgium almost doubled over two years after the introduction of the scheme in 1986.--ALISON BOULTON, freelance journalist, London

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