For the sake of argument, let’s assume that because pigs are already raised for human consumption, their use for lifesaving medical procedures would also be acceptable in today’s society.
This being the case, the next issue of contention, and the one that causes the most concern, is that of transgenesis. The transfer of genetic material from one species to another is controversial at best. There are questions about whether or not introducing new material into a genome violates the species integrity or nature. Likely the changes that are necessary for xenotransplantation will not affect a pigs physical appearance or characteristics, but their fundamental makeup will have been altered. Some may consider that they will no longer have the “nature” of a pig. But then what is it? A human-pig hybrid?
And if we are introducing human genes into another animal, is there a point at which they have enough human DNA to gain human rights? The Nuffield Report (1995) argues that no more than one or two human genes need be inserted into the pig genome, itself consisting of 50,000-100,000 genes. As this is proportionally a minor change (0.001-0.004% of the genome) they don’t consider the pig to be any part human. However, not everyone is going to agree with this position, and many opponents of GM products would consider this a significant and unacceptable change.
We also need to consider the potential repercussions to humans in the process of creating and using transgenic pigs. Of course the issues brought up in Risks to Human Health are important, but as are human rights to privacy and consent. Because of the unknown potential for disease transmission, patients may need to be monitored for years following a xenotransplantation (Laderoute, 2001). Both the rights to privacy and consent could be brought into serious question throughout the follow-up of such a procedure.
It will likely be many years before a xenotransplantation clinical study is approved in Canada, if ever. There are many ethical and welfare concerns to address before then, only some of which have been discussed here. Ultimately it needs to be decided how much of an animals nature we are willing to put at risk in order to elongate human life.