The Catholic Church has no objections to using animals as a source of organs, tissues, or cells for transplantation into human beings, and calls for the same bioethic standards that apply to all medical interventions.
As medical procedures involving animals advance and become more widespread, the Vatican presented on Tuesday, 24 March, a new document from the Pontifical Academy for Life outlining medical and ethical considerations of these procedures.
“Catholic theology does not have preclusions, on a religious or ritual basis, in using any animal as a source of organs, tissues, or cells for transplantation to human beings,” the document said.
The Vatican added that ethical questions regarding xenotransplantation, the transplantation of organs, tissues, or cells from one species to another, cannot be answered without reflecting on the human person and the animals providing the transplant.
The guidelines, drafted with the input of experts from Austria, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States, were prompted by biotechnology’s development over the past decades, bringing innovations closer to clinical viability.
While organ transplantation is increasingly used as medical treatment, the number of procedures is limited by a shortage og human organs, tissues, and cells, the Vatican noted.
Research has found that the volume of organ transplants accounts for between five and 10 percent of global demand.
Xenotransplantation would offer an unlimited supply of organs, tissue, and cells for transplantation, relieving the “chronic” shortage of human donors, the document read.
However, in using animals, the Vatican underlined certain conditions: procedures must be carried out only when necessary and reasonable, genetic modifications that could alter biodiversity should be avoided, and unnecessary animal suffering must be prevented.
Xenotransplants should minimise any chance that the recipient’s genome will be altered or intentionally influenced, the document said.
“By example, it is of utmost importance to reject xenotransplantation of those brain cells associated with cognition from animals into the brain of humans if the personal identity of the patient cannot be safeguarded”, the authors wrote.
On the other hand, cell treatments into the brain intended to correct physiologic defects, such as Parkinson’s disease, by pig adrenal cell injection, are very unlikely to pose such a threat, and could be considered ethically justifiable by the Catholic Church.
SOURCE: EURONEWS
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