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DOCTORS AND LAWYERS EXPRESS
CONCERN FOR SERIOUS DANGERS
OF XENOTRANSPLANTS

Doctors and Lawyers for Responsible Medicine (DLRM), an international UK-based group of health and legal professionals, has been closely following proposed pig-to-human transplant research and views the sitation, in terms of patients' medical and legal rights, with growing anxiety.

In the interest of public accountability and patients' rights, DLRM call upon the Secretary of State for Health and the British Government, to disclose to the public, what measures, if any, have been taken to ensure that people who are damaged as a result of pig-to-human organ transplants, receive IMMEDIATE AND ADEQUATE COMPENSATION.

Laboratory-bred pig organs not only differ from human organs in their longevity, their metabolism, and their resistance to disease, but they also carry with them a whole range of known and unknown viral and even sub-viral particles some of which cannot be identified by the most sensitive screening procedures.

"It will not be easy to determine which viruses represent a risk to the xenograft recipient alone, which (viruses) represent a risk to society as a whole as a result of species jumping, and which (viruses) may be dismissed as representing a minimal risk," according to Frederick Murphy, Dean and Professor of Virology, School of Veterinary Medicine, Davis, California, quoted in "SCIENCE" 273, August 9, 1996.

Some British scientists have already admitted that the disease risk involved in xenotransplants is "unquantifiable":

From the Nuffield Council Report on Xenotransplantation:

1. page iii under the heading: "The principal conclusions and recommendation are these:" "SERIOUS PROBLEMS OF SAFETY NEED TO BE RESOLVED."

2. page 67-8: "Any person thinking about volunteering for a xenograft would have to be made aware of, and to consider these risks, ABOUT WHICH VERY LITTLE IS KNOWN AT PRESENT...."

3. PAGE 73: "The conclusion would see that, when considering the possibility of xenografting leading to the transmission of disease into the human population, THE RISK IS UNQUANTIFIABLE..."

It is therefore truly ironic that the very same governmental authority that goes to extreme lengths to protect the public in the UK from importing the rabies virus is now prepared to expose that same public to an "unquantifiable" risk by transplanting unknown pig viruses into people.

A WORST-CASE SCENARIO MEANS ANOTHER AIDS-LIKE EPIDEMIC, WITH LITTLE PROMISE OF CONTAINMENT, GIVEN THE DIFFICULTY OF CARRYING OUT ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT STUDIES BEFOREHAND.

Medical Research Modernization Committee Press Release

Dr. Irwin Bross on cloning

Dr. Helen Fullerton on genetic engineering

Campaign for Responsible Transplantation 5/98

New pig virus infects humans 5/98