Does xenotransplantation make sense?
Well, it depends on how you want to spend your money as to whether xenotransplantation makes any sense at all. …I think it’s really important, when we’re dealing with health care dollars, to be able to set priorities in terms of what we’re trying to do and where that money can be best used. And xenotransplantation is so expensive and it will benefit a certain group of people, that it may not be worth the dollars spent. Those same dollars may be better spent or may save more lives or improve the quality of more people’s lives spent in different arenas and certainly spent better in the arena of preventing illness rather than trying to cure diseases. . . . What about the cost to the consumer? Do you have a sense of what it will cost to get a pig heart? I think the cost to the consumer could be astronomical. Let me give you some estimates in terms of cost. The Institute of Medicine in 1996 tried to estimate what the actual cost of xenotransplantation would be in terms of health care. And
