Is crossing the species barrier a significant event, in terms of medical science?
I think it is, and the use of tissues in animals from different species could help us find treatments for many human diseases. The transplant surgeons and communities would attest to that, and that’s why there has been a lot of work in this area. What are the public health implications of xenotransplant? Now we’re talking beyond the benefit of the patient. We’re talking about whether using these cells or tissues or organs from animals will bring about or introduce infectious agents, viruses that would cause disease in humans and would spread and therefore would have public health implications. . . . At the moment, with the current state of scientific knowledge, can xenotransplant be made risk-free in public health terms? As it stands today, I think it is very unlikely that it is going to be risk-free, since we already know that there are several viral agents that already exist in some of these animal organs that we are using in clinical trials. And we know that we cannot eliminate cert
