Genetically engineering animals to make them more human-like has taken a massive step forward with a kidney from a genetically engineered pig being successfully transplanted to a human.
“Scientists temporarily attached a pig’s kidney to a human body and watched it begin to work, a small step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants.
“Pigs have been the most recent research focus to address the organ shortage, but among the hurdles: A sugar in pig cells, foreign to the human body, causes immediate organ rejection. The kidney for this experiment came from a gene-edited animal, engineered to eliminate that sugar and avoid an immune system attack.
“Surgeons attached the pig kidney to a pair of large blood vessels outside the body of a deceased recipient so they could observe it for two days. The kidney did what it was supposed to do — filter waste and produce urine — and didn’t trigger rejection.”
Science fictions films that had plots centered around cloning people to harvest their organs have just become completely dated.
Perhaps this will result in fewer executions in Communist China or fewer calls by medical ethicicts to kill people by harvesting organs from their still living bodies?
But the biggest benefit is that we are one step closer to genetically engineering catgirls, and other kemenomimi, for domestic ownership!
A little mood music:
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