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Animal rights activists seem to be increasingly desperate in their fight against Xenotransplantation – the transplanting of organs and tissues from animals into human beings. First, they argued such transplantation simply wouldn’t work. After that argument failed, they argued there were enormous dangers of passing diseases between animals and humans. Now that the evidence indicates this risk is minimal, the activists are pulling out the big guns in their rhetorical grab bag – people who receive animal organs aren’t really human.
According to Gill Langley, who
co-wrote a recent report on xenotransplantation for the
British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection and Compassion in World Farming, "The
human xenotransplantation patient will become a literal chimera. It sounds
like scare-mongering, but let me assure you that the word chimera is being
used by xenotransplant scientists."
Scare-mongering? From an animal rights activist?
If the thought of being less than human isn’t enough, Langley’s report warns that patients whose lives are saved by these new technologies (which he still claims won’t work) could face unknown psychological consequences.
So this is the justification that animal rights activists are going to present to the 50,000 people in Europe alone who are waiting to receive organs? Xenotransplantation must be stopped to prevent those dying individuals from becoming less than human and suffering the attendant psychological side effects. Better dead than depressed?
Source:
Activists say animal transplants make us less human. Reuters, October 13, 1998.