CIRCE in Greek mythology is a sorceress, the daughter of Helios, the sun god, and of the ocean nymph Perse. When Odysseus visited her island, Aeaea, Circe offered him and his men a potion mixed with cheese, honey and wine.
When they had emptied their bowls, the men began to grow pig’s heads and bristles, and grunted like a swine; but their minds were as hu-man as ever.
Odysseus, protected by the herb moly courtesy of Hermes, compelled her to restore them to their original shape.
Fairy tales of men being trans-formed into beasts, and princes into frogs transcend cultural divide.
Conversely, anthropomorphism in animals is an equally popular genre for cautionary tales such as Orwell’s Animal Farm when the pigs totter around on their hind legs.
The subject of “the humanisation of pigs” has again become an issue with the advent of xenotrans-plantation, a medical procedure where animal organs and tissues, sometimes referred to as xenografts, or simply grafts, are used for trans-plantation in lieu of those from humans.
It was announced last week that researchers successfully cloned pig-lets that lack one of two genes that trigger the human immune system to reject transplanted tissues from the swine.
This involves the destruction of the protective layer of the blood vessels of the porcine organ and tissue within minutes of exposure to human blood.
If the other gene that causes such a swift and violent allergic reaction of the human immune system can be “knocked out”, then in less than five years, pig organs could be made available to people suffering from end-stage organ failures, who other-wise would have little or no hope ofsurvival.
Xenotransplantation has been ad-vocated due to the shortage of donor organs and tissues. Even in some developed countries, as few as five per cent of the organs needed ever become available.
The technology offers some advan-tages over the use of human organs.
For instance, xenotransplantation can be planned in advance. The or-gan can be transplanted while still fresh and undamaged.
A planned procedure using animal grafts allows doctors to pre-treat the recipient with drugs to improve the probability of success of the trans-plantation.
Hence, over the years many attempts have been made to trans-plant pancreatic and neural cells to diabetics and patients with Par-kinson’s disease.
Kidneys, hearts, livers and bone marrows of pigs, goats, sheep, chim-panzees and baboons have all been used as grafts.
According to statistics, between 1906 and 1995 there were more than 80 cases where animal organs were transplanted into humans, with sur-vival time of between a few hours to nine months.
Although of limited success, one particular case stood out as an in-structive episode in the annals of xenotransplantation.
In December 1995, a 38-year old AIDS activist from California, Jeff Getty, who was himself suffering from AIDS and was not expected to live long became the recipient of a baboon bone marrow.
The theory was that if his bone marrow were partly reconstituted by that of a baboon’s, he would improve greatly because baboon white blood cells cannot be infected with HIV.
Despite opposition from various quarters, including ethicists, the transplant went ahead. Although it did not succeed in terms of engraftment of the bone marrow, it ma-naged to improve the patient’s ge-neral well-being.
Today, Getty is alive, apparently in fairly good health and is a pro-minent spokesman of experiments using animals. His opponents however, have dubbed his case a “fallacy of single-subject experimentation”.
The movement against xenotrans-plantation gained extra momentum four years ago when a moratorium on clinical trials of animal grafts was called by many scientists.
The major concern with regard to using animal grafts is that it might cause animal to human transfer of viruses not transmitted by other routes, such as respiration.
First, a living porcine graft trans-planted into humans provides the opportunity for its virus to by-pass the physical barrier. Second, the use of drugs to sup-press the recipient’s immune system would enhance the virility of the donor’s virus.
Third, the genetic modification of pigs may provide the virus extra capability to attack its new host — the human recipient of the organs or tissues.
Although some might argue that the virus associated with pigs over millions of years called the porcine endogenous retrovirus or PERV is relatively harmless in human cells, many other pathogens have proven to be otherwise.
The most notorious example is HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, which is thought to have lived harm-lessly in the green monkey until it jumped into humans to become their deadliest enemy ever.
Other animal pathogens that have been unknowingly introduced into the human population are the Ebola virus, Marburg virus, Hanta virus, and those that cause syphilis and the “mad-cow” disease.
Closer to home, the Hendra-like (Nipah) virus that terrorised pig farmers and abattoir workers four years ago is a prime example of the “jumping” virus. More than half a million pigs had to be killed to stop the menace.
Hence, xenotransplantation inva-riably raises many moral and legal questions. Should it be allowed if it is proven to benefit patients? In the Islamic traditions, it is recorded that Muslim doctors pre-pared dentures from the bones of animals. Similarly the bone of a pure animal can be used for all purposes, inclu-ding transplantation.
But what about grafts from impure animals like the dog and the swine? Scholars of the Hanafi school have allowed prayer by one in whom a bone has been replaced by a dog’s bone.
As for the swine, Zakaria al-Qazwini, a grand judge of Iraq in the thirteenth century, noticed that por-cine bone graft performed better than other xenografts.
Some scholars have used these analogies to allow the use of gene-tically modified porcine xenografts if it is the only available treatment to save a life. Many others agree by virtue of the fact that the Quran speaks about the pig only in dietary terms and does not forbid the introduction of por-cine-derived materials for other reasons.
At present we lack scientific evidence to answer this query but as pig neural tissues are beginning to be transplanted into the human brain and neuronal connections have formed between the two, solution to this has to be found.
Despite the positive overture of scholars in sanctioning xenotrans-platation, scientists should realise that ordinary Muslims would have a strong reservation in allowing por-cine grafts to be transplanted into their body.
It is true that baboons and chim-panzees are much tougher to breed, and are not cost-effective.
Nevertheless, scientists should preferably develop grafts from pure animals like the goat, sheep and lamb.
In view of the high risks and questionable benefits of xeno-transplantation, it is proposed that efforts to use animal grafts to alleviate diseases and even save lives should proceed with caution.
