Organs of aborted fetuses are used for research in a new medical procedure.
The most successful experiment involves the kidneys of aborted babies to be harvested and transplanted into adult rats, where the organs grow until they are ready to transplant to awaiting human adults.
Researchers who conducted the study transplanted an aborted human fetus’ kidney into an adult rat without an immune system so as to avoid tissue rejection. Then they stitched the animal’s blood vessels to the organ.
The scientists surgically removed the rat’s own kidneys after about a month, and most rats were able to survive about four months with the transplanted human fetus’ kidney. One rat survived about ten months.
The key to the success of this procedure is to adjust the animal’s blood pressure to work with a human organ. To do this, researchers use a device called an arterial flow regulator. The blood pressure of rats is much higher than in humans which, if not accounted for, causes the organ to hemorrhage.
This experiment could be furthered to transplant a kidney into a human for development, but scientists would need to do much more research to decide if that is feasible.
The human fetal kidneys were obtained from a California-based company that gives researchers tissue from deceased fetuses and adults. Consent was given for all procedures, and the scientists were not involved in the donation process.
Co-author of the study Eugene Gu said this “is definitely the first time an actual whole human organ has been grown in an animal, and has sustained the life of that animal. He went on to explain that the developers’ “long-term goal is to grow human organs in animals, to end the human donor shortage.”
Gu added that the fetal organs could also be used to test the effects of new drugs.
Understandably, this procedure has raised a number of ethical questions. The first and most is important is, should human fetal organs even be used as part of organ donation research?
Ethical and legal biomedical expert Hank Greely told Live Science that “the key issues are the existence of the pregnant woman’s consent and the total separation of the decision to abort from the decision to let the fetal remains be used in research.”
In practice, a woman must have already decided to abort before doctors can ask the mother about donating her baby to research.
Caty Dyer, Founder and CEO of Stem Express, a multi-million dollar research firm that sells human clinical specimens to biomedical researchers, reiterated the necessity of consent to this research. “All donors are properly consented through an Institutional Review Board (IRB) consent, and donors are made aware of the potential use of any sample that we collect”, he said.
A second concern is the very act of transplanting human organs into an animal. Greely said that researchers often do experiments that use human body parts in an animal host. Although this sort of research is usually done with cells or tissues, Greely claims that this practice is not ethically objectionable unless it involves human sex organs, brains, or external signs that distinguish a human from other animals.
But not all scientists are positive about this new procedure. NYU Langone Medical Center Bioethicist Arthur Caplan thinks “there is no way we’re ever going to use fetal human kidneys or any other solid organs for transplant. American society is morally uncomfortable enough about abortion that growing organs from fetal remains will never be accepted, and will be banned in state after state.”
Eugene Gu, Founder and CEO of Ganogen biotech company in Redwood, CA, believes the American public might find this idea “more palatable” if the recipients of such organs have no other chance of survival.
The third, and perhaps biggest concern, is that procedure like these can easily lead to abuse. The debate surrounding whether or not it is ethical to purchase fetal organs has been going on for years now. Invasive medical procedures like this can lead to all kinds of abuses. These include travesties like baby trafficking, and in the most extreme examples, women who are forced to having babies for the sole purpose of using that infant’s organs.
Even now, scientists do not treat a fetus as a human being until after it is born. There would not be many ethical objections to making a profit from the tissues and organs of a non-living mass of cells.
The success of transplanting infant organs and tissues has also led to the increasing demand in continuing research.
In mid-January, doctors at the Hammersmith hospital in west London performed the first UK organ transplant from a baby who died shortly after birth.
Hospital staff reportedly “praised” the parents for being so generous in consenting to the donation. Two different patients received the newborn’s healthy kidneys and liver tissue.
Doctors viewed this as a “milestone” in organ donation, and see the potential for more newborns to become organ donors.
Currently, UK guidelines do not make it easy for parents to allow their newborns to become organ donors, because doctors must wait until the newborn’s heart has stopped beating. But in the next few month the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (RCPCH) plans to publish new guidelines that will approve neurological tests for determining the death of a newborn.
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