Should Animals Be Used As Organ Donors?
Name: ______Date: ______Period: ______
Guided Reading 5
“Should Animals Be Used as Organ Donors?”
A. Make a PREDICTION about what the article is about. Do not just restate the title. ______
B. ANNOTATE the article as you read. Make sure that you:
o Write at least three questions in the margins.
o Circle three new words.
o Star three important main ideas.
o Draw an arrow to one supporting detail for each of the main ideas.
C. EVALUATE the article when you finish reading. What is the PURPOSE of the article?
______
D. Answer the following questions after you read.
Which answer is a point made against using animals for organs? / 3. / Question three is a content question.
From 1988 to the present, by how much has the average wait time increased?
a. It is cheaper to use animal organs
b. Wild animals are unsuitable for
donation because of bad health
c. More people would receive organs
d. Human life is more important than the
life of an animal. / a. From 4 months to 5 years
b. From 4 months to more than a year
c. From a year to 5 years
d. From 5 years to 4 months
2. / Question two is an analysis question.
Why are pigs considered another possibility for human organ donation? / 4. / Question four is an analysis question.
Which factor was NOT considered in the article that may affect organ donation?
a. Are more closely related to humans
b. Are easier to catch than primates
c. Have less diseases than primates
d. Cheaper to raise, similar organ size / a. Cost of the harvesting the organ
b. Animal rights
c. Why there are not enough human
organs to begin with
d. Not enough animal organs to meet
demand
Question five is an open-ended reflective question. Be sure to read all of the requirements of the question. For example, if the question asks for two examples of supporting details from the text, be sure to give two. Write your answer in the space provided.
5. a. When you acquire a driver’s license or state I.D. will you decide to be an organ donor? Explain why you have made this decision or why you are still thinking about it. Remember that you are already dead when organs are harvested from your body.
5. b. Why do you think the number of people who need transplants have been increasing so quickly? Think about health, age, other factors…
“Should Animals Be Used as Organ Donors?”
By: Issues and Decision Making, Pearson Education, Inc.
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In recent years, doctors have found it harder and harder to obtain human organs for transplant. At the same time, the number of people on the waiting list for donated organs has been increasing by thousands every year.
In 1988, a patient’s average waiting period for a donated organ was about four months. In 1991, it was more than a year. Now the wait may be as long as five years. In 1992, more than 27,000 Americans were waiting for an organ transplant. More than 80 percent of these people were waiting for a kidney. The waiting list continues to grow despite the fact that as many as 20 people on the list die every day.
The length of the waiting list only hints at the size of the problem of organ shortages. Many people who could benefit from an organ transplant are never put on the list because they cannot afford the operation or the drugs needed to prevent their body from rejecting the new organ. Sometimes, doctors choose not to put a patient on the waiting list because the patient is too old or has an unhealthy lifestyle.
For many patients, the situation is desperate. A number of proposals have been put forward to improve the outlook for those awaiting transplants. Some physicians have suggested that a $1000 payment to family members of donors might increase donation rates. Other physicians would prefer to try using animal organ donors.
Animal Organ Donors
Researchers began to use animals as organ donors in the 1960s. Between 1963 and 1964, about 20 patients received organs from chimpanzees or baboons. Most of the transplants were failures, and most patients died within days or weeks of receiving animal organs. One percent lived for 9 months with a chimpanzee kidney. A well-publicized animal-organ transplant involved an infant known as Baby Fae. In 1984, Baby Fae received the heart of a 9-month old baboon. She died 20 days after the operation.
Ethical Controversy
After Baby Fae died, animal-rights groups began to raise questions about the value of human life versus the value of animal life. The animal-rights groups expressed concern that some animals might become little more than a supply of spare parts for humans. The benefit of transplanting animal organs into humans had not been proved, they argued, and the lives of many animals would be needlessly sacrificed.
Supporters of animal organ donation have suggested that animal-rights groups visit hospitals to talk with patients who are dying while waiting for an organ transplant. Supporters say that the donation process is not painful for the animals.
Proponents of animal organ donation also point out that using animal donors is much less expensive than relying on human donors. Obtaining a human organ can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000. Expenses include donor testing and removing the organ. Organs from nonhuman primates, such as baboons, cost between $2000 and $4000 each. Some supporters even note that in some places baboons are considered pests. There is a bounty on baboons in several African countries.
Animal-rights groups counter by saying that organs cannot be obtained from wild baboons in Africa. Organs must be obtained from baboons raised specifically for that purpose in a laboratory. They also point out that baboons often carry the Ebola and Marburg viruses. These viruses pose a serious threat to organ recipients whose immune systems have been suppressed by drugs to prevent organ donation.
Members of animal-rights groups add that, although an animal donor might be treated humanely in its final hours, the baboon or chimpanzee will have been forced to live for months or years in small cages. The baboon heart donated to a man in 1992 was taken from a 15 year-old baboon that had lived in a laboratory its whole life.
Finding Acceptable Donors
Relying on laboratory-bred primates to ease the demand for organs would solve only a small part of the organ shortage problem. Scientists estimate that only about 200 animals will be available as donors over the next five years, a fraction of the number needed. For example, baboon livers could be provided to only 2 to 5 percent of the people who need them.
Some researchers think that the best solution to the animal organ donation controversy is finding a more acceptable donor species. Although pigs are not as closely related to humans as primates, their organs are about the same size and they physiology is quite similar. There are thousands of patients whose hearts have been repaired using pig heart valves. There are large numbers of pigs, and they cost far less to raise than primates. Perhaps most importantly animal-rights advocates might be more likely to support organ donation from animals that will be killed for food anyway.
There is also another hopeful possibility. New technology is being tested using genetic manipulation on pigs. DNA is taken from a patient and then injected into pig fetuses. That fetus then grows the organ with the same DNA as the patient so that way there will be no rejection later. For example, if a liver transplant is needed, a sample of healthy liver cells is taken from the patient and is used to replace the liver cells in the pig fetus. The pig is then given anti-rejection drugs so that way it grows the liver without problems. Eventually the pig’s liver is large enough to replace the original patient’s liver and the transplant is done.
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