BBC News | October 25, 1999
It is possible to use pig organs for human transplants
Transplant patients who receive organs from pigs may be barred from having children.
The ban is being considered by the UK body that regulates animal to human transplants, or xeno-transplants, as part of strict guidelines to ensure that powerful viruses are not spread to humans.
Patients may also have agree to have their sexual partners registered and monitored by medical authorities.
If the proposals under consideration are approved, patients who are about to receive pigs' hearts or lungs would have to sign a contract agreeing to "use barrier contraception consistently and for life".
They would also have to agree never to give blood.
Checks on sexual partners
Health monitoring teams could be called in to check "household members and other sexual partners and others with whom the recipients may engage in activities in which bodily fluids may be exchanged".
Details of samples would be held on a confidential database. The GPs of people who have made sexual contact with transplant patients would be kept informed.
The guidelines are set out in a consultation document on the "monitoring and surveillance of potential infections associated with xeno-transplantation".
The document has been compiled by scientific experts on the infection surveillance steering group of the United Kingdom Xeno-transplantation Interim Regulatory Authority (UKXIRA).
The authority was appointed by the government to examine the medical and ethical implications of such operations. The report will be discussed by the full regulatory body in December.
Safety is the top priority
Dr David Cook, a medical ethicist and a member of UKXIRA, said: "The draft guidelines have been produced in order to make sure that if ever we were to proceed to this kind of transplantation public safety would be guaranteed.
Cook: "Safety is the top priority"
"We recognise that some scientists are telling us there may be a risk. If there is a risk we have to protect not just the individual, but the community."
Dr Cook said that, if scientific opinion concluded that xeno-transplantation was too dangerous, it would never be allowed in the UK.
Any risk that powerful viruses, similar to that which causes HIV, would be released into the community would be unacceptable.
"If retro-viruses are released they could be catastrophic so nothing will be allowed to happen in the UK unless it is absolutely guaranteed that safety will be preserved."
The government gave the go-ahead to research on the use of pigs for transplants because of the chronic shortage of human organs.
Britain has a herd of pigs bred by scientists for the purpose. Doctors in the US have already performed successful operations using pig cells.
No licence for the transplant of a pig organ into a human has been granted.
However, it is reported that the first application is imminent.
Anti-vivisection groups, opposed to the use of animal organs in humans, said that the proposed monitoring was "intrusive".
This year a 39-year-old US woman became the first stroke victim to receive a transplant of a pig's foetal cells into her brain.
