MADRID -— In a move that could eliminate the gruesome market for forcibly harvested human organs, scientists have created complex human organs in a laboratory.
It has been reported that China has been harvesting the organs of Fulan Gong and other political prisoners to sell on the international market, in a move that many believes violates international human rights laws. Australia is the latest to come out against China’s illegal human organ harvesting market.
Not only is forcibly harvesting a prisoner’s organs wrong, but the end-result is equally bad. The illegal sales of harvested organs have tended to disfavor the poor for the benefit of the rich. But as the international community moves to create protocols to eliminate the illegal harvesting and unequal distribution of donor organs, the poor tend to suffer the most, with supplies running low. But scientists have come up with what could be a breakthrough solution: complex organs grown in a petri dish.
At Gregorio Marañón hospital in Madrid, Dr. Francisco Fernandez-Aviles and his team are spearheading a bioengineering revolution that has turned the science-fiction dream of building replacement parts for the human body into a reality.
Since a laboratory in North Carolina made a bladder in 1996, scientists have built increasingly more complex organs. There have been five windpipe replacements so far. A London researcher, Alex Seifalian, has transplanted lab-grown tear ducts and an artery into patients. He has made an artificial nose he expects to transplant later this year in a man who lost his nose to skin cancer, the Wall Street Journal reports.
“The work has been extraordinarily pioneering,” said Sir Roy Calne, an 82-year-old British surgeon who figured out in the 1950s how to use drugs to prevent the body from rejecting transplanted organs.
Now, with the quest to build a heart, researchers are tackling the most complex organ yet. The payoff could be huge, both medically and financially, because so many people around the world are afflicted with heart disease. Researchers see a multi-billion-dollar market developing for heart parts that could repair diseased hearts and clogged arteries.
In additional to the artificial nose, Dr. Seifalian is making cardiovascular body parts. He sees a time when scientists would grow the structures needed for artery bypass procedures instead of taking a vein from another part the body. As part of a clinical trial, Dr. Seifalian plans to transplant a bioengineered coronary artery into a person later this year. His employer, University College London, has designated a person to oversee any future commercialization of it and other man-made organs. more