Category: Uncategorized

Infigen Announces Pig Cloning Advance

Wisconsin-based biotech company Infigen announced in February that it had cloned a litter of pigs that bring the possibility of xenotransplantation one step closer. Researchers at Infigen genetically modified the pigs to turn off two sets of genes that would result in rapid rejection of tissues by the human immune system. Researchers at University of Missouri-Columbia announced earlier in January that they had produced double knockout pigs.

Pigs possess two copies of a gene that results in the sugar molecule alpha-1-galactose being added to the surface of cells. The human immune system would spot the alpha-1-galactose molecules and launch a quick response.

Infigen researchers not only knocked out both copies of this gene, but they did so in a species of pig that was genetically modified to avoid passing on porcine endogenous retrovirus to human beings. Xenotransplantation opponents have used the risk of the exchange of retroviruses like PERV between pigs and humans to argue that such transplants are simply too risky.

Sources:

Pig-Organ Transplants for Humans One Step Closer. TheBostonChannel.Com, February 28, 2003.

DeForest firm achieves litter of cloned pigs. John Fauber, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, February 27, 2003.

Infigen Announces the Birth of Genetically Modified Miniature Swine for Potential Use as Organ Donors for Humans. Infigen, Press Release, February 27, 2003.

Infigen Clones Litter of Pigs for Organ Donor Use. Wisconsin Ag Connection, February 28, 2003.

Man Who Had Fox Shot by Police Receives Threats, Harassment

A British man whose son was allegedly bitten by a fox has faced harassment and threats after he had police shoot and kill the fox in question.

Peter Day, 45, made news in Great Britain in February when a fox apparently entered his home and attacked his 10 month old son, Louis. Day called in a pest control specialist who trapped and killed the fox. Day lives in an area where residents have made numerous complaints about the rather sizable fox population.

Day and his partner, Sue Eastwood, came under criticism from animal experts who maintained that a healthy fox would never enter a residential home and attack an infant (though some experts did allow that an injured or diseased animal might engage in such behavior).

Since reporting the attack and having the animal trapped and killed, Day says he has been confronted repeatedly by people who believe he and his partner made the whole story up, and recently received a letter calling him and his partner an “odious, lying, self-serving manipulative scumbags” and threatening to firebomb his car and smash the windows in his home.

The pest control specialist who trapped the animal was also sent a copy of the letter.

Source:

Fox-hater’s family gets letter threats. Toby Nation, This Is London, February 25, 2003.

Clarissa Dickson Wright Says She Receives Up to 15 Death Threats Weekly from Activists

Clarissa Dickson Wright, a British television cook who is an outspoken pro-hunt activist, recently told the Edenburgh Evening News that she receives as many as 15 death threats a week from animal rigths activists angered over her public support of hunting.

Dickson Wright hosts the cooking show Two Fat Ladies and also is known for her documentary series about British rural life, Clarissa and the Countryman. She has an outspoken defender of hunting in Great Britain and has incurred the wrath of animal rights activists.

During a 2000 promotional tour for a book based upon Clarissa and the Countryman, she and her co-host Johnny Scott were sprayed with red paint by animal rights activists.

Dickson Wright told The Edinburgh Evening News,

I can get as many as 15 death threats a week, eitehr at my home in East Lothian or at the shop [a bookstore Dickson Wright owns]. Some of them can be extremely nasty, saying I’m going to die horribly or showing graphic pictures of me dying.

There’s a detective assigned to me who I can call for advice depending on the nature of the threats, and if I’m going to appear at an event.

. . .

I’m pretty used to it by now. Sometimes I get bored with it, but I tend to keep the more serious ones to show to friends.

Source:

’15 death threats a week’ for TV chef. Brian Ferguson, Edinburgh Evening News, February 27, 2003.

Deaths from vCJD Continue Decline in Great Britain

The United Kingdom’s National CJD Surveillance Unit reported in The Lancet that the number of people who died from vCJD continued to fall in 2002.

Last year 17 people in Great Britain died from the disease, compared to 20 in 2001 and 28 in 2000. Since 1995, 122 people have been killed by vCJD and another eight people who are still alive are believe to be infected with the prion disease that is linked to the consumption of meat contaminated with a bovine version of the disease. So far in 2003, one death has been linked to vCJD.

The big question is whether or not vCJD deaths will continue to decline. Dr. Robert Will, who heads up the UK CJD Surveillance Unit told the BBC,

That mortality is no longer increasing exponentially is encouraging. However, to conclude that the epidemic is in permanent decline would be premature.

In animal studies, for example, the incubation rate of vCJD-like diseases varies widely between individuals, so it is possible that the number of cases could begin to increase sometime in the future.

Source:

CJD cases ‘in decline’. The BBC, February 28, 2003.

Organ Donation: Should National Origin Matter?

I didn’t really follow the Jesica Santillan case very closely, and missed an interesting fact about Santillan — she was apparently in the United States illegally. According to a number of reports, her mother smuggled her into the country hoping that she would receive better care in the United States than in Mexico.

Doing a Google search on Santillan turns up a number of opinions on this state of affairs. There’s the hardcore anti-immigrant folks who think Santillan’s case is a tragedy because it will just encourage more people from Mexico to take the often dangerous step of illegally crossing the border. There’s also plenty of sentiment that it doesn’t matter — here’s a young woman who needed a transplant, and her nationality be damned.

Of course Santillan is a very sympathetic figure. In the 1980s, there was less sympathy for a number of wealthy foreign nationals — including the wife of a prominent Saudi Arabian diplomat — who came to the United States for organ transplants.

In response United Network for Organ Sharing decreed that transplant centers must limit to 5 percent the number of transplants they do for foreign nationals. In 2002, 936 of the 22,709 organ transplants operations in the United States were performed on foreign nationals.

One of the major problems with this system us that UNOS appears to have no serious guidelines for deciding when an organ should go to a foreign national over a U.S. citizen. The American Society of Transplant Surgeons proposed giving U.S. citizens first shot at any organs, with foreign nationals qualifying only if there were no citizens who could take the organ (and, to be fair, something like that appears to have happened in the Santillan case), but UNOS appears to have never formally adopted that guideline, leaving such decisions up to whatever policies transplant centers themselves want to formulate.

Sources:

Immigration, organ issues mix: Medical community faces quandary of who is most deserving recipient. Scott Dodd, Charlotte Observer, February 21, 2003.