You are here

Article Text

Article menu
Download PDFPDF
Commentary
Prioritisation and non-sentientist harms: reconsidering xenotransplantation ethics
  1. Christian Rodriguez Perez1,
  2. Edwin Louis-Maerten1,
  3. Samuel Camenzind2,
  4. Matthias Eggel3,
  5. Kirsten Persson1,4,
  6. David Shaw1,5
  1. 1 Institute for Biomedical Ethics (IBMB), University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
  2. 2 Department of Philosophy, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
  3. 3 Department of Philosophy, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
  4. 4 Tierärztliche Hochschule Hannover Institut für Tierhygiene Tierschutz und Nutztierethologie, Hannover, Germany
  5. 5 Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands
  1. Correspondence to Christian Rodriguez Perez; c.rodriguezperez{at}unibas.ch; Mr Edwin Louis-Maerten; edwin.louis{at}unibas.ch

https://doi.org/10.1136/jme-2024-110202

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    Rodger et al have interestingly argued that xenotransplantation should, if possible, entail the use of genetic pain disenhancement to prevent otherwise unavoidable pain in ‘donor’ animals.1 Their argument relies on the empirical assumption that xenotransplantation offers a realistic solution to organ shortage, and that, due to the recent clinical developments and the lack of human donors, it will thus continue for the foreseeable future. We argue below that other options should be prioritised over xenotransplantation, and that so-called ‘non-sentientist’ harms are undervalued in discussions on disenhancement.

    Xenotransplantation should not be a research priority

    We do not challenge the empirical claim made by the authors. That is, xenotransplantation research might continue for the foreseeable future since organ demand is increasing. However, we disagree with the priority given to xenotransplantation over other solutions that are more morally desirable. We argue that, if we comply with the 3R principles (Replacement, Reduction, and Refinement of the use of animals in research) and follow a minimal welfarist reasoning (to which the authors seem to adhere), then (1) the principle of replacement demands the use of non-animal alternatives if possible and (2) there are alternative solutions that lead to morally better consequences.

    Schematically, there are …

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • CRP and EL-M are joint first authors.

    • Contributors EL-M and CRP are co-first authors and guarantors, they conceptualised and wrote the commentary. DS, SC, ME and KP contributed substantially to revise and improve the commentary.

    • Funding This study was funded by 'Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (206472)'.

    • Competing interests None declared.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.

    Linked Articles