Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy G. Thompson, as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, oversees those agencies. Thompson now has an 18-member group, the Secretary's Advisory Committee on Xenotransplantation, helping him with that responsibility. The committee had its first meeting in February. But there are concerns, especially the risk of transmission of infectious diseases from animals to humans, he said. In fact, xenotransplantation could become one of the greatest medical advances of the 21st century, he said.
Surgeons arrive, scrub, enter sterile rooms and begin removing organs to order.
Those organs quickly are perfused with a cold saline solution, put on ice and shipped by plane around the country. However, science still needs to address some issues. Even organs from humans are often quickly rejected when transplanted into other people. Organs and tissue from other people are viewed as foreign by the body's immune system, which begins to attack the organs as soon as they are transplanted. But there is a violent, hyperacute rejection that takes place when animal organs are transplanted into people.