Their work is supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the International Foundation for Ethical Research. A company in California is fashioning an artificial liver that functions outside the body and can be used until a replacement liver becomes available for the transplant patient. While tissue engineering holds great promise for replacing diseased body parts, the need for organs outstrips the supply. For instance, every year 30,000 people need liver transplants with only 3,000 receiving new organs. While tissue engineering may be the answer in the long term, another rather controversial area has recently emerged that may fill this need in a more timely manner.
Xenotransplantation is the use of animal body parts to replace diseased human tissues.
Currently a number of biotechnology companies are breeding pigs for this purpose. This fact, coupled with the new generation of anti-rejection drugs, suggests that xenotransplantation may solve the transplant shortage. Yet many have argued that xenotransplantation may start the next plague. The 1918 influenza virus started in pigs and killed 40 million people. There is also reasonable speculation that HIV arose in a non-human primate and is expected to infect 40 million people worldwide by the end of year 2000.