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(LifeSiteNews) — In a disturbing violation of human rights, Chinese scientists recently used a 39-year-old “brain dead” man as a xenograft host, implanting him with a lung from a gene-edited pig. Researchers in China reported in the journal Nature Medicine that the man remained hemodynamically stable throughout the experiment: “Throughout the postoperative period, dynamic physiological and hemodynamic parameters remained stable, indicating the recipient’s physiological stability and homeostasis over a 216 hour observation period.”
According to a news report, the “dead” man lived for nine days producing antibodies against the foreign organ before he died:
However, 24 hours after transplantation the lung showed signs of fluid accumulation and damage, possibly initially due to transplant-related inflammation. And despite the recipient being given powerful immunosuppressive medication, the transplanted organ was progressively attacked by antibodies, resulting in significant damage over time.
The amount of Orwellian double-speak in this account is staggering. How can a dead man be kept alive? How can a dead man be stable enough to be used as a test subject for the implantation of an animal organ? How can a dead man produce antibodies? How can a dead man die again after nine days?
The answer, of course, is that “brain dead” people are not dead. They have beating hearts, absorb oxygen and release carbon dioxide through their lungs, metabolize nutrients, eliminate wastes, fight infections, and reject foreign organs. They act in exactly the way we would predict that brain-injured people would act, and there is absolutely no evidence that their souls have departed. But these neurologically injured people have been redefined as being dead for the sake of legally obtaining their valuable, viable organs for transplantation. And precisely because “brain dead” people are still alive and stable (but have been shorn of their human rights) doctors have been using them for years as test hosts for xenografts.
Historically, xenotransplantation, or the transplantation of organs from other species into humans, has failed due to incompatibility and rejection. In 2022, an American patient became the first to receive a genetically modified pig heart transplant. The donor pig had undergone deletion of certain pig genes and addition of human genes to make its heart less likely to be recognized as foreign by the human recipient. David Bennett Sr. lived 45 days before apparently dying of a pig virus that hitched a ride on his new heart.
In August 2023, two “brain dead” men were used as test subjects when researchers at the University of Alabama and the NYU Langone Transplant Institute surgically implanted genetically modified pig kidneys into their abdomens. “With informed family consent, the decedent received cardiopulmonary support in a critical care setting throughout the study.” One of these helpless “brain dead” men was kept alive like a lab rat for over a month as doctors studied how long the xenograft kidney would function. At the end of these experiments, both men were sacrificed for pathological examination.
Medical ethicist Joel Zivot MD, MA, JM, was not impressed: “Broadly, the rightness or wrongness of this type of procedure are the consequences of a series of moral choices, thus far unreported and unexamined, and include the problems of brain death, human experimentation, consent, rationing, and animal rights.” He points out that the concept of “brain death” has turned people into resources, commodities to be used for the valuable vital organs they possess.
It is hard to imagine that an experiment of this nature would receive consent from not only the family, but also from the institutional review boards and ethics committees of these respective hospitals. When the President’s Council on Bioethics wrote their white paper on death determination in 2008, they morally justified the declaration of death by neurologic criteria (“brain death”) on the basis that continuing to ventilate and support these people violated the respect due to the dead. Clearly, that respect has now gone out the window.
And the experimentation continues. In March 2024, Chinese scientists transplanted the liver of a gene-edited pig into a “brain dead” human. Researchers at the Chengdu-based Clonorgan Biotechnology firm removed three pig antigens from the donor animal using gene-editing technology and replaced them with three human proteins. Team leader Dou Kefeng said that because liver functions are complex, gene-edited pig livers cannot completely replace human livers at present. The experiment “provides a theoretical basis and data support for the clinical application of xenotransplantation,” he added. After 10 days, the experiment was terminated and the patient was sacrificed so that the liver could be studied.
Are we ready to say enough is enough? Or do our desires outweigh our morality as we consider the potential benefits such experimentation may bring? “Brain death” is not death but a utilitarian social construct and a legal fiction. “Brain dead” people are still alive and deserve to be treated as persons, not used as lab rats.
