Leading surgeon David Cooper talks about the dawn of a new era of transplantation in which organs for human transplants come from genetically modified animals
Health
8 February 2022
Few people know more about transplanting animal organs into humans than David Cooper. “I think this is the beginning of a complete revolution in transplantation,” he says.
Cooper, a surgeon and researcher at Harvard Medical School, is referring to the creation of pigs genetically modified to make their organs more suitable for xenotransplantation – the use of organs from other animals in humans. A series of such transplants has made recent headlines. Late in 2021, two teams transplanted pig kidneys into people who were brain-dead in experiments lasting just a few days. …