Organ Babi Menggantikan Organ Manusia ?

Para saintis di Australia sedang giat menjalankan ujikaji bagi membolehkan paru-paru babi digunakan dalam transplant manusia. Dalam kajian terbaru menunjukkan keputusan yang amat positif yang boleh membawa kepada kemugkinannya paru-paru babi dapat menggantikan paru-paru manusian yang telah rosak.

Banyak kajian bagi membolehkan organ terutamanya jantung, paru-paru dan buah pinggang babi digunakan oleh manusia sedang dijalankan di Australia kerana saiz organ babi yang hampir sama dengan manusia, sehinggakan kerajaan Australia sedang bersedia untuk menternak sekumpulan babi yang di ubah DNAnya bagi menyesuaikan organnya dijadikan sebagai sparepart manusia yang rosak.

Perkembangan teknologi perubatan sekarang ini amat laju sekali dan pelbagai kaedah perubatan telah diparaktiskan yang sebelum ini tidak pernah terlintas dek akal kita.

Walaupun hampir semua penemuan teknologi perubatan terkini adalah daripada para saintis barat dan bukan daripada umat atau negara Islam, kita perlu berbuat sesuatu untuk memastikan umat islam tidak ketinggalan mengikuti segala perkembangan, dan yang paling penting sekali apakah hukumnya bagi seseorang muslim yang mahu mengamalkan atau terlibat dalam memanafaatkan segala teknologi baru tersebut.

Umpamanya seorang muslim yang mahu menukarkan paru-parunya dengan paru-paru seekor babi...?

Ulama' mempunyai misi yang amat mencabar, bukan sekadar asyik mengulang baca kitab kuning di masjid-masjid sahaja.

Sila ikuti laporan perkembangan penggunaan paru-paru babi dalam human transplant di bawah:

Laporan 1

Pig lungs in human transplants moves step closer

The use of pig lungs in transplants into humans has moved a step closer with a medical breakthrough.

Scientists in Melbourne, Australia, used a ventilator and pump to keep the animal lungs alive and "breathing" while human blood flowed in them.

Experts estimated the work could lead to the first animal-human transplants within five years.

Dr Glenn Westall, who helped conduct the experiment, said: “The blood went into the lungs without oxygen and came out with oxygen, which is the exact function of the lungs.

"It showed that these lungs were working perfectly well and doing as we were expecting them to do.

“This is a significant advance compared to experiments that have been performed over the past 20 years."

The breakthrough came after scientists were able to remove a section of pig DNA, which had made the pig organs incompatible with human blood.

Previous attempts to combine unmodified pig lungs and human blood ended abruptly two years ago when blood clots began forming almost immediately, causing the organs to become so blocked no blood could pass through.

Human DNA is now added to the pigs as they are reared to reduce clotting and the number of lungs which are rejected.

The full results of the research are due to be announced in Vancouver in August.

The issue has prompted an ethical debate about the use of animals for human transplants.

Medical ethicist Professor Nicholas Tonti-Filippini said: “It is basically a human-pig, a hybrid, or whatever you want to call it.

“It is about whether the community is prepared to accept a part human, part animal."

Laporan 2

Organs transplants from pigs could be a reality in less than a decade, claims Lord Winston

Hearts and kidneys taken from genetically modified pigs could be transplanted into humans within a decade, a leading scientist has said.

Lord Winston, the fertility expert at Imperial College London, is developing a genetically modified strain of pig that he believes could solve the shortage of organs for transplant patients.

The pigs, which could eventually also donate other organs such as the liver, will be bred so that transplants will not be rejected by the human body.

Once created the "donor strain" should be able to reproduce normally thus producing an almost limitless and cheap supply of organs.

A shortage of appropriate donors means that approximately 500 people die every year in the UK while on waiting lists for transplant operations.

Lord Winston said: "We think we can produce transplantable organs within two or three years but then will need to carry out extensive tests.

"Within 10 years we think they could be available for hospitals."

Lord Winston said he understood that there was a "large amount of nervousness" over animal to human transplants but felt it could be overcome.

He said that the biggest worry that animal diseases could be passed onto humans was one that scientists had already countered by producing pigs in a completely virus free environment.

"One person every 15 minutes goes on the transplant waiting list and only about a fifth of people who could benefit from a transplant go on the list at all,|" he said.

"There is a massive shortage and people are literally waiting for a car accident to happen. These pigs offer some quite special possibilities."

Lord Winston and his team want to insert genes into immature sperm cells in male pigs, genes that would genetically programme their offspring so that their organs could be safely transplanted into humans.

But he said that Government and European Union bureaucracy was hindering the work and he was likely to carry some of the work in America.

There are 7,963 people on waiting lists and only enough donors to carry out around 3,000 transplants a year.