We’ve all heard stories of family members donating organs such as kidneys to another family member in their time of need. But have you heard of the family pet donating an organ?

While this may seem a little far-fetched to some, it is becoming an ever-increasing reality for many people who need organ transplants.

Imagine sitting in a hospital bed talking to a doctor. He tells you that your kidneys are shot and you’ve only got two options. Because the transplant waitlist gets longer by the day, a human organ is out of the question. Your first option is to simply let life run its course. Go against the odds and see how you do.

The second option, he tells you, is to wait while one of his interns runs down to the bar on the corner to buy a pickled pig’s kidney out of the jar on the counter. Once he gets back, they’ll fix you right up.

Xenotransplantaion is the procedure of receiving foreign tissue into the body. Most commonly, this procedure is associated with humans receiving pigs’ cells or organs for medical purposes.

Many people today view xenotransplantion as dangerous – they think that too many things can go wrong. People don’t want to wake up after surgery and realize they shouldn’t have made fun of Mr. Ed for all of those years.

However, xenotransplantation is an opportunity to help out thousands of people each year, and a great deal of time and money is being put into researching possibilities for the future.

Plain and simple, xenotransplantaion will help people who need organ transplants. Last year alone, 70,000 people needed a transplant, and only 3,000 received one.

Pigs are the animals of choice for this procedure. Their organs have been found to function more similarly to ours than any other animal’s. Pig organs have been transplanted into humans, but most research is done on baboons.

Now, I know what you’re saying: “Pigs? Baboons? Why don’t we throw in a snake and a few llamas and we can start a zoo?” But research has to be done on animals to prevent the loss of human life. A baboon’s immune system functions closely to the way a human’s does, and that gives us a chance to monitor the way their bodies react to a foreign tissue.

Most research conducted in the past has not been successful. But it does give us reasons to be optimistic. In several instances, patients receiving an animal organ have lived months past the operation. While xenotransplantaion might never be perfected, it could be used in other ways.

Some determining factors for people to receive an organ transplant are their physical condition and age (and let’s not forget money, because rich people can do whatever they want). For example, a 50-year-old man has a massive heart attack. Doctors determine that there is nothing they can do because his body is too weak to undergo a transplant. They let him die.

Not anymore.

With xeno, you could use a pig’s heart to help you get stronger until you are ready for a human heart. This process, called bridging, is definitely something that we should try to cross.

Xenotransplantaion is a good thing. It will save lives. Its only setback is that it could cause competition for human organs to become even more tilted. If a doctor knows both little Penny Less and Real E. Richman need new tickers, and a new shipment of pig innards is on its way in from the farm, the doctor might give even less consideration to finding a human heart for Penny since a lesser substitute is available.

But for now, this is something we should be willing to deal with.

The thought of having an animal’s organ inside of one’s body may seem a little too “freaky” for some people to handle, but I’m sure most will get over it – preserving life is much more important than reservations of embarrassment and awkwardness.

Erik Bussa is a senior in agricultural communications. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].