Bobier et al1 provide a sobering challenge to the optimistic ‘panacea’ narrative of xenotransplantation. They argue that even with technical parity to allotransplantation, xenotransplantation will fail to solve the organ shortage due to social stigma, religious hesitancy and economic bottlenecks. While I welcome their caution, I believe their argument relies on an ‘observer bias’: it prioritises the attitudes of healthy individuals over the clinical reality of patients facing terminal organ failure.
The authors cite several surveys2 3 suggesting high levels of public hesitancy towards xenotransplantation. However, these studies often focus on populations not directly affected by organ failure, such as the Spanish Gypsy community or Latin-American residents. There is a fundamental ethical and psychological gap between a healthy individual’s theoretical ‘distaste’ for porcine organs and a patient’s life-saving necessity.
Recent data from Ozcan et al4 clarify this: patients on dialysis or those who have…