Pigs Are Not Organ Farms for Humans: PETA Statement on Latest Xenotransplantation

For Immediate Release:
March 21, 2024

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding the transplantation of a kidney from a genetically engineered pig to a 62-year-old man at Massachusetts General Hospital:

Pigs are not merely housing their organs until humans need them. Before we get carried away by the hype, it’s worth thinking back to decades of failures, beginning with the doomed transplant of a heart from a baby baboon into the human infant Baby Fae, and to remember that we are in an age when advances do not depend on using other species as spare parts. Cleaning up the organ procurement business, which wastes as many as 28,000 organs annually, and enacting presumed consent laws would save human and animal lives and protect society from dangerous pathogens that can easily jump from one species to another.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—points out that Every Animal Is Someone and offers free Empathy Kits for people who need a lesson in kindness. For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on X, Facebook, or Instagram.