PETA Statement: Self-Centered Humans Should Fix Organ Shortage, Not Use Pigs

For Immediate Release:
October 20, 2021

Contact:
Tasgola Bruner 202-483-7382

Please see the following statement from PETA Senior Vice President Kathy Guillermo regarding the news that surgeons attached a pig kidney to a human:

Pigs aren’t spare parts and should never be used as such just because humans are too self-centered to donate their bodies to patients desperate for organ transplants. What’s not in the headlines is that this “transplant” is not a transplant at all. It involved a brain-dead patient on a ventilator, not a person with kidney disease. The pig’s kidney was attached via blood vessels to the outside of the patient’s body, and it stayed there for only 54 hours. Human organs are still the best hope, and presumed consent laws would make enough available to help people in need of a transplant.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to experiment on”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information about PETA’s investigative newsgathering and reporting, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.