DMT1 is thought to be an autoimmunedisease in which case you'd have to recieve a pancreas with non-immunogenic beta-islet cells, considering they don't even know why they're immunogenic (ie which protien, but their best guess is it's a pre-insulin product in the pathway to insulin production, which of course is bad) i, unfortunately, wouldn't expect a foolproof pancreas in your lifetime... but if we could "cure" DMT1 in our grand-children's generation then i would consider it a battle won.
it's unfortunate that religion must so often stand in the way of actually helping people in the name of ethics, seems a bit of an oxymoron to me...
this actually isn't a horribly new idea, scientist (and "normal" people as well) have been talking about xenography for quite a while now, with pigs often being decided upon a suitable "donors" due to the plethora of pigs seemingly everywhere (uh... like porcine pigs, not cops [which also seem to be everywhere]), a similar body size to people, and other physiologic similarities. there are huge potential problems with xenography though, chief amongst these is host verses graft disease (organ rejection) by the recepient, which biotechnology is now struggling to conquer by humanizing animals (so the cells "look" human, although tissue-typing will also be an issue). however an issue with a much less clear-cut answer is the question of introducing potential pathogens into a virgin population. seldom are viruses, or other especially "non-living" pathogens discovered until they start causing substantial damage to one population or another, and while any organisms may harbor countless different microbes very few actually cause noticable morbidity (this population is known as the reservoir), but could very well be lethal to other species for the same reason that our cells are just different. it is for this reason that i could inject as much HIV into a cow as i wanted, but it simply wouldn't become infected (as bovine cells lack CD4 ccr3, ccr5, or cxcr4), but a relatively small dose of BIV (Bovine immuno-def. virus) would not make our cow a happy camper. similarily it is thought that pigs may latently harbor many potentially dangerous pathogens, and organ transplants may be a way of seeding these into a susceptible population, a potential example of this is PERV (porcine endogenous retrovirus); what does this virus do in humans?-who knows? (but it's cool that there's a virus called "PERV") but a retrovirus cannot be removed from living tissue by any feasible means today, and an organ cannot be 100% gauranteed to be retrovirus-free. new viruses, prions, viroids, bacteria, fungi, etc. one cannot rule them out, one can only try to correct anything that may potentially go wrong. but the potential to start some sort of wierd epidemic will remain.
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DMT1 is thought to be an autoimmunedisease in which case you'd have to recieve a pancreas with non-immunogenic beta-islet cells, considering they don't even know why they're immunogenic (ie which protien, but their best guess is it's a pre-insulin product in the pathway to insulin production, which of course is bad) i, unfortunately, wouldn't expect a foolproof pancreas in your lifetime... but if we could "cure" DMT1 in our grand-children's generation then i would consider it a battle won.
it's unfortunate that religion must so often stand in the way of actually helping people in the name of ethics, seems a bit of an oxymoron to me...
this actually isn't a horribly new idea, scientist (and "normal" people as well) have been talking about xenography for quite a while now, with pigs often being decided upon a suitable "donors" due to the plethora of pigs seemingly everywhere (uh... like porcine pigs, not cops [which also seem to be everywhere]), a similar body size to people, and other physiologic similarities. there are huge potential problems with xenography though, chief amongst these is host verses graft disease (organ rejection) by the recepient, which biotechnology is now struggling to conquer by humanizing animals (so the cells "look" human, although tissue-typing will also be an issue). however an issue with a much less clear-cut answer is the question of introducing potential pathogens into a virgin population. seldom are viruses, or other especially "non-living" pathogens discovered until they start causing substantial damage to one population or another, and while any organisms may harbor countless different microbes very few actually cause noticable morbidity (this population is known as the reservoir), but could very well be lethal to other species for the same reason that our cells are just different. it is for this reason that i could inject as much HIV into a cow as i wanted, but it simply wouldn't become infected (as bovine cells lack CD4 ccr3, ccr5, or cxcr4), but a relatively small dose of BIV (Bovine immuno-def. virus) would not make our cow a happy camper. similarily it is thought that pigs may latently harbor many potentially dangerous pathogens, and organ transplants may be a way of seeding these into a susceptible population, a potential example of this is PERV (porcine endogenous retrovirus); what does this virus do in humans?-who knows? (but it's cool that there's a virus called "PERV") but a retrovirus cannot be removed from living tissue by any feasible means today, and an organ cannot be 100% gauranteed to be retrovirus-free. new viruses, prions, viroids, bacteria, fungi, etc. one cannot rule them out, one can only try to correct anything that may potentially go wrong. but the potential to start some sort of wierd epidemic will remain.