- GENEVA (Sapa-AFP) -- Global
health experts have warned that pioneering research into organ transplants
from animals to humans must urgently be regulated to prevent diseases jumping
the species barrier in a similar manner to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome.
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- The call is contained in policy proposals submitted by
the World Health Organisation (WHO) to its Executive Board, which started
a one-week meeting on Monday.
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- WHO officials said the experimental transplants were
on the verge of going ahead in some countries, but there was little regulation
to keep track of what is going on or to prevent the misuse of xenotransplantation
or animal-to-human transplants.
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- "The principal concerns are safety concerns,"
said Alex Capron, WHO director of ethics, trade, human rights and law,
calling for "protective measures".
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- Capron underlined the dangers of humans accidentally
acquiring animal viruses through infected organs or tissue, and of possible
further secondary transmission to other people.
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- "The risks in terms of immune reactions and the
transfer of animal pathogens to not only the individual recipient, but
potentially in to the general population as we saw with SARS... pose as
of yet unquantified risks," he told journalists.
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- The WHO wants its 192 member states to stop xenotransplantation
until they have a regulatory framework, which barely exists anywhere at
the moment, Capron said.
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- "The sense of the consultants was that there is
a need for restrictions," he added.
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- Humans in southern China are believed to have been infected
by the SARS virus for the first time in late 2002 after close contact with
animals.
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- The WHO has also highlighted recent outbreaks of deadly
avian flu, warning of the dangers of the virus jumping from animals to
humans and then merging with the human influenza virus.
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- Unregulated xenotransplantation could add to those naturally-occurring
risks, according to health experts.
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