The reason - lack of budget
Scientists at the Roslyn Institute in Scotland, who cloned Dolly the sheep, announced yesterday that they are stopping the development of the breed of pigs whose organs are supposed to be used for human transplantation. Physiologically, pig organs are quite similar to human organs. For this reason, several companies are developing genetically modified pigs, whose organs will be genetically compatible with humans, so that the patient's body will not reject them. However, the main fear of using pig organs for transplantation is that diseases that currently exist only in pigs will be transferred to humans. In initial experiments in which pig tissues were transplanted into humans, this did not happen.
Prof. Ian Wilmot, who led the team that cloned Dolly, said that the reason for stopping the research is that Jaron, which purchased the Roslin Institute about two years ago, decided to cut funding for the development of the pigs. Wilmot told the newspaper "Scotland on Sunday" that he was disappointed by Jaron's move.
The company, which has been working on the development of genetically engineered pigs for about two years, is not the leader in the field, but in March its scientists succeeded in creating five cloned pigs.
{Appeared in Haaretz newspaper, 15/8/2000{
