Last Farm(ed) Animal Awareness Week, we wrote about pigs being used as “spare parts” for humans, explaining that this unethical and ineffectual practice serves only to benefit the researchers themselves. 

Unfortunately, over the last year, xenotransplantation research has only ramped up while donated human organs continue being left behind, lost, wasted, or disappeared.

You probably already know that animal researchers attempt to justify their exploitation of animals for xenotransplantation research by pointing to the shortage of human organs. But you might not know that the umbrella agency of the world’s largest funder of animal research is contributing to, if not driving, this shortage itself…

The U.S. organ transplant system falls under the purview of the Health Resources and Services Administration (“HRSA”), which — just like the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”, the world’s largest funder of animal research) — is part of the Department of Health and Human Services. 

Also, just like the NIH does with animal research institutions, the HRSA:

• Uses its federal monies to enter into “lucrative” contracts with non-governmental, and “private”, “groups” – in this case, 56 “organ procurement organizations, or OPOs”, each with “a monopoly on organs in a particular geographic area”; and
• “Doesn’t seem to be doing the job of oversight that the agency should”, resulting in “mismanagement and waste[]” among its contractees . . . to the detriment of the human population it claims to serve.

The parallels between the animal research industry, as backed by the NIH, and the organ procurement industry, as backed by the HRSA, are startling, as both scream of “inefficiency, inertia, negligence and corruption”.

Similar to how the NIH enriches animal researchers to the detriment of both humans and other-than-human animals, the HRSA enriches OPO executives to the detriment of both humans (who go without needed organs for transplant) and other-than-human animals (who are victimized to generate organs for experimental transplant). 

And, similar to how the NIH perpetuates the animal research industry by failing to significantly pursue ethical, human-relevant science, the HRSA is perpetuating the animal research industry’s fixation on xenotransplantation by sustaining an unmet need for human organs. By way of a few examples only:

• OPOs “could be recovering more than twice as many organs as [they do] now” (e.g., “a 2021 report in the American Journal of Transplantation . . . showed that procurement organizations collected organs from just 33 deceased donors at VA hospitals between 2010 and 2019, though 5,281 donors met the criteria to provide them.”)
• OPOs are “underusing deceased donor organs by the tens of thousands”. (Some analysts have pegged this latter number at more than 75,000 organs – “enough to put the nation on pace to wipe out the waiting lists within a few years”.) 
• An ongoing investigation is querying the disappearance of “nearly 7,000 pancreata [the plural of “pancreas”] taken by [OPOs] from dead Americans’ bodies” over a three-year period and “not used for transplants”. (These organs could have cleared the list of humans awaiting just pancreata almost nine times over…) 
• “[O]ne in four recovered kidneys are not transplanted”. (“In 2023, for example, ‘there were 8,574 kidneys recovered with intent to transplant, but were later discarded; that comes out to about 23 kidneys wasted per day,’ . . . ‘At the same time, an average of 12 people die each day waiting for a kidney transplant. This is a system failure and completely unacceptable.’”)

In taking a broader overview, advocates and investigators say that the federal government:

• Creates strong disincentives to using currently unused organs (i.e., are incentivizing the maintenance of organ shortages!);
• Displays lax oversight of careless treatment (of, e.g., donated and lost organs); 
• Allows its contracted parties to ‘act with complete impunity,’….”;
• Permits fundamental conflicts of interest and misconduct ranging “from kickback schemes . . . to discrimination, favoritism and bribery….”;
• Okays the suppression of data that would lend itself to industry accountability;
• Accepts the  “taking [of] credit” for advancements that were driven by outside factors; and
• Sanctions a system that does not ensure the protection of whistleblowers or the appropriate vetting or redress of their complaints.

Sound familiar?

As more comes to public light, both the animal research and the organ transplant systems are being “throw[n] . . . into question”.

Right below their surfaces, we find governmental and non-governmental actors using mismanaged systems to “enrich themselves and their organizations”. We find industries propped up by financial and political ties. 

With regard to the U.S. organ transplant system, the federal government’s Senate Finance Committee has actually laid this bare, (1) “alleg[ing] that organ procurement organizations and their executives ‘have engaged in a complex web of financial relationships with tissue processors, researchers, testing laboratories, and logistics providers, which have the potential for creating conflicts of interest’”, and (2) concluding that the “‘alleged financial and business relationships’ . . . ‘pose serious risks to those in need of a lifesaving organ transplant.’”

Overall, then – and as summed up by a researcher and surgeon before Congress: “‘Patients are continuing to die in the United States waiting for an organ, due to self-interest, incompetence, and mismanagement,’….” 

Substitute “a treatment or therapy” for “organ”, and you might as well be talking about the animal research industry…

And, this is how the controlling interests want things to stay: industrial representatives “ignore[] research” that details their industry’s failings and “lobb[y] against bipartisan, data-driven measures to hold” industry “accountab[le]”; and federal government representatives defend and maintain support for dysfunctional, ineffective, and harmful programs instead of supporting efforts and spending money to align the systems’ activities with human (and other-than-human) interests.

Recognizing that human organs are being wasted while both humans in need die and other-than-humans are tortured and killed as incubators for human parts, we see that while one arm of the Department of Health and Human Services mangles the human organ donation system, another arm of the same Department uses the result of this mismanagement (i.e., the human organ shortage) as a reason to bolster the animal research industry.

The result? Those financially invested in this perversion line their pockets, while the rest of us — including farmed animals — pay the ultimate price.

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