LAB SHORTS
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, June 1995:
Using pigs to grow spare parts
for humans came closer to reality with
the late April announcements that a team
at the Lahey Hitchcock Clinic in
Burlington, Massachusetts, had trans-
planted pig tissue into the brain of a 59-
year-old man in hopes of reversing
Parkinson’s disease, while a team at Duke
University created genetically engineered
pigs whose bodies include two human pro-
teins that prevent hyperacute tissue rejec-
tion. “In societies where animals are
killed in the tens of millions for food,”
wrote Dr. John Favre of the London
University Institute of Child Health, in a
Nature Medicine editorial accompanying
publication of the Duke data, “it would be
difficult to argue on ethical grounds for a
proscription on the killing of a tiny num-
ber of pigs to save the lives and restore the
health of sick and dying patients.”
Stanford University professor
Seymour Levine has taken unan-
nounced early retirement in connection
with the settlement of a sexual harassment
suit brought by former research assistant
Helen Bae. Levine’s isolation experi-
ments involving squirrel monkeys drew
frequent protests in recent years. His lab-
oratory is reportedly to be closed.
A team led by Dr. Coenrad
Hemker of the University of Limburg, in
the Netherlands, claims to have created a
drug to break up blood clots, refined from
vampire bat saliva.
