Two recent Master of Science in Bioethics alumni, Sana Baban, MBE and Ashlin Amano, MBE, and their senior advisor Lisa Moses, VMD published a piece in the Hastings Center Forum entitled, 'Involuntary Donation: Animal Welfare and Xenotransplantation.' The article follows up on Dr. Moses' presentation this past September in the Harvard Surgical Ethics Conference session about non-human animal ethics considerations in xenotransplantation research.
The piece urges bioethics to consider the ethical implications for non-human animals in xenotransplantation and calls for greater oversight and transparency to allay concerns about animal welfare. Dr. Moses explained,
"We wrote this piece because so few people know about how the animals in xenotransplantation research are actually used that animal welfare concerns have been really overlooked by the public and much of the bioethics community. We wanted to educate people about what we know—and about how little information is actually available—to evaluate animal welfare and animal ethics in xenotransplantation research."