LE3 .A278 2009

2009

Whitehall, Geoffrey

Acadia University

Bachelor of Arts

Honours

Political Science

Politics

Xenotransplantation, the process by which animal tissues or cells are inserted into human bodies, promises to fill the gap in human-to-human tissue transplantations, thereby alleviating organ transplant wait-lists and decreasing human suffering. This thesis examines the xenotransplant and the recipient. While pigs are used for agricultural and medical purposes, transplanting a living part of a pig body into a human body is different from other exchanges between the two species. Exploring the concepts of biotechnology, life itself, and speciesism, this thesis studies the relationship between the xenotransplantation donor and the xenotransplantation recipient. The thesis concludes that xenotransplantation begets a novel form of speciesism, whereby the xenotransplantation recipient becomes a humanising human and the xenotransplantation donor becomes a species without a species.

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https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses:619