Egyptian clerics denounce first pig kidney transplant into human body
The global medical community has welcomed the US operation as a breakthrough, but some Egyptian clerics say the procedure violates Islamic law.
CAIRO — Doctors at the NYU Langone Health Center in New York City have successfully transplanted a pig’s kidney to a human after scientists removed the molecule from the pig’s genes that caused the human immune system to previously reject similar transplants. The surgery was performed on a patient who had kidney dysfunction and had been pronounced clinically dead, after the consent of the individual's family.
The medical community hailed this procedure as a breakthrough in organ transplantation amid the severe shortage of human organs for such surgeries.
Egyptian clerics, however, were quick to denounce the procedure, arguing that Islamic Sharia prohibits any kind of pig consumption.
In the first scathing comment, Attia Lashin, a member of the Fatwa Committee of Al-Azhar in Egypt, described the surgery as impermissible, stressing in a statement on Oct. 22 that “any use or consumption of pig meat or body organs is a sin, and pigs will continue to be forbidden until the end of days.”
