PIG IN THE MIDDLE

16 Year old school girl leads mass protest against medical trials
20th May 2005

	Protester Gemma Lewis argues with potential xenotransplantation recipient Ryan Wheeler
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16 year old school girl, Gemma Lewis, is leading a mass picket of protesters in a last minute bid to stop the first xenotransplantation trials scheduled to start at the Unsworth Hospital next week.
Xenotransplantation, or animal to human transplants, is a controversial new treatment which replaces a diseased human organ with a healthy animal organ, in this case a specially bred pig’s kidney.

Gemma, herself a former kidney dialysis patient of Doctor Mayhew, who is heading up the programme, says that the trials are dangerous to humans and cruel to the pigs who are being bred to provide the organs in question. She accused Doctor Mayhew of using the trial patients as human guinea pigs to further her career.

This morning angry patients and their relatives called on the hospital authorities to take police action. 16 year old Ryan Mathews, the first patient scheduled to receive a pig’s kidney, was unavailable for comment.

Mrs Sally Mathews, Ryan’s Mother, said that it was her son’s decision to go ahead with the transplant and if she is happy to respect her son’s decision so should Gemma and the thousands of other protesters.

In an interview earlier today Doctor Mayhew, who has recently been the subject both of a number of attacks on her property and hate mail, said that if these trials are successful then this new treatment will change the lives of thousands of patients desperate for a replacement organ.

Without this treatment the chances of those patients receiving a replacement organ are extremely low due to the shortage of human organs.