Abstract

Following on the heels of groundbreaking research in 2022, perhaps the most notable of which involved a genetically-altered pig heart being transplanted into a severely ill patient, a xenotransplant phase I clinical trial has been registered in the United States. While the hope is that xenotransplantation will save human lives, the research requires the genetic alteration and subsequent death of animals. In this paper, I respond to criticism of the ethical defensibility of xenotransplant research from within Catholic moral teaching. I present three necessary conditions set forth by Catholic moral teaching for ethical animal research and argue that xenotransplant research satisfies each condition. I respond to the concern that xenotransplant research is grounded in a non-theologically tenable paradigm and argue that it is ethically defensible.