From Wayne Conlan
Ottawa, Canada
Your editorial “The means to an end”, supporting the replacement of rodent
tissues with human tissues for most laboratory experiments, ignores important
issues of biosafety (Editorial, 25 October, p 3).
Tissues from purpose-bred rodents are essentially free of viruses that infect
for humans, the same is obviously not true for primary human tissues from
hospital repositories. Frankly, the thought of the latter tissues gaining
wide-spread use in ill-equipped laboratories staffed with inadequately trained
personnel frightens me more than any issues of biosafety raised by
xenotransplantation. Your wholehearted backing for this approach would seem to
be premature.
