The Medical Faculty of Harvard University has been in the vanguard of research on Xenotransplantation – the transplantation of animal organs into human bodies to meet the shortage of organs from human donors.
Judge Weeramantry, who has written intensively on the interface area of law, science and ethics was requested by Harvard University’s Medical Faculty to assist them in relation to the ethical and legal implications of this work. Having spent some time as a Visiting Professor at the Medical Faculty studying this problem with Faculty members, he wrote a book Xenotransplantation: The Ethical and Legal Concerns. This work, done with the assistance of the Faculty and a grant from the WAIT Foundation and the Foundation for Ethics and Technology in Boston, was prepared for publication at the Weeramantry Centre in Colombo and was published by the Centre.
It was launched at the Biennial International Conference of the International Network for Human Rights of Academic and Scholarly Societies in April 2007 in collaboration with the Medical Faculty of the University of Colombo. Professor Fritz Bach, the Harvard Professor who led this research has observed that this book is “perhaps the most detailed study of the problem from the point of view of law, human rights and international law and should be a stimulus to further discussion on the subject.”
Among the implications of Xenotransplantation which are dealt with in detail in this study, are human rights implications, religious implications and international law implications. These arise in view of possible epidemics resulting from the procedure. They could affect several countries. All of these concerns fall within the area of activities of the Centre.
