FDA Contemplating Clinical Trials of Pig-Organ Transplants (WSJ)

The WSJ has the story:

FDA Planning to Allow Clinical Trials of Pig-Organ Transplants. Move could be an important step in effort to ease the shortage of human donor organs.  By Amy Dockser Marcus and Liz Essley Whyte

"The Food and Drug Administration is devising plans to allow clinical trials testing the transplantation of pig organs into humans, a person familiar with the matter said.

"If the agency follows through, the trials could be a key step in an effort to ease the deadly shortage of human donor organs. The planning comes in the wake of a handful of experimental surgeries involving the transplantation of pig organs into a critically ill man and in brain-dead patients.

"It is unclear when the trials would begin, the person said, adding that proposals from researchers would be handled case by case."