Polite Dissent

A xenograft is the transplantation of a tissue or organ from an animal to a human. In the early 1960s attempt were made to transplant chimpanzee kidneys into humans. It didn’t work particularly well with the longest recipient living for 9 months. There have also been attempts to transplant primate hearts into human, but again, the results were not particularly encouraging.

A more successful example of xenografting has been the transplantation of pig and cow heart valves into humans who have defective valves. There are also ongoing studies looking at transplanting animal neural tissues into patients with Parkinson’s disease.

In comic books, xenografting has been much more successful:

• In Jumbo Comics #99, Sheena fights Panther, a criminal who has had his own eye replaced with the eyes of a leopard.
• Gorilla-Man (Arthur Nagan) was a surgeon who experimented with xenografts of gorillas and humans. Through circumstances that aren’t entirely clear, he ended up with his head transplanted onto the body of a gorilla.
• The definitive example must be the Ultra-Humanite, who transplanted his brain into the body of giant white ape.

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Please Note: Xenografting is not to be confused with Xenagrafting, which the transplantation of tissues or organs from the Warrior Princess onto normal people.

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Other Comic Book Diagnoses:
Frozen Solid
Brains! Brains!
Hypertrichosis

Tags: comics medicine xenograft sheena gorilla-man ultra-humanite xena