Dear FRONTLINE,

I have a hard time understanding why human beings feel that they are so important as to breed other intelligent (maybe not AS intelligent)living creatures then eventually destroy them (quickly? painlessly?).

It was so difficult to watch the segment where the piglet's heart was removed from its body and then transplanted onto the baboon's neck. I'm sure the information gathered during the experiment was important but it makes me feel no better about knowing that 1) the pig died; and 2) the baboon was probably NOT asked to sign a consent form for the experiment to take place. Who gave us EVERY RIGHT?

annandale, virginia

Dear FRONTLINE,

Anyone opposed to this alternative source of organs is not on a waiting list.

dallas, tx

Dear FRONTLINE,

I am able to see and understand where the animal rights people are coming from.

However, if improving the lives of dangerously sick people, involves a pig, baboon, calf,or even a dog, then that far outweighs the argument of those on the animals side. The loss of an animal,improveing a human life, is nothing to morn over.

The animal rights folks need to get a life and let reserch find future cures. Those protesting now may benefit from this research just a few short years from now. Think about it protester. Isn't your life infinitely more important than an animals?

Randy Cornell
oklahoma city, ok

Dear FRONTLINE,

I do realize that this is a way to save people but maybe there is a reason that the person is dying it's called population control. Or even better survival of the fittest. There are too many people on this planet already and now we are trying to keep the people that are sick alive longer while adding more.

The planet will not be able to survive our overpopulation and I think that is one on the reasons different diseases are showing up more commonly now.

For us to try to enlongate our lives is a futile cause that will only contribute to the unnessary suffering of millions of animals that belong to this planet more than humans. They do not polute it, destroy it or prostitute it.

lori davidson
boston, ma

Dear FRONTLINE,

I watch with interest your program on the human efforts to develop animal to human organ transplants. I am afraid that these human efforts despite their ingenuity, technical sophistication, and scientific manipulation, will not help prolong life nor offer hope to a humanity that the natural cycle of life and death can be interfered. No matter how noble the goals of xenotransplantation may offer the human race, animal to human organ transplant is unethical and cruel. The consequences of these transplants do not enhance the quality of life. Instead, they mislead human hopes for longevity, they inflict suffering on life, they are costly, and they waste human efforts on research in an area that humans have no control over. Such research and transplants are wrong. Instead we should look for ways that improve and enhance human life such as the practice and education of compassion, the alleviation of suffering, and treating all of life as something sacred. We should find and fund ways of being more human. We do not stand at the apex of creation as humans with the mandate to control and subdue creation. Rather we need to realize that we are partners with creation. We should develop a respect for life, human or otherwise. If not, we are doomed to live and die just as all of nature does. And there is nothing wrong or unethical about this.

Ah-Seng Choo
bloomington, in

Dear FRONTLINE,

I support the research. With animals or even with humans. The greater good is served. Limitations of science based on teary-eyed extremism are not what has propelled our society forward this far. There's no place for those feelings, really. Inability to understand the clinical environment is the disability suffered by the so-called animal "rights" activists. They live in wooden houses and bemoan the lost forests. It's insanity. The greater good must be promoted.

Charles Morgan
fort worth, texas

Dear FRONTLINE,

The best remedy to this madness is finding ways to encourage human organ donation. We humans can help each other by planning for tragedy, God forbid, so we may help our fellow man. Too many are too busy to consider something so simple. So we'll rip the animal population to shreds until a few can find the Holy Grail of medicine.

Disturbing.

Jim Brown
nashville, tn

Dear FRONTLINE,

I am sitting here watching this program and am amazed at the sheer audacity of these researchers and doctors who are involved in this type of study. I can see no good coming from this at all.

In light of the recent outbreak of hoof and mouth disease, we as a society need to be especially weary. We may well be introducing a plethora of cross species diseases into the world. Just as some research appears to point to the leap of AIDS from primates to humans, so we may see a more horrid leap of hoof and mouth.

This can lead to no good.

Elliott Smith
ypsilanti, mi