Daniel Q. Haney

About the author: Daniel Q. Haney is a medical editor with the Associated Press news wire service.

Despite some anticipated difficulties, researchers project that pigs may begin fulfilling the mounting human need for hearts and kidneys by 2006. In particular, genetically engineered miniature pigs, scaled down to the dimensions of a large person, show promise for supplying much-needed organs. Unlike primates, pigs are not endangered, and because their tissue is less like human tissue than the tissue of primates, their organs are less likely to successfully transmit a foreign virus during transplantation. Most importantly, many pig organs are similar in size and shape to human organs, making them more viable for transplantation.

As unlikely as it sounds, one solution to the shortage of organs for transplant could be...