A Survey of the Attitudes of Scientists Toward Xenotransplantation in Taiwan

This study examined the attitudes of scientists in Taiwan's leading animal research institution toward xenotransplantation. The aim was primarily to evaluate the opinions of professionals in the biomedical field on key issues including ethical moral, legal, and regulatory issues raised by the biotechnology. A secondary objective was to identify potential factors that influenced opinions. A questionnaire-based survey was used to evaluate opinions. A test for internal consistency of the questionnaires to sample of 91 scientists was performed as well as a principal component analysis. We evaluated associations between variables using the nonparametric Kruskal-Wallis test. Among the subjects 85.2% thought that xenotransplantation can be more beneficial than harmful to human society and 94.3% believed that it is important to develop xenotransplantation. Also, 97.8% of participants believed that legislative guidelines should be adopted to regulate research in biotechnology. Gender was an influencing factor, whereas, variables such as religion, marital status, and age did not have obvious effects. Further studies on the general public are needed to detect other factors and to examine the attitude of nonprofessionals toward xenotransplantation.