All-clear for kidney transplants on cats worries animal charity

Cats with failing kidneys could get transplants after the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons officially sanctioned the practice yesterday.

Transplants could cost up to £8,000, with a high risk that the cat might not live longer than six months afterwards. Animal charities expressed concern about the ethics of the procedure. Cats Protection saidit could not condone the removal of a kidney from a healthy cat (as a source) because the cat could not give its consent, and the operation would not be in the donor's best interest.

The college said guidelines would be robust and members of surgical teams would have the appropriate qualifications. Stephen Ware, its president, said: "It is important to note that the decision to carry out the procedure will be a clinical veterinary decision in the first instance, which will depend on the condition of the patient and the suitability of the potential source animal." He added that the college was only expecting "a handful of cases" in Britain in the next few years.

Cats can live up to 25 years. Kidney failure is one of the most common causes of death in older animals but progress has been made in recent years to treat the condition. Transplants have been offered as treatment in America for 16 years, where about 60 per cent of cats receiving transplants survive for more than six months after surgery.

Cats Protection said too little was known about the longer-term effects of kidney transplantation in cats.

A spokeswoman warned that if transplants became common practice then it could lead to the founding of commercial "source cat" centres. "Such [centres] could mean the wide-scale euthanasia of healthy cats for kidney removal purposes, which the charity would find totally unacceptable."