section_path: Uses/In medicine
section_name: In medicine
paragraph_text: In medicine
  
  Pigs, both as live animals and as a source of post-mortem tissues, are valuable animal models because of their biological, physiological, and anatomical similarities to human beings. For instance, human skin is very similar to the pigskin, therefore pigskin has been used in many preclinical studies.
  
  Pigs are good non-human candidates for organ donation to humans, and in 2021 became the first animal to successfully donate an organ to a human body. The procedure used a donor pig genetically engineered not to have a specific carbohydrate that the human body considers a threat– Galactose-alpha-1,3-galactose. Pigs are good for human donation as the risk of cross-species disease transmission is reduced by the considerable phylogenetic distance from humans. They are readily available, and the danger of creating new human diseases is low as domesticated pigs have been in close contact with humans for thousands of years.