An animal rights group has called on a Hong Kong e-commerce company to stop conducting experiments that it said involve keeping detached animal heads and limbs “viable” for hours.
Hong Kong Technology Venture (HKTV), the parent company of popular shopping platform HKTV mall, announced in a stock exchange filing on March 30 that its research team has been developing “equipment designed to maintain the viability of detached body organs”.
The company said its team of doctors, professors and researchers had conducted “38 experiments in which the animals’ limbs or heads were separated from their bodies” since 2022.
“The detached heads remained viable for approximately 7 hours,” the company said, adding that it believes the case to be a world first.
The detached limbs were kept alive for approximately 46 hours, according to measurements made using electrodes.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Asia’s president Jason Baker called on the company on April 1 to “immediately cease and permanently prohibit” the experiments and other similar tests.
“In addition to being cruel, this research is purely exploratory, with highly speculative benefit,” he said in a letter sent to HKTV and the media.
A US-based team of scientists announced in 2022 that it had restored blood flow and cell functions in the bodies of pigs that had been dead for an hour, after previously restoring cell function in dead pig brains.
HKTV said in its filing that the technology could enable long-term preservation of human organs, adding that it “places the utmost importance” on the project, and will “continue to allocate resources to it”.
HKTV told AFP the experiments were conducted on pigs and sheep, and that “appropriate anaesthetics are administered throughout the procedures”.
The experiments were conducted in accordance with standards and regulations in Europe and the United States, the company added.
“The Life Science Project is not intended to cause unnecessary harm to the animals, with the objective of improving the quality of life for the elderly, while contributing to advances in organ preservation, limb transplantation, and blood regeneration,” it said in an email to AFP.
HKTV has invested more than HK$44.5 million (S$7.2 million) in the project since 2021, it said, and intends to invest at least HK$50 million annually in the coming years.
However, it warned that the project remained in its early stages.
“The results obtained to date do not constitute commercial products nor clinically applicable solutions, and there is no assurance that such outcomes will be achieved in the future,” it said.
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