12.

 The questions and issues connected with the defence of the personal identity of the recipient patient is a central point not only for philosophical anthropology but also for moral theology, as is demonstrated by certain official pronouncements of the Magisterium on xenotransplantation, which see this as one of the fundamental criteria for the moral legitimacy of xenotransplantation. First Pius XII (Address to the Italian Association of Corneal Donors, Clinical Ophthalmologists and Legal Medicine, 14 May 1956), and more recently John Paul II (Address to the Eighteenth International Congress of the Transplant Society, 29 August 2000, n. 7), have clearly upheld the moral legitimacy, in principle, of this therapeutic procedure, on the condition that "the transplanted organ does not affect the psychological or genetic identity of the person who receives it" and "that there exists the proven biological possibility of carrying out such a transplant with success, without exposing the recipient to excessive risks".

We may observe here that together with the defence of personal identity, these pronouncements of the Magisterium indicate a second criterion for the moral legitimacy of xenotransplantation: health risk. We shall discuss this in greater detail shortly.

With regard to all other issues, from the standpoint of moral theology, the ethical conditions required for every other kind of transplant apply also for xenotransplantation.(⁶³)