There’s a lot of work on something called immuno-tolerance, so that you can transplant someone and persuade someone that they don’t need to take immunosuppression. This is the holy grail of transplantation. And there’s a lot of work trying to find out how can you achieve immuno-tolerance. We haven’t achieved it yet, this is something which we’re trying to do. We’ve tried other ways of trying to wash out all of the cells, and basically cleaning the system, and replacing all the proteins that essentially come out when you wash out the system. But still there’s side effects from that, and it is quite an invasive procedure. So we haven’t quite achieved that.

We’ve looked at alternatives, looked at different types of antibodies, and we haven’t quite got there yet. But you never know – in the future, there’ll be aspects such as stem cells, which may be used, and even something like xeno-transplantation, where you’re taking organs from animals, where you may be able to do some work beforehand, modifying transgenically the antigens on the animals. But we’re not there yet.

So the question of whether you can stop taking immunosuppression… We’ve had lots of patients who have tried to see if they can do that – our advice is always no. The reason why is that they will end up rejecting, and the challenge is basically getting to that point where they accept that they have to carry on taking the medications. And often we see this with adolescent children as they’re getting older, or in other older age-groups when they don’t like the side-effects of some of the immunosuppression tablets. What we do know is that they probably feel OK the first few times – they may skip a few doses – but then if they have something like a urine infection, that triggers the whole immune system, and everything happens. And it’s the sort of thing that you don’t see the spark, and the initial fire, but it’s a situation where when you open a door and there’s a blaze inside that room, you can’t really put it out.

And that’s why we warn people not to experiment and not to do this. We’ve seen lots of people who’ve stopped taking their immunosuppression and lost their organs. I’ve heard of cases where people have got away with it, by stopping their medication, but I personally haven’t seen it myself, and I’m a little bit worried about that. You know when people sort of comment, it’s a bit like sort of hearing stories on the internet, and you think, clearly it must be fine, and the power of the internet and what that does to people’s minds. So, what we consent is, obviously, someone has given some organs for your benefit, please look after them, and if you look after those organs, they will look after you.