Royal College of Art student Eliot Postma has created a conceptual project where pets could be used to harvest human organs for transplants.
Called Human Body Shop, the project includes proposals for models to commemorate the sacrificed animals, which would be made of the cremated remains set in resin and mounted on a plinth made of the pet's skin.
See also: Life Support by Revital Cohen, a conceptual project about turning animals into medical devices. See Dezeen's top ten stories about animals here.
Here are a few more details from Postma:
In memory of our pets
Cremated sheep's remains set into clear resin
With organ donor shortages across the globe, Eliot Postma explores a future in which pets are engineered to grow replacement human parts.
This doll questions a new relationship between pet and owner, happily living side by side until a transplant is required. Once an organ has been harvested the doll is made as a memorial to the pet. The cremated remains are set into a clear resin model of the pet and stand on a plinth of the sheep's skin. The subtle human mutations acting as a reminder of the reason for its existence and sacrifice.
Eliot presented this product in the Royal College of Art Architecture show as part of a wider project called 'Human Body Shop'.