The first person to receive a heart transplant from a pig has died two months after the groundbreaking experiment.
The Maryland hospital that performed the surgery announced that David Bennett, 57, died at the University of Maryland medical center. An exact cause of death was not provided, but just that his condition had begun deteriorating for days prior.
For decades, doctors have sought to use animal organs for life-saving transplants in order to end the organ shortage. Bennett was a candidate for this attempt because otherwise, he would have faced certain death.
His family said that they knew there was no guarantee that the transplant would work, but that they were grateful for the last-ditch experiment. Bennett’s son, David Bennett Jr., said in a statement released by The University of Maryland School of Medicine that the family hopes this story will be the beginning of hope, not the end.
These types of transplants are known as xenotransplantation. In the past, they have failed largely due to patients’ bodies rapidly rejecting the organ. But this time, the doctors used a heart from a gene-edited pig.
Scientists modified the pig in order to remove pig genes that would otherwise trigger a quick rejection. They added in human genes in hopes it would let the body accept the organ. Pigs have long been used in medicine, but transplanting an entire organ is a much more complex procedure than previous or typical uses.
There is a massive shortage of organs. More than 41,000 transplants were performed in the United State in 2021, which was a record number. Close to 4,000 were heart transplants.
These numbers are just a drop in the bucket. More than 106,000 people are still on a national waiting list for an organ. Thousands die every year while waiting for an organ. Thousands more never make it on the list because they are considered too much of a long shot.
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