Bioethicists weigh in: Xenotransplantation may be here ‘within the next five years,’ but concerns loom
In January of this year, scientists transplanted a genetically modified pig heart to a severely ill patient who was not eligible for human organ transplant. That patient, 57-year-old David Bennett, survived some 60 days before his new pig heart succumbed to a virus that infects pigs but not humans, as first reported by MIT Tech Review at the time.
According to that report, Bennett’s doctor Bartley Griffith said during a webinar, “It wasn’t an experiment to us. All he [Bennett] wanted to do was live. In fact, he was such a funny guy. On the way in to get his pig heart transplant, he looked at me and he said squarely, ‘Are you sure I can’t get a human heart?’”
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