We have written before about animal transplantation, its controversy, and its exciting future. On January 7th, Dr. Bartley Griffith successfully transplanted a pig’s heart in a human body. The experimental surgery had only been approved 7 days prior and approval read “Good luck with the surgery!” The patient, “David Bennett, Sr., a fifty-seven-year-old man with severe heart failure, had to undergo four psychiatric evaluations, to make sure he could give consent.” While Dr. Griffith had performed thousands of heart transplants prior to this surgery, “before he made the first incision, he suggested that everyone pause for thirty seconds to “think about what this man is entering into.” The New Yorker details the entire process of the surgery, the aftercare, and some of the concerns.
Illustration by Carnovsky