U.S SURGEONS TRANSPLANT PIG HEART 💖 INTO HUMAN PATIENT IN MEDICAL FIRST.

By Chandrayee Roy Choudhury, Canada: In a medical first, doctors have transplanted a pig heart into a patient, in a last-ditch effort to save his life. And three days after the highly experimental surgery, a Maryland hospital said Monday that the patient is doing well.

Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center, near Baltimore, say the transplant showed that a heart from a genetically modified animal can function in the human body without immediate rejection.

The patient, David Bennett, 57, knew there was no guarantee the experiment would work, but he was dying, ineligible for a human heart transplant and had no other option.

"It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live," Bennett said a day before the surgery, according to a statement provided by the University of Maryland School of Medicine. "I know it's a shot in the dark, but it's my last choice."



There's a huge shortage of human organs donated for transplant, driving scientists to try to figure out how to use animal organs instead.