In 1st, US surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient
The Hindu
Over the years, scientists have turned from primates to pigs, tinkering with their genes.
In a medical first, doctors transplanted a pig heart into a patient in a last-ditch effort to save his life and a Maryland hospital said Monday that he's doing well three days after the highly experimental surgery.
While it’s too soon to know if the operation really will work, it marks a step in the decades-long quest to one day use animal organs for life-saving transplants. Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center 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, a 57-year-old Maryland handyman, knew there was no guarantee the experiment would work but he was dying, ineligible for a human heart transplant and had no other option, his son told The Associated Press.

On January 11, 1922, 14-year-old Leonard Thompson became the first person to receive an insulin injection as a treatment for diabetes. A disease that had haunted humankind for millennia finally became treatable, and the century since has seen a lot happen, both good and bad. A.S.Ganesh takes stock of a disease that is now unfolding as a global epidemic…












