Mar 10, 2022: David Bennett, the first person to receive a transplant from a pig heart, has died two months after the groundbreaking experiment, the hospital that performed the surgery has announced.

Bennett, 57, died on Tuesday at a hospital in Maryland in the United States, and doctors did give an exact cause of death.

The spokesman for the hospital said that the cause of death was not immediately clear.

Dr. Bartley Griffith, the transplant surgeon, said the entire staff was saddened by Mr. Bennett’s death. He was a brave man who fought to the last. Remember that this wonderful feat was performed by Pakistani Dr. Mansoor, a team of doctors successfully transplanted the heart of a genetically modified pig into a 57-year-old man, after which David Bennett became the first person in the world to get a successful transplant from another specie.

Prior attempts at such transplants, or xenotransplantation, have failed largely because patients’ bodies rapidly rejected the animal organ. This time, the Maryland surgeons used a heart from a gene-edited pig. Scientists had modified the animal to remove pig genes that trigger the hyper-fast rejection and add human genes to help the body accept the organ.

Bennett’s son praised the hospital for offering the last-ditch experiment, saying the family hoped it would help further efforts to end the organ shortage.

After the January 7 operation, the pig heart was functioning, and the Maryland hospital issued periodic updates that Bennett seemed to be slowly recovering. Last month, the hospital released video of him watching the Super Bowl from his hospital bed while working with his physical therapist.

According to Mansoor Mohi-ud-Din, a Pakistani doctor who played a key role in heart transplantation, before the surgery, three genes were added to the pig’s DNA and six human genes were added.

The transplant cost PKR 17.5 million. According to Dr. Mansoor, the heart of a few months old pig is about the size of an adult human heart and its structure is very similar to that of a human heart.

Earlier, attempts were made to transplant monkey hearts into humans, but without success.

The need for another source of organs is huge. More than 41,000 transplants were performed in the US last year, a record – including about 3,800 heart transplants. But more than 106,000 people remain on the national waiting list, thousands die every year before getting an organ and thousands more never even get added to the list, considered too much of a long shot.

But from Bennett’s experience, “we have gained invaluable insights learning that the genetically modified pig heart can function well within the human body while the immune system is adequately suppressed,” said Dr Muhammad Mohiuddin, scientific director of the Maryland university’s animal-to-human transplant programme.

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