Man Gets Heart Transplant from Genetically Modified Pig
January 11th, 2022“Humanized, genetically-edited heart…”
Via: Reuters:
In a world first a terminally ill man in the U.S. has received a heart transplant – from a genetically modified pig.
Doctors say 57-year-old David Bennett of Maryland is doing well, three days after the experimental procedure.
The surgery took seven hours and was performed by a team at the University of Maryland Medicine.
It was seen as the last hope for Bennett, who had been suffering from terminal heart disease.
That meant doctors were able to receive an emergency authorization for the operation from the FDA.
…
The pig heart was provided by Revivicor, a regenerative medicine company based in Virginia.
Prior efforts at pig-to-human transplants have failed because of genetic differences that caused organ rejection or viruses that posed an infection risk.
Scientists have tackled that problem by editing away potentially harmful genes.
“Probably the biggest risk is now. We seem to be past what we consider the hyperacute rejection phase that we would normally have seen in an animal organ that wasn’t specially treated. So we feel good about that one.
So we’re preparing for the next attack on his organ, and we know that the pig heart will be attacked by different soldiers in our body. Different immune players can take it out, and we, we have designed a treatment plan in addition to the humanized, genetically-edited heart to try to account for that.”
Hmmm, Traditional Chinese Medicine considers the heart to be the seat of emotions, among other functions, rather than merely a pump. I tend to agree with this view and there is plenty of evidence to support this. Such as recipients of human heart transplants report developing interests in all manner of different things such as classical music, motor racing, being angrier than they were prior to the op. Upon finding out who the donor was it was discovered the donor had such interests and in the case of the last trait the donor was a male !
I expect this is just gratifying the surgeons egos and their desire to see how far they can push this kind of thing. It is astounding to think they would ever consider doing this. I expect the patient won’t survive all that long. I wonder if the pig played classical music ?