Man with a pig's heart - 28th January 2022

Some doctors in the US made history. They put a pig's heart in a man. This saved his life.

This is very big news in science. Perhaps in the future, there will be enough organs for everyone.

Doctor Bartley Griffith was one of the doctors.

Bartley Griffith: "The driver for all this was to provide an opportunity for patients with end-stage heart disease, who could not either qualify or just didn't get a heart in time, to treat their pretty poor heart function with a transplant."

The man's name is David Bennett. He was too ill to get a human heart. But now, with the pig heart, we hope that he'll get well.

Muhammad Mohiuddin is a director at the University of Maryland Medical School.

Muhammad Mohiuddin: "We are all very excited to see this pig heart beating in this human. That pig heart has performed so far very well even beyond our expectations. We have not seen any signs of rejection."

Scientists made some changes to the pig's heart. They wanted it to work well in the human body. So, they put some human genes in the pig's heart.

Thousands of people need organs. Every year many people die. But pigs' organs can help. They grow quickly and they are a similar size to human organs.

Muhammad Mohiuddin thinks that animal organs can save these people's lives in the future.

Muhammad Mohiuddin: "We'll have these organs available, we can, you know, we have the technique of genetically modifying. So, if there's more tweaking required for modifying the genes, we will be able to do that, and you know, can customise, basically, the heart for all the organs for the patient."