The news: A pig’s heart has been transplanted into a human being for the first time. David Bennett Sr., a man with terminal heart disease, received the genetically modified heart during an eight-hour operation on Friday January 7 at the University of Maryland Medical Center, which issued a statement last night. The operation was a last-ditch effort on behalf of Bennett, 57, who had been deemed ineligible for a conventional heart transplant. He had been in the hospital for more than six weeks before the procedure with life-threatening arrhythmia. “It was either die or do this transplant,” he said in the press statement. “I want to live. I know it’s a shot in the dark, but it’s my last choice.”
Image: Surgeons operate on Bennett in the procedure on January 7 UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND
