Man With GM Pig Heart Dies Two Months After Groundbreaking Surgery

A man who made history as the first person to receive a genetically modified pig's heart transplant died on Tuesday afternoon, the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC) has confirmed.

David Bennet, 57, who had terminal heart disease, received the transplant on January 7, and lived for two months following the surgery, according to a UMMC statement.

But several days ago his condition began to deteriorate and doctors gave him palliative care after determining that he would not be able to recover.

UMMC said Bennet was able to communicate with his family during his last moments.

"We are devastated by the loss of Mr. Bennett. He proved to be a brave and noble patient who fought all the way to the end. We extend our sincerest condolences to his family," Dr. Bartley Griffith, the surgeon who performed the transplant procedure at UMMC, said in the statement.

"Mr. Bennett became known by millions of people around the world for his courage and steadfast will to live," he said.

Transplanting organs from one species to another is called xenotransplantation. Some scientists have long been interested in using genetically-modified pig organs for human transplants because they are so similar physiologically to our own. But previous efforts have failed due to issues such as genetic differences that caused the organs to be rejected.

Last year, surgeons in New York announced that they had successfully transplanted a pig's kidney into a person. But the patient, who was suffering from kidney disease, was brain-dead on a ventilator with no expectation of recovery.

Xenotransplantation has been criticized by some animal rights groups such as PETA, who described such procedures as "unethical, dangerous, and a tremendous waste of resources."

Bennet was admitted to UMMC in October, 2021, where he was placed on an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine to stay alive.

An ECMO is a life support device that pumps and oxygenates a patient's blood outside the body, in cases where the heart and lungs are unable to do so adequately.

Doctors determined that Bennet was not eligible for a conventional heart transplant and he was offered the experimental pig heart transplant instead, which he was told came with unknown risks and benefits.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted an emergency use authorization for the procedure on December 31 of that year, acknowledging that without the intervention, he would die. At the time, the 57-year-old himself admitted that the procedure was a "shot in the dark."

But while the genetically-modified, transplanted heart functioned "very well" for several weeks without any sign of rejection, his condition deteriorated in recent days until he passed away.

Dr. Muhammad Mohiuddin, a professor of surgery and scientific director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, said: "We are grateful to Mr. Bennett for his unique and historic role in helping to contribute to a vast array of knowledge to the field of xenotransplantation."

"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," Dr. Mohiuddin said. "We remain optimistic and plan on continuing our work in future clinical trials."

According to Dr. Griffith, the world-first transplant led to "valuable insights" that will hopefully provide "lifesaving benefits for future patients.

The man's son, David Bennett Jr., said he hoped his father's transplant would be the "beginning of hope and not the end," according to The Associated Press.

"We are grateful for every innovative moment, every crazy dream, every sleepless night that went into this historic effort," he said.

Newsweek has contacted the University of Maryland Medical Center for comment.