Revolution in Medical Science -Succesful Transplant of a Pig' Heart into a Human body

Article # 88
Dated: 18th January 2022

An unbelievable and miraculous benchmark set by the US doctors who have successfully translated a pig's heart to a human's body. This news did not make us even blink because we are living in an era in which technology is changing everything and medical sciences are touching new heights.

This whole procedure was done by the world-class team of transplant surgeons led by Dr. Griffith and Dr. Mohiuddin at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. It is a proud moment for Pakistanis as Dr. Mohiuddin is a Pakistani-origin American Doctor.

I saw this news today and I started digging it online to find out what really happened? And what was the whole procedure of this strange transplant? It was a former felon named David Bennet aged 57 whose heart was about to fail as he was suffering from terminal heart failure which is an end-stage as a person's life expectancy becomes six months or less. So it was a "do or die" situation for the doctors. So they decided to try this pig's heart transplant as a last resort. And this try become a new innovation in medical science and I hope this innovation would be successful and doctors will be able to save lives now.

But they needed to genetically modify the pig's heart. Our body is bound to reject foreign object if it enters our body as our immunity systems keep on fighting against them. Thats why the doctors felt the need to genetically modify the heart and now it is functioning as a human heart. They used a drug along with an anti-rejection drug in this procedure which is specially designed to suppress the immune system and prevent it from rejecting the heart as a foreign organ. They knocked out the three genes in the donor pig. And they inserted Six human genes which are responsible for the immune acceptance of the pig heart.

It's not the first time that an animal organ is transplanted into a human. It was first tried in 1980 when an infant named Stephanie Fae Beauclair received a baboon heart transplant because she was born with a fatal heart condition. But she died within a month after the procedure because her immune system fights the heart as a foreign organ.

I wish medical science will keep progressing and keep touching the new limits. I am sure there will be some implants in the developed countries that will be able to replace bones like in my case. My skull bone is replaced with titanium mesh but my immune system keeps fighting with it and rejecting it. I hope I would be able to get compatible implants as a replacement for my frontal bone. The doctors of my country are highly intelligent and they are famous all over the world but unfortunately, greed is making them only think about the money, not the well-being of their patients.

Link to the report of the university report paper who did this remarkable procedure of Transplant

Source For Lead Image