The first person to receive a heart transplant from a pig has died, two months after the groundbreaking experiment, the Maryland hospital that performed the surgery announced Wednesday. David Bennett, 57, died Tuesday at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
Highlights
- David Bennett, 57, died Tuesday at the University of Maryland Medical Center.
- Doctors didn’t give an exact cause of death, saying only that his condition had begun deteriorating several days earlier.
- Bennett, a handyman from Hagerstown, Maryland, was a candidate for this newest attempt only because he otherwise faced certain death.
- Bennett survived significantly longer with the gene-edited pig heart than one of the last milestones in xenotransplantation – when Baby Fae, a dying California infant, lived 21 days with a baboon’s heart in 1984.
- Doctors: “We are devastated by the loss of Mr.
- Bennett.