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The surgery took place Friday, and demonstrates for the first time that an animal heart can survive in a human without immediate rejection, the medical school said in a statement.
The patient, David Bennett, had been deemed ineligible for human transplant.
The 57-year-old Maryland resident is being carefully monitored to determine how the new organ performs.
"It was either die or do this transplant. I want to live. I know it's a shot in the dark, but it's my last choice," he said a day before the surgery.
Bennett, who has spent the last several months bedridden on a life support machine, added: "I look forward to getting out of bed after I recover."
The Food and Drug Administration granted emergency authorization for the surgery on New Year's Eve, as a last ditch effort for a patient who was unsuitable for conventional transplant.
"This was a breakthrough surgery and brings us one step closer to solving the organ shortage crisis," said Bartley Griffith, who surgically transplanted the pig heart.
"We are proceeding cautiously, but we are also optimistic that this first-in-the-world surgery will provide an important new option for patients in the future."
Bennett's donor pig belonged to a herd that had undergone a genetic editing procedure to knock out a gene that produces a particular sugar, which would otherwise have triggered a strong immune response and led to organ rejection.
The editing was performed by biotech firm Revivicor, which also supplied the pig used in a breakthrough kidney transplant on brain dead patient in New York in October.
The donated organ was kept in a machine to preserve it ahead of surgery, and the team also used a new drug along with conventional anti-rejection drugs to suppress the immune system and prevent it rejecting the organ.
It is an experimental compound made by Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals.
About 110,000 Americans are currently waiting for an organ transplant, and more than 6,000 patients die each year before getting one, according to official figures.
To meet demand, doctors have long been interested in so-called xenotransplantation, or cross-species organ donation, with experiments tracing back to the 17th century.
Early research focused on harvesting organs from primates — for example, a baboon heart was transplanted into a newborn known as "Baby Fae" in 1984, but she survived only 20 days.
Today, pig heart valves are widely used in humans, and pig skin is grafted on human burn victims.
Pigs make the ideal donors because of their size, their rapid growth and large litters, and the fact they are already raised as a food source.
Source: Agence France-Presse
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Personality changes following heart transplantation: The role of cellular memory:
Personality changes following heart transplantation, which have been reported for decades, include accounts of recipients acquiring the personality characteristics of their donor. Four categories of personality changes are discussed in this article: (1) changes in preferences, (2) alterations in emotions/temperament, (3) modifications of identity, and (4) memories from the donor's life. The acquisition of donor personality characteristics by recipients following heart transplantation is hypothesized to occur via the transfer of cellular memory, and four types of cellular memory are presented: (1) epigenetic memory, (2) DNA memory, (3) RNA memory, and (4) protein memory. Other possibilities, such as the transfer of memory via intracardiac neurological memory and energetic memory, are discussed as well. Implications for the future of heart transplantation are explored including the importance of reexamining our current definition of death, studying how the transfer of memories might affect the integration of a donated heart, determining whether memories can be transferred via the transplantation of other organs, and investigating which types of information can be transferred via heart transplantation. Further research is recommended.
Might explain this: Peppa Pig World [Link]
I just watched BoJo on Peppa Pig World and that is beyond unbelievable. Can't make up that shit on a bet
Omg... I cannot find it now, but there was a youtube where he is interviewed after, and Johnston retorts smugly: I think the audience understood very well; they knew exactly what I was talking about.
It's much beyond outrageous. Which audience? Those who have ears to hear the implicit messages in which they speak. Meanwhile, media presents him(/them) as a benign bumbling fool. He most certainly is not.
We are rolling down a river.
I'll have a look at "The Heart's Code".
Doesn't have to be all gloom.
Well, what does one say in answer to that!
But one wonders if, a heart transplant from a Pig, would result in people rutting around in the earth and mud, to protect their skin, groveling into the forests, to smell the wonders of those high value truffles.
The mind boggles, with this development. Can human beginnings, be so debased, by some, that we are nothing more than animals, And our hearts, are nothing more than parts, to be traded.
Most people, I think would consider their heart as a sacred place, and to trade it with a pig, is a stretch too far, regardless, if this could give then brief longevity.
i don't really believe that horseshit.... just showing how stupid the FDA is.
Always looking out for pharmaceutical profits. I wonder how much some pharma corporation will make off of every pig heart... They can't sell the human ones.
Unless you are a flesh-eating robot [Link].
By the way, I very much prefer the meat of ruminants. I don't tolerate omnivores or even hindgut fermenters that well.
Thus the great experiment ended.
RC
How does anyone verify this to be true? 100% trust needed.
Makes the "science" seem all powerful and knowing in discovery but the Chimera analogy is pure myth. Your telling me people die if they recieve the wrong blood type but you buy the notion a animal organ can be nourished by and survive a completely different species blood?? Hahaha nice try.
Lends to this "transhumanist" tripe as well, people believe a gene can be switched off but dismiss the major compatibility issue of 3 billion genes LOL.
But wait....
It must be true because you were simply "told" it happened and since verification is old hat we should just trust the "science" because let's face it, safety in numbers works much the same with group-think, popularity and pride.....pretty much how your all being controlled right now. Ignorance is bliss when your all in agreement that is the way things are. You fire the gun, I point it a certain way and off we go in that direction.
Both complementary discourse to bolster the bs.
#BRAINDEAD