<h5>Why do doctors try to put animal parts into human bodies?</h5>  <p>Sometimes a person’s heart, liver, kidney or other organ stops working properly because of illness or accident. In these cases, getting a new organ is the person’s best chance of staying alive. However, there’s a big dearth of organs in the world. We all need our organs to stay alive and usually don’t have any spare organs for others who need them.
Sometimes, people donate their organs upon their death and doctors transplant these into other people’s bodies who need that organ to live. But most often, it’s a real challenge for people to receive the organs they need. To solve this problem, scientists have been trying to put animal organs in human bodies for hundreds of years.</p> <h5>Does putting animal organs in humans help?</h5>  <p>One French doctor put goat and pig kidneys in his patients in 1906. In 1964, a human was given a chimpanzee's heart. In 1984, a baby was given a baboon’s heart. None of these patients survived.
Despite the lack of success, doctors didn’t give up trying to put animal organs in human bodies. With each new attempt, they have gotten better at it. The hope is that someday soon they’ll have solved this problem altogether and anyone who needs a new organ to live will receive one from an animal.</p> <h5>What has been the latest attempt to put an animal organ in a human?</h5>  <p>The newest attempt to save a man’s life using another animal’s organ was done in January 2022. A 57-year-old man named David Bennett Sr. from the USA had a very damaged heart. He needed a transplant urgently but wasn’t getting a human heart anywhere. So doctors decided to try putting a pig’s heart in him.
A pig’s heart is similar in size and weight to a human heart. For more than 30 years doctors have been putting pig valves in unhealthy human hearts to make them function better. This was the first time the whole heart of a pig was going to be put in a human.</p> <h5>How is a pig’s heart going to work in a human body?</h5>  <p>As we discussed above, a pig’s heart is quite similar to a human one. But there are many differences as well. If you stick one randomly into a human body, it will reject it right away.
Gene-editing is a cutting-edge technology in medicine where scientists change an organism’s DNA. In the case of David Bennett Sr., scientists gene-edited the pig to ensure a better chance of his body accepting it.</p> <h5>Was the transplant successful?</h5> <figure>
        <img src="https://firebasestorage.googleapis.com/v0/b/newsahoot.appspot.com/o/a-pigs-heart-in-a-human-body%2Fa-pigs-heart-in-a-human-body-section1.jpg?alt=media&token=539f0450-2973-4caa-9bb3-58f548ce1c32" alt="Was the transplant successful?" >
        <figcaption>The model of a human heart. Photo by Ali Hujiluyi / Unsplash.</figcaption>
      </figure> <p>The good news - this was the best animal-human organ transplant in the history of the world. David Bennett Sr. lived for two whole months after the transplant surgery. He did a lot of fun things with his family during this time. Usually, people have died within hours or days of such an operation.
The bad news - Bennett Sr. died suddenly two months after the surgery.
However, this operation is still considered a success. Doctors have learnt many things from it that will help the next receiver of a pig’s heart live longer. As gene-editing becomes more advanced, someday patients who receive a pig’s heart will be able to live years instead of months.</p>

For hundreds of years, doctors have tried to put animal parts in human bodies. Why have they been doing so and is it working? Let’s find out.

A Pig’s Heart in a Human Body

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A Pig’s Heart in a Human Body

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