Roughly a month ago I posted a link to a story about the experimental transplantation of a genetically modified pig kidney to a human recipient. Now a heart from a similarly modified pig has been transplanted into a human volunteer whose heart was failing and who was ineligible for a human transplant. The New York Post has the Associated Press story.
All such work is highly experimental at present, but if it can be perfected transplantation surgery will boom and lifespans will be extended, no small accomplishment. And, as noted earlier, bacon may be a tasty byproduct of raising organs for people. That assumes the genetic modification which makes pig organs no longer produce a particular sugar which causes organ rejection won’t also make the meat unsafe or unpalatable for consumption.
Anthropologists have reported cannibal tribes have referred to human flesh with terms that translate as “long pig.” Coincidence or insight, who knows?
