Can pig-to-human organ transplants save lives?

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Editor's note: Before we get into today’s subject, let me jog your memory back nearly 25 years. In January 1997, Dr Dhani Ram Baruah, a heart surgeon from Assam, transplanted pig organs into a 32-year-old patient with terminal heart disease. According to the surgeon, the patient, Purno Saikia, died seven days later. The incident raised a storm that made the editorial pages of prestigious medical journals. The Lancet reported that a pig’s heart, lung and kidney had been transplanted. The British Medical Journal reported only a heart and lung transplant. Some reports only mention a heart transplantation. Just like in Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, where the same events are narrated differently by different witnesses, the details of what conspired, how long Saikia lived and how he died are hazy and difficult to independently corroborate today. Much was written at the time about the ethics of the experimental surgery, whether or not informed consent of the patient was obtained, and regulatory laws in India. Dr Baruah and his associates were briefly jailed. A multiple-organ, pig-to-human transplantation has not been attempted since. But many researchers …