In 1st, US doctors transplant pig heart into human

U.S. doctors have transplanted a pig heart into a patient in a last-ditch effort to save his life — a first for medical science. The patient is 57-year-old David Bennett, a Maryland handyman too sick to get a human heart.   Doctors at University of Maryland School of Medicine said the patient is doing well three days after surgery.

Dr. Bartley Griffith, University of Maryland School of Medicine said "This patient was given an opportunity for this, this experimental transplant, with the idea in mind that we didn't know what the outcome might be, but it wasn't going to be worse than traditional therapy."

The surgery showed that a gene-edited animal heart can function in the human body without immediate rejection. There's a huge shortage of human organs donated for transplant, driving scientists to try to figure out how to use animal organs instead.  Last year, there were just over 3,800 heart transplants in the U.S.