Pig hearts for humans?

• Position: MEDICINE - Brief article

A new medical breakthrough may bring renewed hope to the tens of thousands of people in the U.S. awaiting organ transplants. Scientists at the National Institutes of Health were able to keep a pig's heart alive in a baboon for 945 days, a record for cross-species transplantation. So far, only skin and valves from pigs--whose hearts, livers, and kidneys are roughly the same size as ours--have been used successfully in human transplants. To make pig hearts more compatible with humans, the researchers in the latest experiment altered the DNA of their pigs, swapping a pig gene that could cause infection or organ rejection with...