While you can soften the failure by highlighting the patient's broad systemic issues, this is still a notable failure that will likely put a damper on future similar pig transplants.
7 weeks doesn’t sound like long, but a great many things needed to work for the patient to survive even 1 week.
So no, the first transplant didn't "fail even sooner" because it wasn't the heart that failed.
Before human heart transplantation was available, you could pick someone with severe heart disease but otherwise in good condition as a test candidate. It was entirely ethical; they'd die without the transplant anyways.
Now that we have viable human heart transplantation, you have to pick sicker patients as candidates - people who wouldn't survive even if they got a human heart transplant. Giving someone who'd survive with a human heart an experimental pig heart isn't ethical.
It makes sense that the failure model would be different.
I mean if we do have enough human hearts to transplant into anyone who needs it I suppose that's a good thing, but all I hear about transplants is how long the wait times usually are for human organs.
Which means if someone has stage 4 cancer etc they aren’t on the list.
“After Washkansky’s surgery, he was given drugs to suppress his immune system and keep his body from rejecting the heart. These drugs also left him susceptible to sickness, however, and 18 days later he died from double pneumonia.”
Is the idea that they should have it all worked out before they even try it?
I should hope not. Not everything works first time. Hopefully it gives data such that the next one works for 16 weeks, and the one after that for 3 months, until this is a standard source of transplant organs.
Not sure that’s a good trade for the pig though.
Don’t misunderstand me, I love meat, and while I think that killing pigs (at least someone else killing pigs) is acceptable for that purpose, I would have a harder time justifying killing a whole pig to keep someone alive a little longer. For the same reasons we don’t just raise humans as cattle to use as organ transplant sources. We tell ourselves that it is acceptable with pigs, and while this certainly makes it easier on the humans (and they grow faster), I’m not sure it’s fundamentally different.
I'm a little baffled by your ethical calculus here. Raising pigs for muscle to eat seems substantially less ethical than raising pigs for organs to transplant; you can eat plant-based alternatives, but good luck pumping blood with a soybean.
The first human heart transplant was successful for a little less than three weeks, until the patient died of systemic organ failure. That procedure is historically regarded as wildly successful.
A team of medical scientists did something even more amazing. This procedure was a success. The next one will be better.