An Indian Surgeon did world’s first pig heart transplant to humans in 1997

Apropos your Feature on Pig Organs Head for the Clinic (1), this is not the first pig heart transplantation in the humans in the world. In 1997 in Guwahati India a heart surgeon Dr Dhaniram Barua, FRCS transplanted a pig heart in a human patient (2,3). The patient survived for a week but passed away after that. There was a huge furore in the media and the surgeon’s office was ransacked. Due to lack of ethical clearance Dr Baruah was given a 40 days jail term as reported in Nature in January 1997 (4). However, Dr Baruah’s pig heart transplant was historically the first in the world. Mentioning David Bennett as the first recipient of pig heart is a distortion of history and it should be corrected and credit should go to the pioneer. It is understood that David Bennett’s case involves a genetically modified pig heart with a Crispr/Cas mediated gene editing which itself is a novelty; however, to be historically accurate Bennet was not the first human to have received a pig heart. 

Dr Baruah achieved this feat 25 years ago unbeknownst to the western media with a normal unmodified pig heart. In fact, when Bennet’s pig heart transplant was published in January 2022 several Indian newspapers recounted Dr Baruah’s pig heart transplantation surgery of 1997 (4). Though Dr Baruah’s surgery crossed ethical boundary it has to be appreciated as the world’s first pig heart transplant in humans. He is a maverick whose methods might have been unconventional but the fact that he performed world’s first pig-to-human heart transplant in 1997 and the patient survived for a week cannot be ignored and denied. I urge the editor to please include this fact to correct an error in history of transplant surgery. 

 References: 

1. Sara Reardon (2022) PIG ORGANS HEAD FOR THE CLINIC. Nature. Vol 611, pg 654-655 

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhaniram_Baruah, last accessed on 26/11/2022 

3. Mudur G. Indian surgeon challenges ban on xenotransplantation. BMJ. 1999 Jan 9;318(7176):79 

4. K.S.Jayaraman. (1997) Pig heart transplant surgeon held in jail. Nature. Vol 385, pg 378 

5. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/guwahati/transplant-jogs-dhani-ram-memories/articleshow/88843361.cms last accessed on 26/11/2022