The recent and thrilling news about the successful transplant of a pig kidney into a human seems revolutionary. But it comes out of decades-long efforts by doctors and other scientists to perfect the practice of xenotransplantation, that is, transplanting other species’ organs into humans.
The child who would become known to the world as “Baby Fae” was born on October 14, 1984, with a fatal congenital heart defect known as hypoplastic left-heart syndrome. Faced with the certainty that her baby would die, Baby Fae’s mother decided to allow something extraordinary.
