Pig heart transplant: totally kosher and halal

DDavid Bennett, 57, has been living with a genetically modified pig’s heart since January 7. Performed in the United States by a medical team from Maryland, this xenograft, the work of Drs Bartley Griffith and Muhammad Mohiuddin, is a world first. A few months ago, another American team had transplanted a pig kidney in a woman in a state of brain death. If the use of organs of animal origin and interspecies transplants raise many scientific, ethical and philosophical questions – especially among antispeciesists –, they do not arouse any reservations within Jewish and Muslim religious doctrine, which nevertheless considers the pig as an animal “unclean” (in Judaism) or “unfit for consumption” (for…