Pig Kidneys Transplanted Into Brain-Dead Man as Patients Face Organ Shortages - WSJ

The experimental surgery, which proceeded after discussions with ethicists and after Mr. Parsons’s family consented to the experiment, is part of a decadeslong effort to ease the chronic shortage of donor organs by allowing critically ill patients to receive pig organs rather than human ones.

I have profound doubt that this was indeed an ethically valid decision.

Earlier this month doctors at the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore performed the first transplantation of a genetically modified pig heart into a living human after receiving authorization from the FDA.

Here’s the key distinction between these similar cases. The Maryland heart transplant was done in an effort to save the patient’s life. They remain hospitalized, but alive.

The Alabama kidney transplant was performed on a patient who will not survive his injuries. His life was only sustained so that this experimental transplant could be performed, not because it created an avenue of possible recovery.

They said they stopped the experiment when mechanical support was no longer sufficient to maintain Mr. Parsons’s physiological processes.

Translation: life-support was only withdrawn when his body was no longer useful to the experiment, far past the point of a dignity-affirming natural death.