On Friday 7January, David Bennett became the world’s first person to successfully receive a transplant of a pig’s heart. The eight-hour-long operation by surgeons at the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore was no doubt arduous. But it was a short final step in a 60-year-long journey to genetically alter the pig’s heart so that it would not be immediately rejected – a journey that began with a plane crash in Oxford in the summer of 1940.
It was a hot Sunday afternoon when Peter Medawar, then 25, enjoying garden life in Oxford with his wife Jean and eldest daughter Caroline, was startled by the sight and noise of a bomber flying low towards them. The plane crashed violently in a garden 200m away. The pilot survived but suffered horrific burns. Medawar had trained as a zoologist, but his recent research had been to find out which antibiotics were best at treating burns. For the pilot who just crashed, doctors were at their wits’ end in deciding the right medication and asked Medawar to help.
