![]() "Far more are probably motivated by probably exaggerated hope."Īs to whether Bennett's past should have influenced his shot at a new heart, the ethicists and doctors were unanimous: no.ĭoctors treat the patient in front of them and don't make judgments about whether the person is deserving or not, said Karen Maschke, a research scholar at The Hastings Center in Garrison, New York, who has a federal grant to study the ethics of using animal organs in people. "Bioethicists love to think that research participants are motivated by altruism," Greely said. "Some people will say, 'Yeah, but that's better than dying.' But that's not necessarily true." "The odds that this is going to help him significantly in the long-run … are very small," Greely said. Hank Greely, director of the Center for Law and the BioSciences at Stanford School of Medicine, agreed that being first is a risky position. ![]() Jesse Gelsinger, one of the first recipients of gene therapy, endured a "horrible death" when his immune system went into overdrive, Caplan said, and Stephanie Fae Beauclair, a newborn who lived for 21 days in 1984 with a baboon heart beating inside her chest "would have died (anyway), but died more miserably than she would have if she hadn't been in an experiment." The first recipient of a permanent artificial heart, Barney Clark, "suffered horribly, begged his investigator who gave him the artificial heart to shut the thing off and let him die and they wouldn't do it," Caplan said.Ĭlark died in 1983, 112 days after receiving the device. "What's going on here is more like: How do you pick which test pilot is going to fly the first new dangerous aircraft?" ![]() "I have seen so many first, cutting-edge experiments fail," Caplan said. Some have questioned whether Bennett, who served time in prison for stabbing a man 34 years ago, should have been given a second shot at life.īut it's not yet clear whether Bennett got a gift or a curse, said Art Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University Langone Medical Center. His surgeon said he couldn't promise whether Bennett would survive an extra day, week or year with the new heart because a gene-edited pig heart had never been tested in a person before. When David Bennett Sr., 57, agreed to accept a pig heart as a replacement for his own failing one, he took a huge chance. ![]()
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