I do wonder, however, if there were potential patients available, who were near death solely due to the need for a heart transplant (and were near-certain not to get a conventional human transplant in time), and not also because of a host of other issues.
Given the complexities of the human body and how central strong circulation is to them, "Near death from heart failure, ineligible or outside the window for another transplant, but lacking any life-threatening non-cardiac comorbidities" is going to be a tough find.
Not sure about that aspect either. They invested a boatload of money into a guy that can't even make a 1-year follow-up. How are they supposed to observe the transplant long term?
Healthy people? Well, it's not like it's "raining organs" for people on a waiting list. Many of them will die waiting. There must be someone on a slight better shape and willing to take a chance.
It may not be ethical to do this under the guise of administering medical practice even if there is informed consent. Part of a doctors duty is to be the rational actor to say “you could have 6 months to live and this procedure has no evidence that you’ll live any longer, in fact, it could shorten your life to the time of your surgery”.
This is advocating for civil engineers to willingly approve on a bridge they have no evidence won’t collapse, just because the current bridge needs serious replacement.
Define "slightly better shape". Because that's now your inclusion criteria. You have to be sick enough that "Or this might not work and kill you" seems like an acceptable risk, but not as sick as the guy they chose by arbitrary and hidden metrics primarily based on looking at the outcome retrospectively.
People needing an organ less urgently are going to be unlikely to take a huge risk on something unproven. People needing an organ urgently but with fewer red flags otherwise would similarly likely prefer the human organ they could get over the experimental one.
