David Bennett Sr.
Bennett suffered from advanced heart failure, accompanied by cardiac arrhythmias. Due to insufficient adherence to therapy - among other things, he had not made sufficient efforts to control his blood pressure - the treating physicians saw him as unsuitable for an allotransplantation. There were doubts as to whether, given the very scarce human organs, one should be able to give one to a person whose subsequent compliance was not assured. Therefore, with Bennett's approval, an exemption was sought from the Food and Drug Administration to perform a pig heart transplant.