The woman who survived a pioneering liver transplant involving a pig’s organ in 1994, has died at 86 years old.
Mavis “Connie” McArdle desperately needed a liver transplant, so her medical team decided to take a pig’s liver from a research lab at the Montreal General Hospital and hook it up outside of her body.
“When Mavis McArdle fell into a coma because her liver couldn’t filter blood properly, Dr. Jean Tchervenkov, former head of the Royal Victoria Hospital’s transplant program, and his team decided to use a pig’s liver as temporary life support,” the MUHC said on its site. “They connected it to McArdle’s veins so that it would clean her blood like a dialysis machine. The pig’s liver kept her alive for several hours until a human liver was available the following day.”
“My aim is to still be here in 20 years time,” McArdle said after the surgery.
The procedure worked and McArdle survived over 30 years after. She died on March 10.
“I believe very much in the power of prayer,” she said 20 years after the procedure in 2014. “I pray every day for my donor and my donor’s family. I also pray every day for the doctors and the nurses that their hands be guided to help other people.”
The procedure was a first in Canada and, until 2024, was tried without success.
Last year, the journal Science reported that two genetically modified pig organs in Massachusetts and China were used in similar procedures.
McArdle’s mother Annie Montour was from the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) community of Kahnawake, and McArdle remained active in the community in the years before and after her procedure.
She served on the Kateri Memorial Hospital Foundation board and worked for decades at the Eastern Door newspaper in Kahnawake.
