On January 7, Muhammad Mansoor Mohiuddin, a Pakistan based US doctor, earned headlines as the co-founder of US’ Maryland Medical Center that successfully transplanted a genetically engineered heart of a pig into a terminally ill American man. While the Muslim doctor was hailed by his fraternity for the medical breakthrough, he received severe backlash from his own family members because he used an organ from an animal that is forbidden in Islam.
Speaking to Vice, a Canadian-American magazine, Dr Muhammad Mohiuddin, director of cardiac xenotransplantation at the University of Maryland Medical Center said: “I got quite a backlash from my family.”
“Why are you using this animal? My father used to always ask me, said the doctor, adding that his father kept inquiring “Can you at least try using another animal?”
“My mother used to make me gargle even if I just said it”, Pakistan based US doctor behind pig heart transplant reveals
The doctor further shared how in his family the word ‘pig’ was taboo and he would be punished for even just saying it. “My mother used to make me gargle,” he revealed, adding: “It was a big no-no in my family. It was forbidden in our home.”
He stated how his family’s concerns, as well as his personal faith, led to him questioning using a pig organ for the surgery.
“I try to follow all the tenets of Islam, so that concern was in the back of my mind all the time. So, I used to try to find reasoning for me to continue using this animal,” Mohiuddin said.
“Since I live in a country where pork is consumed on a regular basis it was not an ethical issue here in the Western world. It was easier,” added Dr Muhammad Mansoor Mohiuddin.
The latest treatment, led by Mohiuddin and Bartley P. Griffith, the centre’s cardiac transplant programme director, employed a heart from a genetically engineered pig provided by Swedish biotech company Revivicor, as well as a rare immunosuppressive medication. The heart was given to a 57-year-old guy who is currently recovering.
The transplant has opened up vistas of life-saving possibilities for thousands on national organ transplant lists in the United States, which is experiencing an extreme organ scarcity crisis.
“Almost 150,000 people lose their lives a year just in the U.S., you can calculate how many more throughout the world lose their lives just because organs are not available,” Mohiuddin said, adding: “If this technique is successful, we will be able to save almost all of them.”
Muslims worry whether Covid-19 vaccines are halal as they may contain pork products
It may be recalled how in 2020, there are concerns among Muslim countries around the world regarding Coronavirus vaccines as pork-derived gelatin is widely used as a stabilizer in vaccines to ensure that they remain safe and effective during storage and transport. Though spokespersons for Pfizer, Moderna and AstraZeneca had said that pork products are not an ingredient of their Coronavirus vaccines, Sunni Muslim scholars from Raza Academy, Mumbai, and All India Sunni Jamiyyathul Ulama had issued a fatwa against the Chinese vaccine that contains pork gelatin.
The Raza Academy scholars had claimed that the pork gelatin component of the vaccine makes it “haram” for the Muslim community. Some reports had claimed that the Chinese vaccine contains the said component that has stirred controversy in the Muslim community worldwide.
Aversion towards vaccines by the Muslim community due to their being ‘haram’ or containing pork products is not a new phenomenon. In 2018, the Indonesian Ulema Council, the highest clerical body in the country that issues halal certificates, declared that measles and rubella vaccines were “haram” because of the pork-derived gelatin.
