Finally, another ethical question. How did they stop the heart beating? They stopped the experiment after three days, meaning they killed the heart. You can't do that with a brain dead person. You can't stop their heart. You can pump them full of morphine and let them die naturally, but you can't purposefully kill them, but the inference here is that that's what they did.

Granted, the patient, er, I'm sorry, deceased, may have been on a ventilator in which case they could have just pulled the plug. The articles give no details at all though. They give very little context to this.

Another thought I had is this. Reuters and CNN would have gotten way more clicks by using a more honest headline.

Original: Pig organ transplants inch closer with testing in the dead
More honest, better clickbait: Pig organ transplants inch closer with testing on brain dead patients.

Original: Testing pig heart transplants in donated bodies
More honest, better clickbait: Testing pig heart transplants in unconscious patients.

So the question is, why use the misleading headlines? If they would have made more money by using a more honest headline, why use the ones they used?

The simplest answer is that, over time, they will make more money using the headlines they're using. AP is a huge organization. I wonder if they have any connections to the vast network of research facilities and pharmaceutical conglomerates involved in this research. Or maybe they're just counting on the advertising dollars from those players on the back end.

EDIT: Not Reuters, AP. They do have have a disclaimer at the bottom of the article: