Pigs hardly resemble the gallant heroes featured in movies and comic books. By 2017, however, “mini-pigs” may be saving more lives than Spiderman ever has, shining a new “bacon of hope” for those on the organ transplant waitlist by providing their pancreas islet cells, heart valves and hearts. Of the 100,000 people currently in line for an organ transplant, many will die waiting. In the United States alone, in recent years 6,000 people have died annually for lack of human organs. The line is expected to grow even longer, to an estimated 1.58 million people by 2015. The transplanting of animal organs into humans has been stymied by the fact that human bodies recognize the organ as foreign and reject it in a matter of minutes to hours.