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Still, he entered into a very difficult ethical minefield. Why not throw a Hail Mary? This leads many bright professionals into folly. At Bailey's time, hopes ran so high for transplants--and while some of those hopes have borne fruit, intractible long-term difficulties for even the most successful human-to-human are the biggest problem at the forefront right now.
That, and obtaining enough organs for transplant.
Animals presented a hope in the seventies and eighties--because you can keep a baboon alive in the basement of the hospital to harvest when you need it, which means when all hope for an alternative has disappeared. The key was figuring out how to make it work.
Chimpanzees are and were endangered species, and for the most part unobtainable. I expect that Bailey used a baboon heart because it was the best thing he had available. If he shrugged off the pieties of the evos--well, surgeons as a breed tend to have egos of their own.
