Twenty-eight years ago, Dr. Norman Shumway performed the first successful heart transplant in the United States on a 56-year-old man. Although that patient died a short time later, in the years to come, the operation became the reason that thousands more were able to live.

Shumway, 83, died at his home in Palo Alto Friday of lung cancer, Stanford University spokeswoman Ruthann Richter said.

The spread of bird flu from Asia to eastern Europe and now west Africa has increased the chance the virus will mutate and set off a pandemic, the U.N. bird flu chief said.

Dr. David Nabarro said there is no evidence yet of any change in the virus, which has killed at least 88 people since 2003.

Almost all the deaths have been linked to contact with infected poultry, but experts fear the virus could mutate into a form that spreads easily among humans, setting off a pandemic.

Read more about the growing concerns of mutation and possible human infection at the ABC News website.

Diet Pill Gets Closer to Store Shelves

Federal health advisers voted Monday to recommend over-the-counter sales of a weight-loss pill now sold only with a prescription.

GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare still needs final Food and Drug Administration approval before it can sell a nonprescription version of orlistat, a diet pill already marketed in prescription form as Xenical. The FDA approved the prescription version of the fat-blocking pill made by Roche in 1999.