Posted by:
anybody
(
)
Date: March 21, 2024 11:06AM
Fundies will go ape over this (pun intended).
##########
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/21/health/pig-kidney-transplant-living-person/index.htmlDoctors at Massachusetts General Hospital say they’ve successfully completed the world’s first transplant of a genetically modified kidney from a pig into a living human.
The patient is Rick Slayman, a 62-year-old man, from Weymouth, Massachusetts, who was diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease.
In a written statement from the patient provided by the hospital, Slayman said he had been a patient of the hospital’s transplant program for 11 years. This is not Slayman’s first kidney transplant. He received a previous kidney from a human in 2018 after living with diabetes and high blood pressure for many years. That kidney began to show signs of failure five years later, and he resumed dialysis in 2023.
When he was diagnosed with end-stage kidney disease last year, he said his doctors suggested that he try a pig kidney.
“I saw it not only as a way to help me, but a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive,” Slayman said in the written statement.
Dr. Tatsuo Kawai, who is director of the Legorreta Center for Clinical Transplant Tolerance and the surgeon who performed the operation, said the organ was exactly the same size as a human kidney.
When they put the kidney in, Kawai said it immediately “pinked up” and began to make urine. Everyone in the operating room burst into applause.
“It was truly the most beautiful kidney I have ever seen,” Kawai said in a news briefing.
In the news conference on Thursday, doctors said Slayman is recovering well and expected to be discharged from the hospital soon.
##########