| Title | First Person to Receive a Genetically Modified Pig Kidney Transplant Dies Nearly 2 Months Later | |
| Date | Monday May 13, @09:08AM | |
| Author | janrinok | |
| Topic | ||
| from the dept. | ||
The first living patient to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig has died, two months after the groundbreaking transplant, his family and doctors announced Saturday.
Richard "Rick" Slayman, 62, was sent home in March, two weeks after undergoing the transplant at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
"Their enormous efforts leading the xenotransplant gave our family seven more weeks with Rick, and our memories made during that time will remain in our minds and hearts," his family said in a statement of the practice of healing human patients with animal cells, tissues or organs.
Slayman, of Boston suburb Weymouth, said he underwent the daring procedure after suffering ongoing dialysis complications, which saw him hospitalized every two weeks.
"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," he said in a statement at the time.
"Rick accomplished that goal, and his hope and optimism will endure forever," his family said Saturday.
The transplant team at Mass General said it had "no indication that it was the result of his recent transplant."
[...] Before Slayman, pig kidneys had only been tested on brain-dead donors, while two men who received pig hearts both died within months.
The efforts often fail because the human immune system would destroy the foreign animal tissue, and recent procedures like Slayman's use organs from pigs that have been altered to be more human-like.
See: First Time Doctors Transplant Gene-edited Pig Kidney Into Living Human
[...] Richard "Rick" Slayman had the transplant at Massachusetts General Hospital in March at the age of 62. Surgeons said they believed the pig kidney would last for at least two years.
The transplant team at Massachusetts General Hospital said in a statement it was deeply saddened by Slayman's passing and offered condolences to his family. They said they didn't have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant.
Slayman had a kidney transplant at the hospital in 2018, but he had to go back on dialysis last year when it showed signs of failure. When dialysis complications arose requiring frequent procedures, his doctors suggested a pig kidney transplant.
In a statement, Slayman's family thanked his doctors.
[...] More than 100,000 people are on the national waiting list for a transplant, most of them kidney patients, and thousands die every year before their turn comes.
Original Submission #1 Original Submission #2
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printed from SoylentNews, First Person to Receive a Genetically Modified Pig Kidney Transplant Dies Nearly 2 Months Later on 2024-07-27 07:23:44