It has been a hope for a long time that transplants of organs from animals to humans would one day be possible and help solve the problem of finding a donor that matched the recipient.
And Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston announced the world's first successful transplantation of a genetically modified pig kidney into a 62 year old man with end stage kidney disease, in March 2024.
Richard Slayman was recovering well from the four hour operation and was expected to be discharged soon, reported the hospital after this new milestone in kidney transplants. This raises hopes that more work can be done to genetically modify kidneys and other organs from pigs for humans.
Richard left hospital in April. Hopes were high for a successful outcome of this major event in the world of transplanted organs.
However, on May 11th, it was sadly announced that Richard had died after two months with his new kidney. We should not take this as a major setback - Louis Washkansky, the first person to received a heart transplant, died after 18 days, due to pneumonia as his immune system was weakened by the drugs administered to avoid rejection.
Let's hope that further research will lead to this concept becoming successful and save lives regularly, just as has happened with heart transplants. Remember, the first successful kidney transplant was back in 1954 and look at how common they (and heart transplants) are now.
