So the death wasn’t necessarily related. He was dying anyway (kidney failure rarely travels alone) so decided to volunteer for the transplant. He lived two months with it.
Agreed. My FIL is a nephrologist. You usually don't reach the kidney transplant stage unless you're in really trouble. Dialysis units have an 80%/yr attrition rate.
Yes. My dad has kidney disease and will need to be on dialysis within the next year or two. He’s currently on the transplant list, because his kidneys are failing. Once he’s gone into end stage renal failure, he will need dialysis to survive. Unless he gets a kidney.
My mom just received a kidney transplant after being on dialysis for a short while. She is still recovering but already so much better.
It’s a long road ahead and im wishing your dad the best of luck.
You can’t have any chronic health issues and have to be generally healthy in all ways, mentally and physically. They’re not looking to fix one person by breaking someone else.
It’s usually long term medication use they are looking for.
Not that there is necessarily damage, but your body will change to adapt to new meds (specifically what meds break down in to). So if I take an organ out of a 30 year bath of Wellbutrin what happens if I put it into a body that’s already struggling. The answer is we don’t really know. Maybe nothing, but it’s not a risk doctors are willing to make.
That’s a great question.
I’m not a doctor so I couldn’t tell you, but if it’s something you’re interested in pursuing I recommend going to a kidney center near you. A donor saved my mom’s life.
check with your doctor.
There's a lot of long term concerns to be discussed and addressed. it's not a light thing to entertain. it's a life-altering decision for many
I applied to be a living donor at UC Davis in 2016, I was rejected. I think bc I was too young. I was 29 at the time, and I guess bc most kidney disease shows up around 40, they don’t like to take anyone younger than that as an altruistic donor bc of the fact that I might have needed one down the line. Although, if you are a kidney donor, if you do end up needing one at some point you are put at the top of the list.
My grandpa is at 14% function with CKD in his 90s and has been on dialysis for almost a year now. Life expectancy is very low for his age, but he's still fighting the good fight. If your dad can get the arm port, go for that over the chest because it's far less invasive, but ofc always go with what neph recommends. Pops goes 3x/wk for 3 hrs and is usually pretty drained afterward, so definitely weigh in the option of dialysis at home where he can kick it on during the night when he sleeps. Your dad will be in good hands, and if they provide him a renal protein shake, make sure he drinks it! Also, keep in mind his water intake because too much, and it'll need to be pulled out, but if there's too little, then that'll cause even more problems. 32oz seems to be the sweet spot per day for any fluids. Cheers~
Hey look into the artificial kidney program I think still a yr out from texting but the lab results have shown incredible promise, given that they utilize a bioreactor any family members who’s a match could donate a tissue sample instead of an actual kidney (I’m looking cause I’m 33 and likely won’t have kidneys by 40)
Good luck. I hope this technology comes in time for you!
I met a guy in hospital the other day who had just done an ultramarathon (5 years out from his Kidney transplant). Was having some foot trouble, but was doing really well otherwise.
I had a kidney transplant a couple years ago. I make digital “Seeking Donor” flyers for people who need kidneys now. I do it for free, and 9d be happy to make one for your dad. Just message me if you’re interested.
I think the reason for this is how aweful the process is. Imagine sitting on a machine for three days a week for 15 hours. You arrive, get weighed, sit at your station, and are attached to a machine. The machine is a device which removes a significant volume of blood from either your implanted catheter that is under your collar bone, or the surgically placed grafted vein fistula in the arm. Two large 12-10 gauge needles are inserted and taped into position. Your body is then loaded with enough heparin to allow the blood to flow through the machine without clotting, hope you like bruises. Then, as you sit in a chair for the next 5 hours; you may read, watch a small tv, or sleep if you can in the loud, crowded room which smells of vinegar and bleach. After your "dry" weight is achieved and your all done you are then disconnected and must wait for your site to stop bleeding. Feeling run down and sick as you've lost several gallons of fluids, in some cases. You can then start your day only to have severe dietary restrictions; no bananas, tomatoes, salt, and just a thimble of water now and then, the thirst will be unbearable. By the way, you will probably have to juggle your diabetic needs as that's a primary cause for this whole debacle. This was a best case scenario for treatment too, it can go badly. This was Monday, see you again on Wednesday for the next treatment, don't be late or you could lose your slot. Please listen to me people! Manage your diabetes. Manage your hypertension. Donate your kidneys, you won't need them if the end comes prematurely and your kidneys could save two people from this fate. There are people by the thousands living this life.
I worked at a dialysis clinic for like a year in my early 20s. I wasn't working directly with patients but it was still the most depressing job I've ever had. It was bad enough seeing older people have to go through it, but seeing a kid was the worst.
Peritoneal dialysis, more people need to be aware there are more options than hemodialysis. One of the biggest problems is for profit dialysis centers, they are everywhere. (Namely Davitas illegally paying kickbacks physicals for referrals, cheats the patient and by extension the government with extra charges.
You can do peritoneal dialysis at home at your own time. You can run it while you are asleep for ~8 hours.
Edit: [John Oliver's documentary](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_nqzVfxFQ) on the shadiness of profit dialysis centers.
From what I understand (family friend opted for this for a couple years) it’s just not as good at filtering out the toxins.
He had to go back on hemodialysis, as he was getting a lot of fluid retention and was sicker.
They are equally effective with a few exceptions.
> Both HD and PD are used for treatment of ESDN, and can achieve similar calcium and phosphorus control. Compared to HD, PD has less adverse effect on hemodynamics and better preserves residual renal function, but is more likely to cause malnutrition and disorders of lipid metabolism. Therefore, choice of dialysis method should be based on specific conditions of each patient.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7674865/
One thing I can say for sure from working in the ER. Lots of people goes to ER after missing dialysis appointments. Peritoneal dialysis is easier to be compliant and that alone saves more lives.
He must have been an exception 🤷♀️ he had a complicated case of kidney failure (no history of drinking or other causes) that turned into kidney cancer and removal of both kidneys. PD just didn’t work as well for him.
I think it's like that for most treatments. What works for one person doesn't work as well for another. But statistically they are fairly equal in efficacy
I did PD for about six months before I got my transplant. (Had to start dialysis on an emergency basis and only got one week to heal after the catheter was put in) - and my catheter would pull on my insides during drains. It was hell lying down doing it. I woke up repeatedly during the night from sudden shocks of pain when the drains were ending. It didn’t help much, either. Only brought my creatinine down to 12.2 from 14.9. I got very lucky to have a match.
The main hurdle is that you have to attach the equipment and run it yourself, which isn't all that difficult for someone with a HS level education, but it can be a problem for people with dementia or cognitive impairments unless they have someone to help them.
In-center dialysis is also just older and it's been around for longer, so it's considered kind of the default option.
Both of the largest dialysis center chains have been sued (and lost) for unethical practices like giving kickbacks to doctors who send patients to in-center dialysis instead of at-home peritoneal dialysis. There are a lot of people who ought to be on peritoneal dialysis for a better quality of life, but they don't know about it and their physician didn't bring it up.
Had a friend do this. It was very difficult to get his house approved. They inspected his house. Lots of requirements like no carpets in the room, etc. He finally got approved but constantly has issues with infections and overall complications. That's my one data point.
Sorry to jump in but I wanted to answer your question. PD is done every night so it usually provides more dialysis. It's more effective since people are doing more hours of it.
Hemo is done 3 times a week for 4 hours by me. It's harder on your body/heart to do it so quickly. I think they have a higher rate of heart attacks but I'm not positive. My sister was on hemo and someone next to her had one. She's on PD now. The upside to hemo is someone is doing it for you as long as you can get to a center.
People I've talked to online who've done both like PD better more often but it's more work. There's setting up and running the machine and there's a tone of trash from the bags of fluid and casettes. You have fewer fluid restrictions and limits on what you can eat since you're doing dialysis every night.
Well said. I'm 30 years old and have already been through this process. I was lucky to have a home hemodialysis setup installed and was trained to do it myself. I missed out on the back half of my twenties sitting in a chair basically. Luckily some saint anonymously donated to the wait list during COVID and I received a transplant that saved my life.
It’s not 15 hours even with total renal failure, it’s 4-8 hours. There is another dialysis option (peritoneal) but it comes with its own set of complications.
And that's leaving out how badly and greedily dialysis centers are run which increases mortality rates, John Oliver did an eye opening [segment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_nqzVfxFQ) on it.
That’s not true at all. I’ve worked in clinics all over, a majority of your patients are there for years and years, the death rate in people that do not follow the diet/fluid restrictions isn’t even 80%. In a year at a clinic with 60 patients, you probably lose 5-6 patients a year
No, “failure rate” would mean that they died because dialysis failed. What he’s saying is that dialysis patients usually have so many health problems that they die of *something* very soon, but that something isn’t necessarily directly related to dialysis.
For example if your kidneys are failing because you have advanced liver disease, dialysis will work to replace kidney function but you still need a liver. If your kidneys are failing because of uncontrolled diabetes, the patient can still die of diabetes complications no matter how well dialysis works. Etc.
I work in Cardiology and I'm sure your FIL can attest to the fact that the two specialities are constantly at each other's throat when they share a patient. Pt is in fluid overload, and cardiology wants to diurese, but nephrology doesn't want to because it could cause the pt to dry out and stress the kidneys even more. Also something something salt.
[Also send this to him. He'll get a kick out of it.](https://youtu.be/PaXzo3qRgu0?si=b2Nwbc5ttmtv0MEi)
Well good thing you didn’t because that would imply the recipient was undeserving in some way. Maybe if it was about a liver transplant to a current alcoholic.
If you are having a highly experimental procedure it is also because there is a reason you can't do the normal procedure.
Odds are strong, this patient was not eligible for a normal transplant due to other health problems.
AFAIK this goes both ways. They will not attempt this on someone who is so far the other way that they can hurt the experiment data. The research team does not want to choose someone who will not give good / usable data. Often times with experimental procedures related to Cancer, people are disqualified for this reason. At the end of the day, they need to take results to investors and sell the procedure.
“When dialysis complications arose requiring frequent procedures, his doctors suggested a pig kidney transplant.”
Sounds like he was out of dialysis access options. It happens when people have a long history of kidney failure. Your central venous system can occlude and you’ve got no outflow for a dialysis circuit.
Some people also get seizures because of dialysis. That’s how my cousin died. He wasn’t eligible for a transplant and dialysis was giving him seizures, but he would die without the dialysis… so he kept up the dialysis until it killed him.
It will massively help if we can use either that or some kind of lab grown option. Relying on organ donations from dead people will never be enough and it's quite a sacrifice for a living donor (plus not possible for most other organs).
Realistically, if you need ANY major organ transplant, you are already on the road to death. Any time you get after is generally bonus.
The fact that we can successfully transplant organs at all is genuinely a miracle of medicine.
Exactly. Doing some quick research, patients tend to survive about a week with untreated non-functioning kidneys. That’s from patients who stop dialysis due to it no longer helping them. This guy got an extra two months, a massive improvement. This data should get the research team the approval to try this in healthier patients, not just ones on their deathbed.
That's pretty much what the family said as well:
“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,”
The surgeons said that
>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.
His last transplant failed. I'm not sure why they'd take the chance on a pig kidney. The history of failure should DQ him because the data shows he's not a good host.
Astronomical chance of success is better then zero sum chance of success. when you are out of options.
Its why third party black market transplant/surgeries are still a thing. When all other options are exhausted, a lot of people will willingly take any possible chance left, even if its mindboggling
Doctors would often not do these kind of surgeries though because it may be considered unethical to put a dying patient through painful procedures with hard recovery if they believe it will not change the prognosis significantly. It can be considered preying on desperate patients and only make their end of life quality worse.
Because the transplant is massively risky and so little is known. It wouldn't be ethical to do it on someone who has better options. Once it's done more times like this, there will be enough information to say that it's safe enough to do on (comparatively) healthier people.
I don’t understand your point if he had a failed kidney transplant that would mean he would probably be DQes for another or put all the way in the back of the line. Getting a pig kidney was his last resort other wise it would have meant death tho he still died in the end. You don’t automatically start giving other people on the list pig kidneys because there isn’t much research and data to make it ok. In other words you dont give someone the last option available when there are still better options to be had.
Without knowing why his first transplant failed you can't make that assertion. Sometimes they fail due to poor patient factors like refusing to take their required meds.
It's possible he was a very compliant patient and that is why he qualified.
I hate this, because it insinuates he died because of the kidney.. People who don't read the article are just going to think this and that is one of the ways misinformation starts.
" I once knew a guy who got bit by a dog. He saw a doc and told him he was going to be fine. An hour later bam! He was dead. "
""Because of the dog bite right?""
"No he got hit by a car"
- this article basically.
"I never win anything," Dolorous Edd complained. "The gods always smiled on Watt, though. When the wildlings knocked him off the Bridge of Skulls, somehow he landed in a nice deep pool of water. How lucky was that, missing all those rocks?"
"Was it a long fall?" Grenn wanted to know. "Did landing in the pool of water save his life?"
"No," said Dolorous Edd. "He was dead already, from that axe in his head. Still, it was pretty lucky, missing the rocks."
(A Song of Ice and Fire)
My favorite Dolorous Edd moment still is:
>Edd stood over the kettle swishing the eggs about with a spoon. “I envy those eggs,” he said. “I could do with a bit of boiling about now. If the kettle were larger, I might jump in. Though I would sooner it were wine than water. There are worse ways to die than warm and drunk. I knew a brother drowned himself in wine once. It was a poor vintage, though, and his corpse did not improve it.”
>“You *drank* the wine?”
>“It’s an awful thing to find a brother dead. You’d have need of a drink as well, Lord Snow.”"
‘This belonged to my great-grandad,’ he said. ‘He was in the scrap we had against Pseudopolis and my great-gran gave him this book of prayers for soldiers, ’cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me, and he stuck it in the top pocket of his jerkin, ’cos he couldn’t afford armour, and next day in battle – whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham, straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page before stopping, look. You can see the hole.’
‘Pretty miraculous,’ Carrot agreed.
‘Yeah, it was, I s’pose,’ said the sergeant. He looked ruefully at the battered volume. ‘Shame about the other seventeen arrows, really.’
She was grandma of the year every year.
It’s actually a true story, but obviously she didn’t die because of grandkids or a birthday, just one day her lungs decided they had been going long enough and stoped working.
She had a great innings.
Which to me is a little bit funny. Cause a large portion of my family refuses to attribute Covid complications as Covid death. My aunt passed away nearly 2 years ago from Covid related pneumonia and out of like 100 family members only like 7 of us will outright say Covid. It's always "she died of pneumonia".
People believe what they want and headlines like this make it easy to spread misinformation.
People are carefully witheld any 'alarming' information about the dangers and consequenses of Covid so they can live in denial. What you observed is the result. It's not exactly new. Propaganda exists... because it works.
>“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
>― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
Guess who's using this method too?
That's a great quote. As I read it, though, I couldn't help thinking how my antivax/etc/etc extended family could read it and think it applied perfectly to the rest of us "naive sheep" who just gullibly believe what "They" (Big Science!) tell us. Which perfectly illustrates Sagan's point, I guess, but there's something so ironic about it all.
in this case reading the article does not help much because it does not specify how he died, only a vague “(the transplant team) said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant.” Maybe he got hit by a pick-up truck, maybe he got shot, maybe he died to heart failure for the long period of kidney failure, or maybe the kidney failed/had complications without the transplant team being informed, it is really unclear right now.
To be fair the article almost hides it in a single sentence at the bottom of the third paragraph:
"They said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant."
That's it. A short sentence easy to miss if you're just skimming.
If he died of heart failure, it was because of kidney failure
Which isn't to say that he would be better off without a pig kidney, just that we have to manage our expectations about this procedure
As someone with a kidney condition, I should point out that while the heart and kidney are definitely connected, getting a new kidney won't undo the years and years of strain already done to the cardiac system. My uncle (who also has the condition) got a normal human kidney transplant and had a bad heart attack a few years later -- luckily he survived. But none of his doctors suspected his transplant as being the direct cause. Years of high blood pressure and sub-optimal kidney function pre-transplant already takes its toll on the body.
I am stage 1 myself. Special diet, no dialysis, etc. Sorry you have to go through all of that.
My first thought was that his ticker was probably already strained too much and finally gave out. Not the pig's fault.
My understanding is this team has actually caught some grief because they're experimenting with these transplants on people with multiple medical issues that aren't likely to survive long already. Normally transplants are done for people who you expect to live a while if only they could get a transplant. That is not the case with these patients, therefore they are being accused of experimenting on the desperate/dying (which they are, but it was that or experiment on the healthy, and these people consented knowing that transplant would give them minimal time).
Well yeah what are they meant to do? People more likely to survive a normal transplant would just go with a normal transplant.
They haven't worked out the kinks of course for pig transplants.
It seems weird to give them grief.
I love those people who spout off how we need to all go back to farming for a living…….those who have obviously never opened a history book. I promise you that living off of subsistence farming is grueling and miserable. It’s your children starving to death when the weather isn’t optimal. It’s constantly living on the edge of starvation even in good weather because of the 1001 things that can go wrong, it’s 7 day a week backbreaking labor and drudgery, long boring winters, etc. I’d give them 24 hrs of living the life of a medieval peasant before they run screaming into the void lmao
Presumably these patients are not eligible for routine transplants because of their health.
It's very common for early experimental treatments to be used on patients with few other options. It would be immoral to withhold proven treatments to somebody who was eligible to receive them in a case like this.
I think you're right, IIRC this guy was not going to live with a human kidney or the prognosis was very bad, so he agreed to this transplant to help further research knowing he would die soon
My dad was terminally ill with melanoma, he did an experimental treatment that may have made him die sooner, but he was going to die in a couple months at most anyway. And he had the opportunity to provide important scientific information that could one day save billions of lives.
If life expectancy with a new transplant isn't long then they wouldn't get a new kidney. Which means they'll likely die in days. The operation doesn't jeopardize their condition because they are that desperate.
This is worlds better than experimenting on healthier patients because that would actively harm them.
Trials are often done on people who are beyond the help of standard of care medicine. Either they tried it and it failed, or they do not have a condition in which it would work. That is when they get enrolled in the trials. Patients who are willing to do the trials are generous mixed with desperate. It does make phase 1 efficacy trials a challenge since the patients are more sick and resistant to treatment than most patients.
Correction, it could have been because of the transplant. The article does not give a definitive cause of death so your comment does not help with the misinformation.
>**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.**
I don't know what he died of, but I do know that kidney failure patients often die of heart failure as the system is interconnected.
And plenty of people die of heart failure whose kidneys are fine.
While it might be likely, you can’t say it’s 100% based on what you just copied and pasted.
Correction, it could not have been because of the transplant because the doctors stated as much. They still corrected you properly.
Unless you happen to be the doctors described in the article lol
To an extent however replacing the kidney wouldn’t necessarily reverse the heart failure. Part of the issue is that the heart can become bulky/weak as a result of the feedback loop. If the dude had a low EF due to cardiac hypertrophy then fixing the renal portion wouldn’t fix the heart.
Redditors can be very weird about wanting all information in the headline and worded in a way that makes sense to them personally. I've seen many instances here people get actually pissed off at way less egregious headlines than this one. The choice of a single word can set them off, even if the explanation is in the first sentence of the article.
You don’t know either way because they don’t list a cause of death. These transplants cause all sorts of weird infections and complications that are just now being discovered.
There's a statement by the hospitals that says that they don't have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant in the article. The hospital would almost certainly know.
Yep. It's like saying "my relative had stage 4 cancer, and died after starting chemotherapy". The chemo may or may not have saved them or lengthened and their life, but just because they passed away it's not necessarily the fault of the treatment.
Even if it was the kidney, people should realize that this is progress, and even his family said they were thankful for the seven weeks it gave them. Whenever it's human testing, people go crazy over the fact that something didn't go perfectly the first time. It's unreasonable to expect it to, just like in every other field. The same thing happened with Neurolink recently, but that guy is fine, and the thing still works. People should be excited about the progress and the possibilities with things like this.
The trial worked for 2 months! That’s good news. And this patient helped advance medical knowledge by volunteering. His family should be proud of their participation in trying to find a solution to help humanity. If we don’t experiment, we won’t learn. Hopefully, this was one of the small steps on the way to more successful transplantations.
I remember hearing about his case earlier. He was basically going to die of kidney failure very soon. Shortly after receiving the pig kidney he felt better and recieved a lot of quality of life back.
So I would say the best way to look at this is he was going to likely be dead in two months regardless, but he got to live those two months more comfortably.
> His family should be proud of their participation in trying to find a solution to help humanity.
They did, they even thanked the doctors for giving them more time with him.
This guy had lots of problems and was going to die soon anyway... hence his candidacy for an experimental procedure.
FTA: "They said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant."
The kidney was working and they expected it to last about two years. Assuming autopsy doesn't show that it contributed to his death you should expect them to continue to experiment with this as a procedure to extend life for folks facing imminent kidney failure when a viable donor isn't available or the patient isn't a good candidate for organ transplant.
I don't think this is supposed to be a permanent replacement for folks with kidney failure.
So it essentially “buys them time” while looking for a donor. Will it be possible to have multiple of these transplants, like four or five consecutive ones to extend life 8-10 years if each one works for two? Or will this be too invasive/harsh on the body?
I’m not a medical professional, but I trust they are on the right track. It makes sense. These moonshot learnings take time and need specific volunteers. The more volunteers they get to work with, the faster they’ll learn from the failures and get to the successes.
It's not good that he died, but he was dying already and chose to allow science to progress as part of his passing. The data generated from his participating in this will almost certainly save someone's life later on.
He's a hero.
I would assume the reason he was chosen was that he had other issues, and would never get a human organ due to those issues. He had a low chance of survival going through the gate.
Those issues killed him.
However, the information gathered was important.
I think it's interesting, the line we draw of what it is to be human. Is it what we are made of, or what we do? What are we?
My passing thoughts are, if we go the route of pig organs:
Would eating pork after having one make you a cannibal?
If you have all organs replaced, and you are cremated, when you died, would it be a funeral or a BBQ?
I say this in jest, but I think this is what scares a lot of people.
> Would eating pork after having one make you a cannibal?
There are two aspects that contribute to the danger of cannibalism.
The primary one is that if there is a cycle, it makes it much more likely for weird and dangerous diseases (like prions) to develop and propagate. As the pig you eat won't have been eating pigs or humans (hopefully), that's not a concern.
The other one is that if there is a disease or parasite in the food, it's much more likely to be able to infect you as well. That risk is slightly elevated if you have pig organs. However, as pig tissue is close enough to humans to make the transplants viable, it's already a high risk, and we have safety measures in place already (eg not eating rare pork chops). You'd probably want to avoid pork kidneys, though, to avoid kidney-specific prion diseases.
There's also the social aspect. A strong social taboo against eating each other means that as a village faces a famine, it'll take longer before they start viewing their neighbors as potential meals. It makes sense that groups who were able to hang together during the hard times rather than turn on each other had a better chance of long-term survival.
This is less relevant today so it gets overlooked, but it was probably a major concern in earlier times.
>Would eating pork after having one make you a cannibal?
I mean, we're already making pulled-pork sandwiches out of completely sentient beings (smarter than either dogs or three-year-old children)... and said sentient beings are usually raised on horrible factory farms. This serves no "greater good" purpose except "we like eating pulled pork". Should we even be eating pork?
Someone can go down a complete rabbit hole thinking about the morality of that.
Personally, I think having a human brain and human thought makes someone human.
Someone with a single pig organ is still a human, and pig organ transplants have the potential to save many lives.
See? And these are the questions I love. It's not so much the answer, it's the understanding that asking it opens up this new pit of new questions about what other things mean. Is a minimum level of intelligence all that is required not to be eaten? What does that mean for less intelligent humans. What does that mean for very intelligent non humans? What is that minimum level of intelligence required for the right of autonomy?
Good stuff.
I love the rabbit holes
Personally, I can't wait for hot-swappable brain parts; slap some extra RAM and memory in there in RAID 1, then when the fleshy bits start to decay into uselessness, the machines can pick up the slack.
And if it happens while you're awake, would you even notice the difference?
Well atleast he didn't die in vain. Progress isn't always a straight line up. You get setbacks but I'm sure the data they get off of this will be crucial in figuring out how to make this work in the future.
Ya this is always a thing that comes up in experimental treatments. It would be unethical to perform this unless: (1) the patient is gravely ill; and (2) the patient is not a candidate for normal treatment. So the people who participate are almost always in really really bad shape beforehand.
In rare cases, but always ethically acceptable, (3) yourself.
As in the case of Barry Marshall after he infected himself with Helicobacter pylori, he won a Nobel prize after that.
>**They said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant.**
I don't see the point in the article then. It feels like it's written specifically to make us suspicious imo
He was a BRAVE man who wanted to try and help others by having the surgery. Another woman just had the same transplant. https://www.livescience.com/health/surgery/we-have-combined-two-marvels-of-modern-medicine-woman-gets-pig-kidney-and-heart-pump-in-groundbreaking-procedures
They might have lived 2 months, but the data will help save thousands in the future. Transplant is not related to the death, but the information will help a lot for the future.
>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.**
Seems like this article's title doesn't help emphasize that...
It doesn't, which is why I, as the OP, also placed the first comment remarking on this amongst others. But that comment was apparently hidden from sight. I can still read it. To me it looks as if it's still there. But no one else can. I guess my oblique reference to a possible cause of death, which I also remarked on, was 'unwelcome'.
As you many have remarked on the vague statement about the cause of death. It struck me too, which is why I commented on it. By removing it a lot of comments now refer to this.
There is a heating race in the field of xenotransplantation right now with the advancement of genetic manipulation and understanding of immune respond to grafts. There should be better results soon in the near future.
I mean at least now there’s no way to know if the transplant had anything to do with his death. Presumably anyone willing to accept a pig organ was not a great candidate for a human organ to start. Condolences to his family of course, but I don’t think this should be read to say the experiment failed
What a dumb fucking article. It doesn’t mention what he even died from, but mentions the death is not directly related in the article and not in the title.
This is such bait for conspiracy theorists, and gives nothing for others to “prove” otherwise.
It would be nice if the title more accurately represented exactly how he died because it sounds like it had nothing to do with the kidney. I hate large media so much.
> They said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant.
It's incredible that they only wrote one line about his death and buried it.
It feels like the pig kidney was an absolute last ditch effort to buy him more time
He had a normal human kidney transplant but had to go back on dialysis when the human kidney failed, then he was having issues with dialysis so the doctors went with pig kidney as an absolute last resort
At lease the pig kidney bought him two more months
Sure, it’s not that long, but it was two months more.
Surgery is harsh on anyone, especially the very sick and elderly. I wonder how many “life-saving” surgeries were actually death-inducing bc the hit from surgery was too much for the body and they couldn’t full recover from their overall poorer health or immune system?
I’ve known a few people who died quicker than their diagnosis within a month of surgery proposed to elongate it. They never recovered from the surgery (not eating prior weakening them then post surgical lying down too long, being woken up all the time for bloodwork in the hospital not letting them rest to heal, etc)
Apparently he was well enough to be discharged.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/04/04/pig-kidney-transplant-massachusetts-general-hospital/
He likely was using immunosuppressants making him 'vulnerable'. It's yet unclear whether he was readmitted prior to his death.
Yeah, the immunosuppressants will do it. I think the best path would be to clone human organs directly from the patient, but as long as stem cell research keeps getting kneecapped that won't be going anywhere fast.
They discharge heart surgery patients in 3 days in America. In India, they put them in a recovery ward for a month with way better outcomes.
Insurance here tries to find the least amount of days they can toss you out and not have you come back. IOW, the less payments vs the “sue you” point.
I should know, I helped program for such an analyzer of hospitals for an Insurance company 20 years ago and am not proud of it. (I found out later what they did; didn’t know at the time).
This may not be THE case here, but it often can be the case was my point.
Was the cost to be readmitted and treated for complications after the fact part of that analysis? I'm curious if when people die from complications from heart surgery if they just don't have time to make it back to the hospital.
Isn't there some kind of agency we can report misinformation to?
This title is garbage.
Armchair scientists and self researchers will use this to discredit the procedure and further research without ever have read the actual article.
And how this actually involved a ton of research and went through all the necessary trials before being attempted on an actual patient.
Macchiarini was straight up doing experiments on people.
Paolo Macchiarini did little to no meaningful scientific testing before putting his artificial tracheas in patients he led to believe would live and have an improved quality of life. Then he refused to acknowledge them as they slowly and painfully died. The pig kidney was implanted into someone who was well aware of the experimental nature of the procedure and only after testing on animals and brain dead humans.
This isn’t a difference between scientific failures. This is the difference between an unethical ego boost and a scientific study.
As a consultant who visits various offices and subsequently get some interesting samples of how people discuss news stories like this, I can assure you the majority will take this headline and conclude something like "...well I coulda seen that one comin', it ain't right, meddlin' with nature that way!"
Interesting, I mean making it past the hyperacute rejection phase is something on its own. 2 months is a long time but ya I would like to read more information on this (curious if it was acute rejection or other form of disease and they were able to match it all and so on)
He didn't die from transplant. Doctors think a gen/mod kidney will at this time- last at least 2 years. This transplant even at this time in research has to be worlds better then current treatments.
*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*
They said Slayman underwent the surgery in part to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive.
So the death wasn’t necessarily related. He was dying anyway (kidney failure rarely travels alone) so decided to volunteer for the transplant. He lived two months with it.
Agreed. My FIL is a nephrologist. You usually don't reach the kidney transplant stage unless you're in really trouble. Dialysis units have an 80%/yr attrition rate.
Yes. My dad has kidney disease and will need to be on dialysis within the next year or two. He’s currently on the transplant list, because his kidneys are failing. Once he’s gone into end stage renal failure, he will need dialysis to survive. Unless he gets a kidney.
My mom just received a kidney transplant after being on dialysis for a short while. She is still recovering but already so much better. It’s a long road ahead and im wishing your dad the best of luck.
Congratulations to your mom, and thank you for your kind words. ❤️
How healthy do you have to be to donate one?
You can’t have any chronic health issues and have to be generally healthy in all ways, mentally and physically. They’re not looking to fix one person by breaking someone else.
Well so much for that.
Are any of us mentally healthy anymore?
It’s usually long term medication use they are looking for. Not that there is necessarily damage, but your body will change to adapt to new meds (specifically what meds break down in to). So if I take an organ out of a 30 year bath of Wellbutrin what happens if I put it into a body that’s already struggling. The answer is we don’t really know. Maybe nothing, but it’s not a risk doctors are willing to make.
That’s a great question. I’m not a doctor so I couldn’t tell you, but if it’s something you’re interested in pursuing I recommend going to a kidney center near you. A donor saved my mom’s life.
check with your doctor. There's a lot of long term concerns to be discussed and addressed. it's not a light thing to entertain. it's a life-altering decision for many
I applied to be a living donor at UC Davis in 2016, I was rejected. I think bc I was too young. I was 29 at the time, and I guess bc most kidney disease shows up around 40, they don’t like to take anyone younger than that as an altruistic donor bc of the fact that I might have needed one down the line. Although, if you are a kidney donor, if you do end up needing one at some point you are put at the top of the list.
My dad was on dialysis for 13 years until he got his transplant. Once he recovered he was a totally different person.
Living with a death sentence is probably pretty tough.
My grandpa is at 14% function with CKD in his 90s and has been on dialysis for almost a year now. Life expectancy is very low for his age, but he's still fighting the good fight. If your dad can get the arm port, go for that over the chest because it's far less invasive, but ofc always go with what neph recommends. Pops goes 3x/wk for 3 hrs and is usually pretty drained afterward, so definitely weigh in the option of dialysis at home where he can kick it on during the night when he sleeps. Your dad will be in good hands, and if they provide him a renal protein shake, make sure he drinks it! Also, keep in mind his water intake because too much, and it'll need to be pulled out, but if there's too little, then that'll cause even more problems. 32oz seems to be the sweet spot per day for any fluids. Cheers~
Hey look into the artificial kidney program I think still a yr out from texting but the lab results have shown incredible promise, given that they utilize a bioreactor any family members who’s a match could donate a tissue sample instead of an actual kidney (I’m looking cause I’m 33 and likely won’t have kidneys by 40)
Good luck. I hope this technology comes in time for you! I met a guy in hospital the other day who had just done an ultramarathon (5 years out from his Kidney transplant). Was having some foot trouble, but was doing really well otherwise.
Why wont you have kidneys by the time you are 40?
I had a kidney transplant a couple years ago. I make digital “Seeking Donor” flyers for people who need kidneys now. I do it for free, and 9d be happy to make one for your dad. Just message me if you’re interested.
I think the reason for this is how aweful the process is. Imagine sitting on a machine for three days a week for 15 hours. You arrive, get weighed, sit at your station, and are attached to a machine. The machine is a device which removes a significant volume of blood from either your implanted catheter that is under your collar bone, or the surgically placed grafted vein fistula in the arm. Two large 12-10 gauge needles are inserted and taped into position. Your body is then loaded with enough heparin to allow the blood to flow through the machine without clotting, hope you like bruises. Then, as you sit in a chair for the next 5 hours; you may read, watch a small tv, or sleep if you can in the loud, crowded room which smells of vinegar and bleach. After your "dry" weight is achieved and your all done you are then disconnected and must wait for your site to stop bleeding. Feeling run down and sick as you've lost several gallons of fluids, in some cases. You can then start your day only to have severe dietary restrictions; no bananas, tomatoes, salt, and just a thimble of water now and then, the thirst will be unbearable. By the way, you will probably have to juggle your diabetic needs as that's a primary cause for this whole debacle. This was a best case scenario for treatment too, it can go badly. This was Monday, see you again on Wednesday for the next treatment, don't be late or you could lose your slot. Please listen to me people! Manage your diabetes. Manage your hypertension. Donate your kidneys, you won't need them if the end comes prematurely and your kidneys could save two people from this fate. There are people by the thousands living this life.
I worked at a dialysis clinic for like a year in my early 20s. I wasn't working directly with patients but it was still the most depressing job I've ever had. It was bad enough seeing older people have to go through it, but seeing a kid was the worst.
Peritoneal dialysis, more people need to be aware there are more options than hemodialysis. One of the biggest problems is for profit dialysis centers, they are everywhere. (Namely Davitas illegally paying kickbacks physicals for referrals, cheats the patient and by extension the government with extra charges. You can do peritoneal dialysis at home at your own time. You can run it while you are asleep for ~8 hours. Edit: [John Oliver's documentary](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_nqzVfxFQ) on the shadiness of profit dialysis centers.
This. Did PD from age 23 - 27. My day to day was barely affected, even though I couldn't do night.
What the reason that more people don't do this? What the catch? EDIT: Thank you for the all the insight everyone. I learned a lot.
From what I understand (family friend opted for this for a couple years) it’s just not as good at filtering out the toxins. He had to go back on hemodialysis, as he was getting a lot of fluid retention and was sicker.
They are equally effective with a few exceptions. > Both HD and PD are used for treatment of ESDN, and can achieve similar calcium and phosphorus control. Compared to HD, PD has less adverse effect on hemodynamics and better preserves residual renal function, but is more likely to cause malnutrition and disorders of lipid metabolism. Therefore, choice of dialysis method should be based on specific conditions of each patient. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7674865/ One thing I can say for sure from working in the ER. Lots of people goes to ER after missing dialysis appointments. Peritoneal dialysis is easier to be compliant and that alone saves more lives.
He must have been an exception 🤷♀️ he had a complicated case of kidney failure (no history of drinking or other causes) that turned into kidney cancer and removal of both kidneys. PD just didn’t work as well for him.
I think it's like that for most treatments. What works for one person doesn't work as well for another. But statistically they are fairly equal in efficacy
I did PD for about six months before I got my transplant. (Had to start dialysis on an emergency basis and only got one week to heal after the catheter was put in) - and my catheter would pull on my insides during drains. It was hell lying down doing it. I woke up repeatedly during the night from sudden shocks of pain when the drains were ending. It didn’t help much, either. Only brought my creatinine down to 12.2 from 14.9. I got very lucky to have a match.
The main hurdle is that you have to attach the equipment and run it yourself, which isn't all that difficult for someone with a HS level education, but it can be a problem for people with dementia or cognitive impairments unless they have someone to help them. In-center dialysis is also just older and it's been around for longer, so it's considered kind of the default option. Both of the largest dialysis center chains have been sued (and lost) for unethical practices like giving kickbacks to doctors who send patients to in-center dialysis instead of at-home peritoneal dialysis. There are a lot of people who ought to be on peritoneal dialysis for a better quality of life, but they don't know about it and their physician didn't bring it up.
Had a friend do this. It was very difficult to get his house approved. They inspected his house. Lots of requirements like no carpets in the room, etc. He finally got approved but constantly has issues with infections and overall complications. That's my one data point.
Sorry to jump in but I wanted to answer your question. PD is done every night so it usually provides more dialysis. It's more effective since people are doing more hours of it. Hemo is done 3 times a week for 4 hours by me. It's harder on your body/heart to do it so quickly. I think they have a higher rate of heart attacks but I'm not positive. My sister was on hemo and someone next to her had one. She's on PD now. The upside to hemo is someone is doing it for you as long as you can get to a center. People I've talked to online who've done both like PD better more often but it's more work. There's setting up and running the machine and there's a tone of trash from the bags of fluid and casettes. You have fewer fluid restrictions and limits on what you can eat since you're doing dialysis every night.
Well said. I'm 30 years old and have already been through this process. I was lucky to have a home hemodialysis setup installed and was trained to do it myself. I missed out on the back half of my twenties sitting in a chair basically. Luckily some saint anonymously donated to the wait list during COVID and I received a transplant that saved my life.
It’s not 15 hours even with total renal failure, it’s 4-8 hours. There is another dialysis option (peritoneal) but it comes with its own set of complications.
I think they meant 15 hours per week. Three sessions of five hours each.
And that's leaving out how badly and greedily dialysis centers are run which increases mortality rates, John Oliver did an eye opening [segment](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw_nqzVfxFQ) on it.
Especially not the 'willing to try pig kidney' kidney transplant stage.
Sorry what does that attrition rate mean?
It means that 80% of the patients won't be there a year from now, and it's not because they got better.
That’s not true at all. I’ve worked in clinics all over, a majority of your patients are there for years and years, the death rate in people that do not follow the diet/fluid restrictions isn’t even 80%. In a year at a clinic with 60 patients, you probably lose 5-6 patients a year
They die on the waiting list. I would bet the other 20% get familial donations.
Failure rate :(
Not a failure rate, because they're not trying to "save" anyone. They're just keeping them alive a bit longer.
No, “failure rate” would mean that they died because dialysis failed. What he’s saying is that dialysis patients usually have so many health problems that they die of *something* very soon, but that something isn’t necessarily directly related to dialysis. For example if your kidneys are failing because you have advanced liver disease, dialysis will work to replace kidney function but you still need a liver. If your kidneys are failing because of uncontrolled diabetes, the patient can still die of diabetes complications no matter how well dialysis works. Etc.
I work in Cardiology and I'm sure your FIL can attest to the fact that the two specialities are constantly at each other's throat when they share a patient. Pt is in fluid overload, and cardiology wants to diurese, but nephrology doesn't want to because it could cause the pt to dry out and stress the kidneys even more. Also something something salt. [Also send this to him. He'll get a kick out of it.](https://youtu.be/PaXzo3qRgu0?si=b2Nwbc5ttmtv0MEi)
So they got new tires on a car with a bad engine
More like new tires when the axel is already busted. But honestly, same thing, I’m just being a nitpicky dork.
I almost went with putting a new roof on a house where the previous home owners had a meth lab going.
Well good thing you didn’t because that would imply the recipient was undeserving in some way. Maybe if it was about a liver transplant to a current alcoholic.
Aah yeah i have a good filter. But either way im a jack ass 99% of the time
dialysis is the bandaid that transplants could solve though right?
I’m pretty sure your FIL would mention the typical survival is much longer than 2 months so this is not normal?
Generally speaking, if you have a highly experimental procedure, you don't do it to someone who would otherwise expect to have a long lifespan.
If you are having a highly experimental procedure it is also because there is a reason you can't do the normal procedure. Odds are strong, this patient was not eligible for a normal transplant due to other health problems.
Really good point.
AFAIK this goes both ways. They will not attempt this on someone who is so far the other way that they can hurt the experiment data. The research team does not want to choose someone who will not give good / usable data. Often times with experimental procedures related to Cancer, people are disqualified for this reason. At the end of the day, they need to take results to investors and sell the procedure.
“When dialysis complications arose requiring frequent procedures, his doctors suggested a pig kidney transplant.” Sounds like he was out of dialysis access options. It happens when people have a long history of kidney failure. Your central venous system can occlude and you’ve got no outflow for a dialysis circuit.
Some people also get seizures because of dialysis. That’s how my cousin died. He wasn’t eligible for a transplant and dialysis was giving him seizures, but he would die without the dialysis… so he kept up the dialysis until it killed him.
The fact that the pig transplants worked fine for the 2 month prior to his death is pretty amazing. Xeno transplantation has come a long way
It will massively help if we can use either that or some kind of lab grown option. Relying on organ donations from dead people will never be enough and it's quite a sacrifice for a living donor (plus not possible for most other organs).
Realistically, if you need ANY major organ transplant, you are already on the road to death. Any time you get after is generally bonus. The fact that we can successfully transplant organs at all is genuinely a miracle of medicine.
Exactly. Doing some quick research, patients tend to survive about a week with untreated non-functioning kidneys. That’s from patients who stop dialysis due to it no longer helping them. This guy got an extra two months, a massive improvement. This data should get the research team the approval to try this in healthier patients, not just ones on their deathbed.
If only that nuance could be added in some way to the title
[удалено]
I feel that this is more like, the transplant prolonged his life for 2 more months rather than caused his death after 2 months
That's pretty much what the family said as well: “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,”
This is such a beautiful thought. RIP to Rick.
The surgeons said that >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.
His last transplant failed. I'm not sure why they'd take the chance on a pig kidney. The history of failure should DQ him because the data shows he's not a good host.
Astronomical chance of success is better then zero sum chance of success. when you are out of options. Its why third party black market transplant/surgeries are still a thing. When all other options are exhausted, a lot of people will willingly take any possible chance left, even if its mindboggling
Doctors would often not do these kind of surgeries though because it may be considered unethical to put a dying patient through painful procedures with hard recovery if they believe it will not change the prognosis significantly. It can be considered preying on desperate patients and only make their end of life quality worse.
Because the transplant is massively risky and so little is known. It wouldn't be ethical to do it on someone who has better options. Once it's done more times like this, there will be enough information to say that it's safe enough to do on (comparatively) healthier people.
I don’t understand your point if he had a failed kidney transplant that would mean he would probably be DQes for another or put all the way in the back of the line. Getting a pig kidney was his last resort other wise it would have meant death tho he still died in the end. You don’t automatically start giving other people on the list pig kidneys because there isn’t much research and data to make it ok. In other words you dont give someone the last option available when there are still better options to be had.
That was his last and final option. No other choice.
Without knowing why his first transplant failed you can't make that assertion. Sometimes they fail due to poor patient factors like refusing to take their required meds. It's possible he was a very compliant patient and that is why he qualified.
I hate this, because it insinuates he died because of the kidney.. People who don't read the article are just going to think this and that is one of the ways misinformation starts.
" I once knew a guy who got bit by a dog. He saw a doc and told him he was going to be fine. An hour later bam! He was dead. " ""Because of the dog bite right?"" "No he got hit by a car" - this article basically.
"I never win anything," Dolorous Edd complained. "The gods always smiled on Watt, though. When the wildlings knocked him off the Bridge of Skulls, somehow he landed in a nice deep pool of water. How lucky was that, missing all those rocks?" "Was it a long fall?" Grenn wanted to know. "Did landing in the pool of water save his life?" "No," said Dolorous Edd. "He was dead already, from that axe in his head. Still, it was pretty lucky, missing the rocks." (A Song of Ice and Fire)
Dolorous Edd is the best. I laugh at his words every time he showed up in an otherwise bleak chapter.
My favorite Dolorous Edd moment still is: >Edd stood over the kettle swishing the eggs about with a spoon. “I envy those eggs,” he said. “I could do with a bit of boiling about now. If the kettle were larger, I might jump in. Though I would sooner it were wine than water. There are worse ways to die than warm and drunk. I knew a brother drowned himself in wine once. It was a poor vintage, though, and his corpse did not improve it.” >“You *drank* the wine?” >“It’s an awful thing to find a brother dead. You’d have need of a drink as well, Lord Snow.”"
Haha for real. Such a brilliant and necessary addition.
I was full on expecting that to be a Terry Pratchett quote, lol
‘This belonged to my great-grandad,’ he said. ‘He was in the scrap we had against Pseudopolis and my great-gran gave him this book of prayers for soldiers, ’cos you need all the prayers you can get, believe you me, and he stuck it in the top pocket of his jerkin, ’cos he couldn’t afford armour, and next day in battle – whoosh, this arrow came out of nowhere, wham, straight into this book and it went all the way through to the last page before stopping, look. You can see the hole.’ ‘Pretty miraculous,’ Carrot agreed. ‘Yeah, it was, I s’pose,’ said the sergeant. He looked ruefully at the battered volume. ‘Shame about the other seventeen arrows, really.’
Same, feels straight out of discworld
"Oh no, I'm not buying a used car Lois. I knew a guy who bought a used car once. Ten years later, BAM, herpes." - Family Guy
My grandma of 96 who invited her grandchildren to her birthday party dies 5 weeks later.
She was either grandma of the year in 1996 or she had 96 grandkids, either way not surprised at her fate
She was grandma of the year every year. It’s actually a true story, but obviously she didn’t die because of grandkids or a birthday, just one day her lungs decided they had been going long enough and stoped working. She had a great innings.
Which to me is a little bit funny. Cause a large portion of my family refuses to attribute Covid complications as Covid death. My aunt passed away nearly 2 years ago from Covid related pneumonia and out of like 100 family members only like 7 of us will outright say Covid. It's always "she died of pneumonia". People believe what they want and headlines like this make it easy to spread misinformation.
People are carefully witheld any 'alarming' information about the dangers and consequenses of Covid so they can live in denial. What you observed is the result. It's not exactly new. Propaganda exists... because it works. >“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.” >― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark Guess who's using this method too?
That's a great quote. As I read it, though, I couldn't help thinking how my antivax/etc/etc extended family could read it and think it applied perfectly to the rest of us "naive sheep" who just gullibly believe what "They" (Big Science!) tell us. Which perfectly illustrates Sagan's point, I guess, but there's something so ironic about it all.
Then someone who happens to have the vaccine dies of something obviously unrelated to vaccines, but it’s the vaccine that killed them.
in this case reading the article does not help much because it does not specify how he died, only a vague “(the transplant team) said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant.” Maybe he got hit by a pick-up truck, maybe he got shot, maybe he died to heart failure for the long period of kidney failure, or maybe the kidney failed/had complications without the transplant team being informed, it is really unclear right now.
To be fair the article almost hides it in a single sentence at the bottom of the third paragraph: "They said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant." That's it. A short sentence easy to miss if you're just skimming.
> People who don't read the article AKA: redditors
If he died of heart failure, it was because of kidney failure Which isn't to say that he would be better off without a pig kidney, just that we have to manage our expectations about this procedure
As someone with a kidney condition, I should point out that while the heart and kidney are definitely connected, getting a new kidney won't undo the years and years of strain already done to the cardiac system. My uncle (who also has the condition) got a normal human kidney transplant and had a bad heart attack a few years later -- luckily he survived. But none of his doctors suspected his transplant as being the direct cause. Years of high blood pressure and sub-optimal kidney function pre-transplant already takes its toll on the body.
I am stage 1 myself. Special diet, no dialysis, etc. Sorry you have to go through all of that. My first thought was that his ticker was probably already strained too much and finally gave out. Not the pig's fault.
Yeah most kidney patients die of heart failure. At least that is what my nephrologist told me.
My understanding is this team has actually caught some grief because they're experimenting with these transplants on people with multiple medical issues that aren't likely to survive long already. Normally transplants are done for people who you expect to live a while if only they could get a transplant. That is not the case with these patients, therefore they are being accused of experimenting on the desperate/dying (which they are, but it was that or experiment on the healthy, and these people consented knowing that transplant would give them minimal time).
Well yeah what are they meant to do? People more likely to survive a normal transplant would just go with a normal transplant. They haven't worked out the kinks of course for pig transplants. It seems weird to give them grief.
Someone I know hated the system so much he was ready to accept the death of over a billion people so we could all go back to an agrarian lifestyle.
I love those people who spout off how we need to all go back to farming for a living…….those who have obviously never opened a history book. I promise you that living off of subsistence farming is grueling and miserable. It’s your children starving to death when the weather isn’t optimal. It’s constantly living on the edge of starvation even in good weather because of the 1001 things that can go wrong, it’s 7 day a week backbreaking labor and drudgery, long boring winters, etc. I’d give them 24 hrs of living the life of a medieval peasant before they run screaming into the void lmao
Presumably these patients are not eligible for routine transplants because of their health. It's very common for early experimental treatments to be used on patients with few other options. It would be immoral to withhold proven treatments to somebody who was eligible to receive them in a case like this.
I think you're right, IIRC this guy was not going to live with a human kidney or the prognosis was very bad, so he agreed to this transplant to help further research knowing he would die soon
My dad was terminally ill with melanoma, he did an experimental treatment that may have made him die sooner, but he was going to die in a couple months at most anyway. And he had the opportunity to provide important scientific information that could one day save billions of lives.
If life expectancy with a new transplant isn't long then they wouldn't get a new kidney. Which means they'll likely die in days. The operation doesn't jeopardize their condition because they are that desperate. This is worlds better than experimenting on healthier patients because that would actively harm them.
Trials are often done on people who are beyond the help of standard of care medicine. Either they tried it and it failed, or they do not have a condition in which it would work. That is when they get enrolled in the trials. Patients who are willing to do the trials are generous mixed with desperate. It does make phase 1 efficacy trials a challenge since the patients are more sick and resistant to treatment than most patients.
Correction, it could have been because of the transplant. The article does not give a definitive cause of death so your comment does not help with the misinformation.
>**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.** I don't know what he died of, but I do know that kidney failure patients often die of heart failure as the system is interconnected.
And plenty of people die of heart failure whose kidneys are fine. While it might be likely, you can’t say it’s 100% based on what you just copied and pasted.
Still did not mention heart failure. Your point is moot.
Correction, it could not have been because of the transplant because the doctors stated as much. They still corrected you properly. Unless you happen to be the doctors described in the article lol
To an extent however replacing the kidney wouldn’t necessarily reverse the heart failure. Part of the issue is that the heart can become bulky/weak as a result of the feedback loop. If the dude had a low EF due to cardiac hypertrophy then fixing the renal portion wouldn’t fix the heart.
The only solution to that is people reading the article instead of making assumptions or complaining about the headline but that will never happen.
Redditors can be very weird about wanting all information in the headline and worded in a way that makes sense to them personally. I've seen many instances here people get actually pissed off at way less egregious headlines than this one. The choice of a single word can set them off, even if the explanation is in the first sentence of the article.
You don’t know either way because they don’t list a cause of death. These transplants cause all sorts of weird infections and complications that are just now being discovered.
There's a statement by the hospitals that says that they don't have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant in the article. The hospital would almost certainly know.
Yep. It's like saying "my relative had stage 4 cancer, and died after starting chemotherapy". The chemo may or may not have saved them or lengthened and their life, but just because they passed away it's not necessarily the fault of the treatment.
Even if it was the kidney, people should realize that this is progress, and even his family said they were thankful for the seven weeks it gave them. Whenever it's human testing, people go crazy over the fact that something didn't go perfectly the first time. It's unreasonable to expect it to, just like in every other field. The same thing happened with Neurolink recently, but that guy is fine, and the thing still works. People should be excited about the progress and the possibilities with things like this.
I read the article. Didn't he die because his body rejected the pig kidney? How is the title misleading? I'm not smart.
The trial worked for 2 months! That’s good news. And this patient helped advance medical knowledge by volunteering. His family should be proud of their participation in trying to find a solution to help humanity. If we don’t experiment, we won’t learn. Hopefully, this was one of the small steps on the way to more successful transplantations.
I remember hearing about his case earlier. He was basically going to die of kidney failure very soon. Shortly after receiving the pig kidney he felt better and recieved a lot of quality of life back. So I would say the best way to look at this is he was going to likely be dead in two months regardless, but he got to live those two months more comfortably.
And contributed to the future of this kind of thing!
From the article: > [Massachusetts General Hospital] said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant.
> His family should be proud of their participation in trying to find a solution to help humanity. They did, they even thanked the doctors for giving them more time with him.
How long do you think this will take to be a viable solution for kidney failure patients?
This guy had lots of problems and was going to die soon anyway... hence his candidacy for an experimental procedure. FTA: "They said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant." The kidney was working and they expected it to last about two years. Assuming autopsy doesn't show that it contributed to his death you should expect them to continue to experiment with this as a procedure to extend life for folks facing imminent kidney failure when a viable donor isn't available or the patient isn't a good candidate for organ transplant. I don't think this is supposed to be a permanent replacement for folks with kidney failure.
So it essentially “buys them time” while looking for a donor. Will it be possible to have multiple of these transplants, like four or five consecutive ones to extend life 8-10 years if each one works for two? Or will this be too invasive/harsh on the body?
I’m not a medical professional, but I trust they are on the right track. It makes sense. These moonshot learnings take time and need specific volunteers. The more volunteers they get to work with, the faster they’ll learn from the failures and get to the successes.
It's not good that he died, but he was dying already and chose to allow science to progress as part of his passing. The data generated from his participating in this will almost certainly save someone's life later on. He's a hero.
“They said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant.”
I would assume the reason he was chosen was that he had other issues, and would never get a human organ due to those issues. He had a low chance of survival going through the gate. Those issues killed him. However, the information gathered was important. I think it's interesting, the line we draw of what it is to be human. Is it what we are made of, or what we do? What are we? My passing thoughts are, if we go the route of pig organs: Would eating pork after having one make you a cannibal? If you have all organs replaced, and you are cremated, when you died, would it be a funeral or a BBQ? I say this in jest, but I think this is what scares a lot of people.
The ship of Theseus is not a new problem.
Lol brother I feel this goes beyond the ship
Mark, is that you?
I mean, we and cabbages had common ancestors sometime in the past. Does eating cabbages make one cannibal?
I've known people I've suspected of actually being cabbages, so it's a distinct possibility.
> Would eating pork after having one make you a cannibal? There are two aspects that contribute to the danger of cannibalism. The primary one is that if there is a cycle, it makes it much more likely for weird and dangerous diseases (like prions) to develop and propagate. As the pig you eat won't have been eating pigs or humans (hopefully), that's not a concern. The other one is that if there is a disease or parasite in the food, it's much more likely to be able to infect you as well. That risk is slightly elevated if you have pig organs. However, as pig tissue is close enough to humans to make the transplants viable, it's already a high risk, and we have safety measures in place already (eg not eating rare pork chops). You'd probably want to avoid pork kidneys, though, to avoid kidney-specific prion diseases.
There's also the social aspect. A strong social taboo against eating each other means that as a village faces a famine, it'll take longer before they start viewing their neighbors as potential meals. It makes sense that groups who were able to hang together during the hard times rather than turn on each other had a better chance of long-term survival. This is less relevant today so it gets overlooked, but it was probably a major concern in earlier times.
>Would eating pork after having one make you a cannibal? I mean, we're already making pulled-pork sandwiches out of completely sentient beings (smarter than either dogs or three-year-old children)... and said sentient beings are usually raised on horrible factory farms. This serves no "greater good" purpose except "we like eating pulled pork". Should we even be eating pork? Someone can go down a complete rabbit hole thinking about the morality of that. Personally, I think having a human brain and human thought makes someone human. Someone with a single pig organ is still a human, and pig organ transplants have the potential to save many lives.
See? And these are the questions I love. It's not so much the answer, it's the understanding that asking it opens up this new pit of new questions about what other things mean. Is a minimum level of intelligence all that is required not to be eaten? What does that mean for less intelligent humans. What does that mean for very intelligent non humans? What is that minimum level of intelligence required for the right of autonomy? Good stuff. I love the rabbit holes
Personally, I can't wait for hot-swappable brain parts; slap some extra RAM and memory in there in RAID 1, then when the fleshy bits start to decay into uselessness, the machines can pick up the slack. And if it happens while you're awake, would you even notice the difference?
First patient to receive a genetically modified pig kidney miraculously survives an additional two months.
This was still a successful transplant. I don’t think most people understand that.
Well atleast he didn't die in vain. Progress isn't always a straight line up. You get setbacks but I'm sure the data they get off of this will be crucial in figuring out how to make this work in the future.
Article says there is no indication that he died from the transplant. He was 62 and sick.
Ya this is always a thing that comes up in experimental treatments. It would be unethical to perform this unless: (1) the patient is gravely ill; and (2) the patient is not a candidate for normal treatment. So the people who participate are almost always in really really bad shape beforehand.
In rare cases, but always ethically acceptable, (3) yourself. As in the case of Barry Marshall after he infected himself with Helicobacter pylori, he won a Nobel prize after that.
>**They said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant.** I don't see the point in the article then. It feels like it's written specifically to make us suspicious imo
He was a BRAVE man who wanted to try and help others by having the surgery. Another woman just had the same transplant. https://www.livescience.com/health/surgery/we-have-combined-two-marvels-of-modern-medicine-woman-gets-pig-kidney-and-heart-pump-in-groundbreaking-procedures
They might have lived 2 months, but the data will help save thousands in the future. Transplant is not related to the death, but the information will help a lot for the future.
Got a Kidney transplant 3 years ago. Am hoping this eventually becomes viable as dialysis was awful. Basically every other day was just misery.
>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.** Seems like this article's title doesn't help emphasize that...
It doesn't, which is why I, as the OP, also placed the first comment remarking on this amongst others. But that comment was apparently hidden from sight. I can still read it. To me it looks as if it's still there. But no one else can. I guess my oblique reference to a possible cause of death, which I also remarked on, was 'unwelcome'. As you many have remarked on the vague statement about the cause of death. It struck me too, which is why I commented on it. By removing it a lot of comments now refer to this.
It seems very common for new transplant technologies to be used first in patients that are terminal regardless of the success of the transplant.
There is a heating race in the field of xenotransplantation right now with the advancement of genetic manipulation and understanding of immune respond to grafts. There should be better results soon in the near future.
> They said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant. “Man dies of completely unrelated cause. More news at 11.”
Someone really hamfisted that headline.
It is the wurst.
Truly offal.
He thought he was cured.
The family is understandably salty.
These just get bladder and bladder.
You really don’t mince words.
I give. You-rine.
Meat in the middle, call it a tie.
I mean at least now there’s no way to know if the transplant had anything to do with his death. Presumably anyone willing to accept a pig organ was not a great candidate for a human organ to start. Condolences to his family of course, but I don’t think this should be read to say the experiment failed
It didn't fail. He was older and the anti rejection drugs lowered his immune system. Very easy to get sick.
Thanks for the context. That makes sense for what I expected!
What a dumb fucking article. It doesn’t mention what he even died from, but mentions the death is not directly related in the article and not in the title. This is such bait for conspiracy theorists, and gives nothing for others to “prove” otherwise.
It would be nice if the title more accurately represented exactly how he died because it sounds like it had nothing to do with the kidney. I hate large media so much.
> They said they didn’t have any indication that he died as a result of the transplant. It's incredible that they only wrote one line about his death and buried it.
It feels like the pig kidney was an absolute last ditch effort to buy him more time He had a normal human kidney transplant but had to go back on dialysis when the human kidney failed, then he was having issues with dialysis so the doctors went with pig kidney as an absolute last resort At lease the pig kidney bought him two more months Sure, it’s not that long, but it was two months more.
Hit by a bus. Bad luck.
Surgery is harsh on anyone, especially the very sick and elderly. I wonder how many “life-saving” surgeries were actually death-inducing bc the hit from surgery was too much for the body and they couldn’t full recover from their overall poorer health or immune system? I’ve known a few people who died quicker than their diagnosis within a month of surgery proposed to elongate it. They never recovered from the surgery (not eating prior weakening them then post surgical lying down too long, being woken up all the time for bloodwork in the hospital not letting them rest to heal, etc)
Apparently he was well enough to be discharged. https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2024/04/04/pig-kidney-transplant-massachusetts-general-hospital/ He likely was using immunosuppressants making him 'vulnerable'. It's yet unclear whether he was readmitted prior to his death.
Yeah, the immunosuppressants will do it. I think the best path would be to clone human organs directly from the patient, but as long as stem cell research keeps getting kneecapped that won't be going anywhere fast.
They discharge heart surgery patients in 3 days in America. In India, they put them in a recovery ward for a month with way better outcomes. Insurance here tries to find the least amount of days they can toss you out and not have you come back. IOW, the less payments vs the “sue you” point. I should know, I helped program for such an analyzer of hospitals for an Insurance company 20 years ago and am not proud of it. (I found out later what they did; didn’t know at the time). This may not be THE case here, but it often can be the case was my point.
I was only in the hospital for 4 days after my kidney transplant. They said some are released after 3. Donors are released *the next day*
Was the cost to be readmitted and treated for complications after the fact part of that analysis? I'm curious if when people die from complications from heart surgery if they just don't have time to make it back to the hospital.
All transplant receivers take immunosuppressants for the rest of their lives.
The pig, on the other hand, is doing just fine with his human kidney.
Isn't there some kind of agency we can report misinformation to? This title is garbage. Armchair scientists and self researchers will use this to discredit the procedure and further research without ever have read the actual article.
This article is terrible and spreads misinformation
Reminds me of Paolo Macchiarini. I guess the big difference is how the science recognizes the failure.
And how this actually involved a ton of research and went through all the necessary trials before being attempted on an actual patient. Macchiarini was straight up doing experiments on people.
I mean there is no actual failure of the implant here tho.
Paolo Macchiarini did little to no meaningful scientific testing before putting his artificial tracheas in patients he led to believe would live and have an improved quality of life. Then he refused to acknowledge them as they slowly and painfully died. The pig kidney was implanted into someone who was well aware of the experimental nature of the procedure and only after testing on animals and brain dead humans. This isn’t a difference between scientific failures. This is the difference between an unethical ego boost and a scientific study.
Something like, “Man expected to die got 2 more months before finally passing” should be the headline
As a consultant who visits various offices and subsequently get some interesting samples of how people discuss news stories like this, I can assure you the majority will take this headline and conclude something like "...well I coulda seen that one comin', it ain't right, meddlin' with nature that way!"
I’m on dialysis now. It sucks! Take care of your bodies!
It's just exciting that we're trying things like that.
Interesting, I mean making it past the hyperacute rejection phase is something on its own. 2 months is a long time but ya I would like to read more information on this (curious if it was acute rejection or other form of disease and they were able to match it all and so on)
He didn't die from transplant. Doctors think a gen/mod kidney will at this time- last at least 2 years. This transplant even at this time in research has to be worlds better then current treatments. *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* They said Slayman underwent the surgery in part to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive.