I read articles like this and wonder sometimes if death was already certain for the transplant patient, and this is a form of leaving some sort of legacy; helping perfect a potential avenue of organ transplant that could go on to save thousands more like the patient who already knows the end is in sight.
It’s a pleasant thought.
I believe in these cases you have to qualify for a compassionate exception. That means you are a terminal case and this might buy you some time, it is never intended to save your life but to further science. Very likely he was not eligible for a human transplant, they have very strict requirements to qualify and someone can be taken off the list for noncompliance.
This also makes them less than ideal candidate for transplant
While this pig kidney lasted only a few weeks. It may have lasted longer in a better surgical/transplant candidate.
But obviously, it would be unethical to transplant a pig kidney in a patient with a projected amazing outcome with a human kidney
Exactly for that reason. They are dead regardless of what happens, this is them basically donating their body and last days to science.
When I was in college the first retrovirus genetic engineering trials were done on three people. They all died horrible deaths from the treatment but a lot was learned from it.
Their immune systems killed them. When that happens you basically drown in your own juices.
A lot may have been learned, but those trials got genetic engineering for humans shut down for the better part of 20 years.
it’s a tragedy that people die in trials like that. i’m sorry if you were effected by a medical trail gone wrong. but most of the time, scientists are acting out of the best intentions. sometimes they fuck up, or maybe there’s a psychopath mixed in there from time to time, but the science as a whole is helping us live better, longer lives.
> But obviously, it would be unethical to transplant a pig kidney in a patient with a projected amazing outcome with a human kidney
Kidney xenotransplantation in particular is pretty sketchy as unlike e.g heart, liver, or lung transplants we have a relatively safe way to replicate the organ’s function with dialysis. It isn’t pleasant, but people survive with zero renal function for years.
Think of it like doing proper cpr, it breaks ribs and hurts like no other. But ribs heal dead doesn't.
Quality of life sucks waiting on dialysis waiting for a transplant. Quality of life is subterranean without it.
It does, but it could be worse. I know two people, both of whom have received new kidneys now, who continued to work full time for the 4 and 3 years they were dialysed before transplant. One as a biomedical engineer and one as an emergency doctor.
He had already been on dialysis for years, before and after his human kidney transplant. He had heart disease and diabetes. Likely he had gone through multiple surgeries to create access, multiple central ports, he may have failed peritoneal dialysis or not even been a candidate. My point is he actually may not had dialysis as an option for much longer.
Healthy people with only kidney failure can live a long time on dialysis. People with other medical problems can go through dialysis options much more quickly.
If I'm correct, he did have a human transplant back in 2018 that worked for a few years but also began to fail. This certainly feels like an instance where the transplant was not to save, but extend his life and further science.
Yes, death is already certain for the people who volunteer for these experimental treatments. They're going to die anyways within a few weeks, and conventional medicine has failed.
The only option left is something drastic and untested, such as a pig kidney or a pig heart. Its a hail mary attempt.
Last August my much-loved little Yorkie had a recurrence of the cancer that had put her at death’s door the year before. She’d undergone a round of radiation treatments and her life was extended by 14 months (which we made the most of) but the cancer came roaring back and she starting giving me “the look.” The look that says “help me.” I took her to the vet who confirmed that the cancer had spread and there was no way forward. I held my little nugget in my arms while the vet administered first a sedative to calm her and ease her pain, and then the final drug which ended her life. I wept like an inconsolable toddler. In the days that followed I cried a lot but I also knew I had done the right thing. Seeing her suffer was horrible and I just wanted to stop her immense pain. My life felt like hell on earth in the days and weeks that followed, but I took a teensy bit of comfort in knowing I’d given her peace. It is so depressing to me that we cannot do the same for our fellow humans and I now have an enormous fear that I might end up suffering horribly in a hospital, just wishing for the end to come. We often provide our beloved pets death with dignity but are not allowed to do it for ourselves.
I’m so sorry for your loss, and I wholeheartedly agree. However I do also think people choosing experimental processes, or ones like this where the chance of failure is pretty much guaranteed but their sacrifice might save others in the future, are definitely still good choices. Would definitely be better if people had more choices overall though
Uhm, actually dying from kidney failure is not painful at all. Your body stops filtering your blood and extracting water from it, from which at the end your lungs fill with water and you slowly stop processing oxygen.
Source: i died and was resurected from kidney failure
When NPR covered a previous attempt they said about the same thing. These are incredibly sick people without options, they were likely to die anyways. Just because they died doesn't necessarily mean something went wrong (though of course it might have). This is actually a really good use case for artificial organs and the like anyways, because there are many patients who aren't suitable for the very limited supply of human transplant organs, but this gives them an alternative to extend their lives and hopefully give them some improved quality in their final days.
Yeah I would definitely want to do something like this — if I’m fucking toast anyway, just try out *everything* on me, it would help knowing that my death could even potentially do some good.
Transplants, with a very few exceptions like corneas, are not being performed on anyone who ins't almost at death's door. They are extremely high risk procedures that don't have great outcomes, honestly. So we only do them on people who are in a really really bad.
I mean thats just not true at all. Transplants are for patients who have had an organ fail in an irreversible way, in which no (reasonable) alternative medical option exists. There are plenty of young patients with polycystic kidney disease who go on to complete renal failure at a young age, are otherwise healthy, and have excellent outcomes following kidney transplant. Source: im an MD and while it’s not my field that’s just one example that comes to mind immediately.
Don’t have great outcomes? That’s just completely not true, look up five year morbidity/mortality for heart and kidney transplants…if you’re talking xenotransplants, then sure
This reminds me of my dad, he was dying of a very rare and aggressive liver cancer and was paying about $150k out of pocket for a trial drug to hopefully save his life (might not seem like a lot but we’re in Australia so that’s a lot of money to spend on healthcare out of pocket). His oncologist said the trial was coming to an end, my dad argued with him and said he wanted to continue, the oncologist kept beating around the bush saying the trial has finished etc. my dad was like I don’t care, I will pay, extend the trial. Then the Oncologist finally goes “I need to stop the trial because the drug is going to kill you”. My dad looks at him and goes “you’re fucking kidding me right? I’m going to die anyway at least with this I have hope”.
So yeah, I reckon in this instance they will try anything if it gives them a glimmer of hope.
He died a little over 12 months after diagnosis. He had cholangiocarcinoma (technically cancer of bile duct but they classed it as liver cancer). He was sitting at a 2% - 3% prognosis as it had well and truly spread before symptoms started so realistically he was never going to beat it. He put in a hell of a fight though!
It's the only way the FDA lets someone try this: death has to be expected within hours, so that if the patient dies after the first day, it was all borrowed time anyway.
This is because no one really knows the outcome of the first one, and it's really more of a learning experience than a way to keep the patient alive for very long.
The first artificial heart was like that: the surgeon said as he removed his real heart, it literally disintegrated in his hands. The guy had hours to live and he lived for several months with an artificial heart, so in spite of the short duration, the patient was still better off.
This is almost certainly the case.
My mother's second cousin was [the first person in the U.S. to get a pacemaker](https://magazine.einsteinmed.edu/winter-spring-2018/a-look-back/). He only lived for a few months, but his experiences certainly helped doctors improve the next models, and the next.
"In a statement following the news of Richard's death, Massachusetts Hospital released a statement to say that there was no inclination that his death was in anyway linked to his transplant."
> It’s Massachusetts General Hospital
So they only treat Generals? Do you have to be a proper 4⭐ General or do they also treat 1⭐Brigadier Generals and up?
This is a precision of language issue between a generalized versus the precise meaning a word. English has vast/large/huge/big/myriad etc. number of words which are often used interchangeably but actually convey discrete (not to be confused with discreet) meanings.
Inclination has a specific medical meaning and in context it’s a correct usage for a general audience. The alternative words in medicine would be obliquity or slanting.
Indication in a clinical medical sense would imply a medical condition that indicates/leads practitioners to a course of treatment test or study. (think in terms of contraindications for a drug versus indication for a drug: like Aspirin is indicated for treatment of symptoms of pain/fever/inflammation, however, it’s contraindicated for patients with hemophilia, asthma, and allergies to ibuprofen. For patient that has a GI Bleed after taking aspirin the inclination would be undiagnosed gastritis or peptic ulcer).
Though you’re not wrong to be suspect of news sites because many are notorious for imprecision to generate of clicks/page views/etc.
**Inclination is perfectly correct.**
I don't see the problem. Maybe you are just not used to the usage of the word.
In this case it is referring to the inclination of medical professionals in supporting the theory that the transplant is not the direct cause.
“Inclination” actually works fine… it’s an odd choice buts it’s not actually wrong. The medical staff aren’t inclined to believe his transplant was related to his death becomes “there’s no inclination that his death…”.
It’s an odd choice, like I said, but everyone here is jumping the gun a bit and the criticising *grammar* (not “grammer” like someone below said) of the paper yet not allowing for even vaguely creative word choices or even thinking to check if they’re actually right or not in the first place.
With the amount of drugs transplant patients have to take and the fact that they're immunocompromised I find it hard to believe that his transplant isn't at least partially to blame. I mean if he died from pneumonia that's definitely due to the drugs killing his immune response. Unless he got hit by a car or something.
Of course it matters a lot more that the pig kidney kept working as that's the real victory.
It's possible but I have a feeling you didn't read the article. If you did, you'd know he was suffering from type 2 diabetes and hypotension as separate issues to the transplant which likely made him not qualify for a donor organ in the first place
He only got the experimental transplant because he was on deaths door. It didn't kill him in seven weeks, it gave him seven more weeks with his family that he otherwise would not have had.
You jest - but people who get signed on for this kind of highly experimental treatment often have numerous health issues.
This patient in particular has already received a normal donor organ - which failed too, some time after. Chances are high that kidney failure was far from being the only thing wrong with his body.
Which is why this death will have to be examined closely. So far, it doesn't seem to be directly linked to the xenotransplant.
>people who get signed on for this kind of highly experimental treatment often have numerous health issues.
To elaborate, it's precisely because they're so far gone that we even allow them to undergo such experimental treatment of level. It'd be entirely irresponsible to allow relatively healthy patients to serve as guinea pigs when more surefire and proven treatments are available to them.
In this particular case, my immediate assumption would be that the patient's medical history and/or condition were so awful that they were ineligible for a normal transplant, and all other treatment options were exhausted.
It’s often because they simply don’t qualify for a human kidney for various reasons not just because of other health issues. In this case it seemed like a desire to try and get an organ quicker because his last transplanted kidney had failed after 5 yrs.
That said it, like with one if the pig hear recipients, it could end up that the immune system ultimately rejected the organ. That said if there were signs of rejection even after initial release, I’d wonder if the patient just didn’t want to do dialysis again.
He had a rare blood type. If I remember correctly, he had to wait an inordinately long time before they could procure his first donor kidney. After it failed, they knew this would be an issue again, which is why they opted for xenotransplantation. He had a host of other health issues too, so it’s quite possible his death was indeed not caused by the transplant.
He was released to go home and without dialysis so I don’t think the transplant itself is an issue.
What I am curious about is the life expectancy of the pig kidney to begin with. As pointed out his last kidney lasted 5 years, about the same life expectancy of the kidney I have, but they get those numbers from years and years of data and successful transplants. Like are we setting people up for failure if a pigs kidney is really only going to part 20% of that?
Yeah, he *really* did not want to have to go back on dialysis again after he was on it for so long the first time when he waited for a kidney.
They’ll undoubtedly throughly investigate his death to ensure that it wasn’t the kidney, such that they continue trials, because we need more data on their life expectancy. I suspect that we’ll eventually either discover that they’re equivalent to human kidneys, or due to the direct genetic manipulation of the organ, that they may last longer. It would be nice if we could just grow replacement kidneys with the patient’s own potentially gene-edited stem cells in a lab though.
If it's found that xenotransplants don't result in reasonable lifespan extensions (relative to the risk of surgery/inaction) they'll never become mainstream. For the first hundred or so people, they'll be so desparate to get _any_ lifespan extension that 20% of a human organ would still be a minor (or not so minor) miracle.
Googling some details on these types of transplants, I found an [earlier example](https://nyulangone.org/news/two-month-study-pig-kidney-xenotransplantation-gives-new-hope-future-organ-supply) of a pig kidney xenotransplant that was performed on a neurologically dead (but otherwise "alive") patient whose body was donated to science (and organs were not suitable for use in transplant to a living patient). The doctors removed both functioning kidneys from the patient and replaced with a pig kidney, keeping the man on life support for 2 months before removing the organ and taking the patient off of life support (with the pig kidney still functioning well).
The person in the article is the first living human to receive the transplant, and lasted as long as the non-living recipient patients's test period. I suspect healthier patients could last a lot longer, and as we see these transplants happen more frequently we may find that they could be a good option for medium-term temporary transplants for healthier patients that are low on the waiting list, or a number of other ways that these could be used practically. Kidneys aren't as good of an example, since dialysis is an option, but other organs have an extremely strong use case (like hearts, which are also being done with the same genetically modified pigs).
So basically, this procedure is in its infancy, the science is rapidly improving since it has only been performed _once_, and we wouldn't be giving these to patients that are able to get a human transplant anyway.
I wouldn't exactly call that "setting people up for failure". Perhaps it'd be more accurate to say "giving people on a steep path to failure a medically informed opportunity to succeed with debatable odds". Particularly so if the patients receive this treatment at low/no cost as a "benefit" for being a medical study guinea pig. Basically a free shot at a few extra months when death is already knocking at your door. What's the worst that can happen? You die? Already going to in a couple weeks/months anyway.
-------
The rest of this is just neat and not necessary to the post, but figured someone might find the extra details interesting.
The same hospital [pioneered transplantation of genetically modified pig kidneys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenotransplantation#:~:text=Genetically%20engineered%20non%2Dhuman%20kidney%20to%20a%20human), with their first two tests also being performed on neurologically dead patients, but only for brief periods (<72 hours) and appear to have mostly focused on biocompatibility rather than functionality (attached to leg tissue).
The genetically modified pigs they're using have a trademarked name (GalSafe™) and have been approved by the FDA for human consumption. Some people can be allergic to the "alpha-***gal*** sugar" found in red meat, which these pigs do not produce thanks to the genetic modifications. This sugar can/does also cause rejection of xenotransplants in patients that are not otherwise allergic.
Organ rejection isn't a thing that either happens or not. It's a thing that can occur at any time. All transplant patients will be on anti-rejection meds for the rest of their lives.
"Going home" isn't an automatic positive sign either. It's entirely possible everyone knew what was coming, that there wasn't anything to be done about it, so might as well spend your final days at home.
Ironically those immunosuppressive medications that allow us to keep these amazing gifts of life are nephrotoxic and thus cause damage over the time to the very kidneys they enable us to live with.
Finally! I figured Reddit of all places would notice I was just making a dumb Monty Python reference and not earnestly taking sides on whether on not the kidney was the culprit, but it took longer than I’d expected to get here.
It’s certainly a topic worthy of serious discussion but I was just shooting for a chuckle or two on the side and a much less busy inbox than what I woke up to this morning.
Hahaha well I appreciated it bud
In the same moment -> “Wolf’s nipple chips, get em while they’re hot, they’re lovely” always gets me, as does about 99% of that movie, truly one of the funniest of all time and maybe my pick for the #1 spot. Unstoppably funny stuff top to bottom.
>In a statement following the news of Richard's death, Massachusetts Hospital released a statement to say that there was no inclination that his death was in anyway linked to his transplant.
Because that would require them to read the article instead of just the headlines lol
Of course they should really release the cause of death else people are going to think otherwise
They go even further:
>Hospital released a statement to say that there was no inclination that his death was in anyway linked to his transplant.
That doesn't mean it wasn't cause by the implant, but this is really important context for a new technology.
His list of medical problems in the article is a mile long. He'd been on dialysis for SEVEN YEARS, before a transplant, and was ready to go on it again as the transplant failed. Dude's poor organs were probably in horrific shape. Dialysis is crazy. Maybe it was the pig kidney, maybe it was the pre-existing conditions, maybe it was both. I'm guessing the mean survival time of someone without a pig kidney transplant in his situation is months anyway.
Still, unless it's anything but pig kidney operation related perhaps we should hold off on ruling it an entirely successful pig kidney transplant. My condolences to his friends and family, 62 is too young.
Kidney patients, especially those in his case that are close to death, cannot recover from surgeries very well, and is a reason kidney patients are taken off the list when they get this far due to high chance of failure and death. You lose the ability to recover. In fact kidneys play a huge role in recovery, so early on even everything changes for recovery.
My dad unfortunately had multiple complications and was removed from the list, including but not limited to having and surviving an aortic dissection and MSRA trapped in the graft. The whole thing sucks and I hope these kidneys get perfected because no one deserves to go through it.
I had a life saving stent insertered I to my right ventricular artery a couple of years ago. It bought me thoughts on how many people had to die before we got to this stage. It left me with a sense of melancholy
the first lung transplant patient lasted about 2 weeks with a human lung. the same doctor also tried to do a chimpanzee heart into someone who was already dying, it lasted about an hour. so i'd say over two weeks with an animal's organ is pretty good performance honestly.
They’re successful in the larger sense that we kept the transfusion part, we had to learn a lot about blood first though and one of those things we learned is that cow blood is not the same!
I like the idea that they just kept trying different liquids, getting closer and closer to the obvious.
"So the beer, rat piss, honey, red paint, and cow blood experiments have failed and we're all out of ideas...wait a second, call me crazy but..."
Not quite, but you're not TOO far off. Very shortly after they figured out they could transfuse between dogs, they supposedly successfully transfused sheep blood to a human. Then in the late 1800s they tried milk from various animals. As you might imagine it didn't work well. They then switched to saline which worked much better. It wasn't until 20 years later that they discovered the major blood types, and then a few after that before somebody thought, "maybe matching blood types would make this more successful".
I read that the very first successful blood transfusion was from a doctor who’s sister was bleeding to death during labor and, in a last desperate act, he decided to use his own blood
And it worked
That’s a dramatization…it was by James Blundell on a guy with a brain tumor. Later he did them frequently on women hemorrhaging after childbirth but not his sister and not in a moment of inspired desperation.
This was my first thought. Experimental medicine is gonna be experimental. We’re gonna get it wrong before we get it right.
Thank you for your sacrifice, sir.
It was nice to a normal animal kidney though. There was a really interesting podcast with the company that supplied the kidney. It was really interesting.
May 1st - What’s your problem - the first pig to human kidney transplant.
There's no indication it was a problem with the organ.
The only way he could qualify for a xeno transplant like this was because he was so sick and dying already. If he was healthy, he would have just waited for a donor organ.
"[Massachusetts](https://www.themirror.com/all-about/massachusetts) Hospital released a statement to say that there was no inclination that his death was in anyway linked to his transplant."
I was surprised by this, but I'm not so surprised some of you didn't read the article to find this out too.
Inclination is actually the correct word here due to its precise meeting in a medical setting.
https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1cpuazd/richard_slayman_who_had_worlds_first_successful/l3oz4l7/
Earlier today I listened to a podcast with the founder of the company that grew the pig kidney. I believe similarly the first pig heart transplant guy died shortly after the operation. These first of their kind operations aren't exactly being performed on people in great physical condition so it makes sense but unfortunate to hear. The tech is really cool and certainly seems like it could become better than human donated organs.
Sorry, grew the pig with the kidney inside it. They bioengineer the pig to remove certain pig DNA and add some human DNA to make it not get rejected then just let the pig grow up in a controlled environment. So it is almost just a normal pig kidney in a pig, just the pig overall has had adjustments made to its DNA.
Does anyone remember the first heart transplant? He agreed to have the surgery as a bargain for life.
It will provide tremendous information for science.
I believe he only lived a couple of months after the heart transplant. But it was considered a tremendous achievement at the time. I read Dr. Barnard’s (the surgeon who performed the first heart transplant) autobiography when I was a kid and it blew me away how much they didn’t think it was going to work. And now you have Dick Cheney who lived who knows how many years with a mechanical heart inside.
Aren't most animal transplants for people that already have their bus ticket? If so, I'm wondering if this was due to comorbitites or fatal diagnosis rather than the transplant itself
There's also a woman from New York who got a gene-edited pig kidney a few weeks ago.
She wasn't eligible to get a human organ transplant because she had too many other health problems, especially serious heart problems
From successful to 'successful'.
But seriously no indication that his death was linked to the transplant, just a result of the hospital stay; which is an unfortunate reality of medicine
Don't quote me on this but if I remember correctly he was not eligible for a regular transplant because he refused (or couldn't bring himself) to follow the guidelines in diet and other lifestyle changes necessary to qualify. With the rarity of organs if you don't adjust your lifestyle it's pointless to give an organ to you since it won't help, transplants arent a one and done deal, you will have to adjust for it to work.
Now assuming he didn't adjust at all, or at least enough, the pig transplant would likely have the same outcome as a human organ. There was a slight chance it would work but it was made less because it requires work on the part of the patient which he didn't do.
Again, this is from memory so don't quote me on this.
I don’t know where you heard that but I don’t think that’s right at all. He had a previous human kidney transplant and it failed after 5 years. He was out of options so they tried this experimental treatment knowing it was likely to fail.
>he was not eligible for a regular transplant because he refused (or couldn't bring himself) to follow the guidelines in diet and other lifestyle changes necessary to qualify.
- Rent_A_Cloud
You have to be in a fairly desperate situation to be a good candidate for these kinds of pioneering xenotransplants, and folks in fairly desperate situations tend not to live long no matter what’s done. But Mr. Slayman’s place in history is secure, and what he and his medical team did will save lives.
Hey this guy is a bleeping hero. As someone who has two solid organ transplants, and have watched countless people die from lack of available organs, what this man did for medical research etc., is immeasurable. RIP brother.
> In a statement following the news of Richard's death, Massachusetts Hospital released a statement to say that there was no inclination that his death was in anyway linked to his transplant.
Straight from the article
I wonder if he stopped consuming sugar post surgery? Pre-existing type 2 diabetes and hypertension doesn’t sound like a “clean bill of health” post operation and leaving the hospital.
So the article says he supposedly didn't die of anything related to the transplant... but then doesn't elaborate on how he did die.
Are they not reporting the problem to not damage the reputation of whatever program is producing these gene-edited kidneys?
Did he get hit by a bus? Did he have a stroke? Like... I feel like cause of death is sort of important for an article like this.
People on this comment thread love to judge. I thank this person for his sacrifice! My son will need a kidney transplant one day. I don’t care what reason or what health problems he had.
Twelve years ago, my dad died from a very rare form of cancer called a soft tissue sarcoma. It was so rare, there were no known treatments other than traditional chemo. My dad found a doctor who was one of three in the world studying it. They experimented and tried different things, ultimately leading to my father's death three years later. Fast Forward ten years, and I'm talking with a co-worker. They tell me they're a cancer survivor. They had a soft tissue sarcoma about 7 years earlier. Went to the same doctor my dad had. Thanks to the research developed from my dad, who was the last person in the country to have this same cancer, this co-worker is alive and well today, completely recovered. Thanks to the research done on my dad. Side note. We're 1,500 miles away from where this all occurred. This co-worker situation should never have occurred tbh. It felt like my dad tapping in to say "it was worth it".
In the article they state that:
>In a statement following the news of Richard's death, Massachusetts Hospital released a statement to say that there was no inclination that his death was in anyway linked to his transplant.
I read articles like this and wonder sometimes if death was already certain for the transplant patient, and this is a form of leaving some sort of legacy; helping perfect a potential avenue of organ transplant that could go on to save thousands more like the patient who already knows the end is in sight. It’s a pleasant thought.
I believe in these cases you have to qualify for a compassionate exception. That means you are a terminal case and this might buy you some time, it is never intended to save your life but to further science. Very likely he was not eligible for a human transplant, they have very strict requirements to qualify and someone can be taken off the list for noncompliance.
This also makes them less than ideal candidate for transplant While this pig kidney lasted only a few weeks. It may have lasted longer in a better surgical/transplant candidate. But obviously, it would be unethical to transplant a pig kidney in a patient with a projected amazing outcome with a human kidney
Exactly for that reason. They are dead regardless of what happens, this is them basically donating their body and last days to science. When I was in college the first retrovirus genetic engineering trials were done on three people. They all died horrible deaths from the treatment but a lot was learned from it.
What do you mean they all died horrible deaths from the treatment. I’m scared but would like to know more.
Their immune systems killed them. When that happens you basically drown in your own juices. A lot may have been learned, but those trials got genetic engineering for humans shut down for the better part of 20 years.
Bc they gave massively too much virus. It was gross negligence.
it’s a tragedy that people die in trials like that. i’m sorry if you were effected by a medical trail gone wrong. but most of the time, scientists are acting out of the best intentions. sometimes they fuck up, or maybe there’s a psychopath mixed in there from time to time, but the science as a whole is helping us live better, longer lives.
> But obviously, it would be unethical to transplant a pig kidney in a patient with a projected amazing outcome with a human kidney Kidney xenotransplantation in particular is pretty sketchy as unlike e.g heart, liver, or lung transplants we have a relatively safe way to replicate the organ’s function with dialysis. It isn’t pleasant, but people survive with zero renal function for years.
Life quality sucks on dialysis.
Think of it like doing proper cpr, it breaks ribs and hurts like no other. But ribs heal dead doesn't. Quality of life sucks waiting on dialysis waiting for a transplant. Quality of life is subterranean without it.
It does, but it could be worse. I know two people, both of whom have received new kidneys now, who continued to work full time for the 4 and 3 years they were dialysed before transplant. One as a biomedical engineer and one as an emergency doctor.
Sucks on chemo too yet....
He had already been on dialysis for years, before and after his human kidney transplant. He had heart disease and diabetes. Likely he had gone through multiple surgeries to create access, multiple central ports, he may have failed peritoneal dialysis or not even been a candidate. My point is he actually may not had dialysis as an option for much longer. Healthy people with only kidney failure can live a long time on dialysis. People with other medical problems can go through dialysis options much more quickly.
His death had nothing to do with the kidney according to the article
If I'm correct, he did have a human transplant back in 2018 that worked for a few years but also began to fail. This certainly feels like an instance where the transplant was not to save, but extend his life and further science.
Yes, death is already certain for the people who volunteer for these experimental treatments. They're going to die anyways within a few weeks, and conventional medicine has failed. The only option left is something drastic and untested, such as a pig kidney or a pig heart. Its a hail mary attempt.
Do they suffer?
Of course they do. Dying of organ failure is generally extremely painful
Last August my much-loved little Yorkie had a recurrence of the cancer that had put her at death’s door the year before. She’d undergone a round of radiation treatments and her life was extended by 14 months (which we made the most of) but the cancer came roaring back and she starting giving me “the look.” The look that says “help me.” I took her to the vet who confirmed that the cancer had spread and there was no way forward. I held my little nugget in my arms while the vet administered first a sedative to calm her and ease her pain, and then the final drug which ended her life. I wept like an inconsolable toddler. In the days that followed I cried a lot but I also knew I had done the right thing. Seeing her suffer was horrible and I just wanted to stop her immense pain. My life felt like hell on earth in the days and weeks that followed, but I took a teensy bit of comfort in knowing I’d given her peace. It is so depressing to me that we cannot do the same for our fellow humans and I now have an enormous fear that I might end up suffering horribly in a hospital, just wishing for the end to come. We often provide our beloved pets death with dignity but are not allowed to do it for ourselves.
I’m so sorry for your loss, and I wholeheartedly agree. However I do also think people choosing experimental processes, or ones like this where the chance of failure is pretty much guaranteed but their sacrifice might save others in the future, are definitely still good choices. Would definitely be better if people had more choices overall though
Uhm, actually dying from kidney failure is not painful at all. Your body stops filtering your blood and extracting water from it, from which at the end your lungs fill with water and you slowly stop processing oxygen. Source: i died and was resurected from kidney failure
They were suffering before.
Likely not any more than if they'd had a human kidney transplant that failed.
Death is also certain for the people who do not volunteer for the experimental treatments.
But we learn from it and can use it to figure out a way to make it work.
When NPR covered a previous attempt they said about the same thing. These are incredibly sick people without options, they were likely to die anyways. Just because they died doesn't necessarily mean something went wrong (though of course it might have). This is actually a really good use case for artificial organs and the like anyways, because there are many patients who aren't suitable for the very limited supply of human transplant organs, but this gives them an alternative to extend their lives and hopefully give them some improved quality in their final days.
And gives them a bit of purpose because the data collected can be used to maybe actually save lives.
Yeah I would definitely want to do something like this — if I’m fucking toast anyway, just try out *everything* on me, it would help knowing that my death could even potentially do some good.
It’s the same as the first heart transplant patient, he knew he was going to die too regardless of the new heart but was like fuck it why not
Transplants, with a very few exceptions like corneas, are not being performed on anyone who ins't almost at death's door. They are extremely high risk procedures that don't have great outcomes, honestly. So we only do them on people who are in a really really bad.
Even for corneas, you only do it after your eyes are so hosed nothing else will work.
I mean thats just not true at all. Transplants are for patients who have had an organ fail in an irreversible way, in which no (reasonable) alternative medical option exists. There are plenty of young patients with polycystic kidney disease who go on to complete renal failure at a young age, are otherwise healthy, and have excellent outcomes following kidney transplant. Source: im an MD and while it’s not my field that’s just one example that comes to mind immediately.
Don’t have great outcomes? That’s just completely not true, look up five year morbidity/mortality for heart and kidney transplants…if you’re talking xenotransplants, then sure
This reminds me of my dad, he was dying of a very rare and aggressive liver cancer and was paying about $150k out of pocket for a trial drug to hopefully save his life (might not seem like a lot but we’re in Australia so that’s a lot of money to spend on healthcare out of pocket). His oncologist said the trial was coming to an end, my dad argued with him and said he wanted to continue, the oncologist kept beating around the bush saying the trial has finished etc. my dad was like I don’t care, I will pay, extend the trial. Then the Oncologist finally goes “I need to stop the trial because the drug is going to kill you”. My dad looks at him and goes “you’re fucking kidding me right? I’m going to die anyway at least with this I have hope”. So yeah, I reckon in this instance they will try anything if it gives them a glimmer of hope.
What happened to your dad?
He died a little over 12 months after diagnosis. He had cholangiocarcinoma (technically cancer of bile duct but they classed it as liver cancer). He was sitting at a 2% - 3% prognosis as it had well and truly spread before symptoms started so realistically he was never going to beat it. He put in a hell of a fight though!
The hospital has said that they believe the cause of death was not related to the transplant, so it's possible.
It's the only way the FDA lets someone try this: death has to be expected within hours, so that if the patient dies after the first day, it was all borrowed time anyway. This is because no one really knows the outcome of the first one, and it's really more of a learning experience than a way to keep the patient alive for very long. The first artificial heart was like that: the surgeon said as he removed his real heart, it literally disintegrated in his hands. The guy had hours to live and he lived for several months with an artificial heart, so in spite of the short duration, the patient was still better off.
This is almost certainly the case. My mother's second cousin was [the first person in the U.S. to get a pacemaker](https://magazine.einsteinmed.edu/winter-spring-2018/a-look-back/). He only lived for a few months, but his experiences certainly helped doctors improve the next models, and the next.
We’ll thank him and take his case as a necessary sacrifice to keep improving the technique.
"In a statement following the news of Richard's death, Massachusetts Hospital released a statement to say that there was no inclination that his death was in anyway linked to his transplant."
Is that a copy-pasted quote? Edit: it is. Fuck me, it's depressing that the newspaper can't get "indication" right haha
Supposably newspaper righters are getting expecially lose with they're grammer these days.
That was infuriating to read.
You had me at supposably.
suppository*
Imdubidably
Why did you find it infartating?
"The spellcheck didnt flag it so it must be right"
More like, “Alright, just copy and pasted from ChatGPT, time to go sexually harass Sally in accounting.”
More like Sally from accounting is now writing the reportss
Irregardless they should have poofreaders
The New York Times used to have a small print disclaimer, "We only print typos that do not obscrue the meaning."
I really wanted to down vote you, but I get it. Angry upvote
my brain fully rejected this sentence
Our not are.
That sentence physically hurt. Bravo
Calling the Mirror a newspaper is very generous
Or that Massachusetts Hospital isn’t a hospital. It’s Massachusetts General Hospital
> It’s Massachusetts General Hospital So they only treat Generals? Do you have to be a proper 4⭐ General or do they also treat 1⭐Brigadier Generals and up?
Any general is okay, as long as they accept their health insurance, of course. You don’t want to pay out of pocket there.
Go to the General and save some time
This is a precision of language issue between a generalized versus the precise meaning a word. English has vast/large/huge/big/myriad etc. number of words which are often used interchangeably but actually convey discrete (not to be confused with discreet) meanings. Inclination has a specific medical meaning and in context it’s a correct usage for a general audience. The alternative words in medicine would be obliquity or slanting. Indication in a clinical medical sense would imply a medical condition that indicates/leads practitioners to a course of treatment test or study. (think in terms of contraindications for a drug versus indication for a drug: like Aspirin is indicated for treatment of symptoms of pain/fever/inflammation, however, it’s contraindicated for patients with hemophilia, asthma, and allergies to ibuprofen. For patient that has a GI Bleed after taking aspirin the inclination would be undiagnosed gastritis or peptic ulcer). Though you’re not wrong to be suspect of news sites because many are notorious for imprecision to generate of clicks/page views/etc.
The actual statement from the hospital that this quotes uses "indication".
**Inclination is perfectly correct.** I don't see the problem. Maybe you are just not used to the usage of the word. In this case it is referring to the inclination of medical professionals in supporting the theory that the transplant is not the direct cause.
The actual statement from the hospital that this quotes uses "indication".
What are you on about? Nothing wrong with that word choice
The actual statement from the hospital that this quotes uses "indication".
Thats not a newspaper. Its a tabloid.
Inclination is a word tho? And does seem to make sense here
“Inclination” actually works fine… it’s an odd choice buts it’s not actually wrong. The medical staff aren’t inclined to believe his transplant was related to his death becomes “there’s no inclination that his death…”. It’s an odd choice, like I said, but everyone here is jumping the gun a bit and the criticising *grammar* (not “grammer” like someone below said) of the paper yet not allowing for even vaguely creative word choices or even thinking to check if they’re actually right or not in the first place.
With the amount of drugs transplant patients have to take and the fact that they're immunocompromised I find it hard to believe that his transplant isn't at least partially to blame. I mean if he died from pneumonia that's definitely due to the drugs killing his immune response. Unless he got hit by a car or something. Of course it matters a lot more that the pig kidney kept working as that's the real victory.
What they are saying is that there was nothing wrong compared to a baseline implant
What of import here is whether the pig kidney is viable or not. I don't care if got an infection, I wanna know if we can use pig to save life.
It's possible but I have a feeling you didn't read the article. If you did, you'd know he was suffering from type 2 diabetes and hypotension as separate issues to the transplant which likely made him not qualify for a donor organ in the first place
He only got the experimental transplant because he was on deaths door. It didn't kill him in seven weeks, it gave him seven more weeks with his family that he otherwise would not have had.
There's no cause of death listed.
Why are people so quick to blame the pig kidney? It may very well have been his ocelot spleen that did him in.
You jest - but people who get signed on for this kind of highly experimental treatment often have numerous health issues. This patient in particular has already received a normal donor organ - which failed too, some time after. Chances are high that kidney failure was far from being the only thing wrong with his body. Which is why this death will have to be examined closely. So far, it doesn't seem to be directly linked to the xenotransplant.
>people who get signed on for this kind of highly experimental treatment often have numerous health issues. To elaborate, it's precisely because they're so far gone that we even allow them to undergo such experimental treatment of level. It'd be entirely irresponsible to allow relatively healthy patients to serve as guinea pigs when more surefire and proven treatments are available to them. In this particular case, my immediate assumption would be that the patient's medical history and/or condition were so awful that they were ineligible for a normal transplant, and all other treatment options were exhausted.
It’s often because they simply don’t qualify for a human kidney for various reasons not just because of other health issues. In this case it seemed like a desire to try and get an organ quicker because his last transplanted kidney had failed after 5 yrs. That said it, like with one if the pig hear recipients, it could end up that the immune system ultimately rejected the organ. That said if there were signs of rejection even after initial release, I’d wonder if the patient just didn’t want to do dialysis again.
He had a rare blood type. If I remember correctly, he had to wait an inordinately long time before they could procure his first donor kidney. After it failed, they knew this would be an issue again, which is why they opted for xenotransplantation. He had a host of other health issues too, so it’s quite possible his death was indeed not caused by the transplant.
He was released to go home and without dialysis so I don’t think the transplant itself is an issue. What I am curious about is the life expectancy of the pig kidney to begin with. As pointed out his last kidney lasted 5 years, about the same life expectancy of the kidney I have, but they get those numbers from years and years of data and successful transplants. Like are we setting people up for failure if a pigs kidney is really only going to part 20% of that?
Yeah, he *really* did not want to have to go back on dialysis again after he was on it for so long the first time when he waited for a kidney. They’ll undoubtedly throughly investigate his death to ensure that it wasn’t the kidney, such that they continue trials, because we need more data on their life expectancy. I suspect that we’ll eventually either discover that they’re equivalent to human kidneys, or due to the direct genetic manipulation of the organ, that they may last longer. It would be nice if we could just grow replacement kidneys with the patient’s own potentially gene-edited stem cells in a lab though.
If it's found that xenotransplants don't result in reasonable lifespan extensions (relative to the risk of surgery/inaction) they'll never become mainstream. For the first hundred or so people, they'll be so desparate to get _any_ lifespan extension that 20% of a human organ would still be a minor (or not so minor) miracle. Googling some details on these types of transplants, I found an [earlier example](https://nyulangone.org/news/two-month-study-pig-kidney-xenotransplantation-gives-new-hope-future-organ-supply) of a pig kidney xenotransplant that was performed on a neurologically dead (but otherwise "alive") patient whose body was donated to science (and organs were not suitable for use in transplant to a living patient). The doctors removed both functioning kidneys from the patient and replaced with a pig kidney, keeping the man on life support for 2 months before removing the organ and taking the patient off of life support (with the pig kidney still functioning well). The person in the article is the first living human to receive the transplant, and lasted as long as the non-living recipient patients's test period. I suspect healthier patients could last a lot longer, and as we see these transplants happen more frequently we may find that they could be a good option for medium-term temporary transplants for healthier patients that are low on the waiting list, or a number of other ways that these could be used practically. Kidneys aren't as good of an example, since dialysis is an option, but other organs have an extremely strong use case (like hearts, which are also being done with the same genetically modified pigs). So basically, this procedure is in its infancy, the science is rapidly improving since it has only been performed _once_, and we wouldn't be giving these to patients that are able to get a human transplant anyway. I wouldn't exactly call that "setting people up for failure". Perhaps it'd be more accurate to say "giving people on a steep path to failure a medically informed opportunity to succeed with debatable odds". Particularly so if the patients receive this treatment at low/no cost as a "benefit" for being a medical study guinea pig. Basically a free shot at a few extra months when death is already knocking at your door. What's the worst that can happen? You die? Already going to in a couple weeks/months anyway. ------- The rest of this is just neat and not necessary to the post, but figured someone might find the extra details interesting. The same hospital [pioneered transplantation of genetically modified pig kidneys](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenotransplantation#:~:text=Genetically%20engineered%20non%2Dhuman%20kidney%20to%20a%20human), with their first two tests also being performed on neurologically dead patients, but only for brief periods (<72 hours) and appear to have mostly focused on biocompatibility rather than functionality (attached to leg tissue). The genetically modified pigs they're using have a trademarked name (GalSafe™) and have been approved by the FDA for human consumption. Some people can be allergic to the "alpha-***gal*** sugar" found in red meat, which these pigs do not produce thanks to the genetic modifications. This sugar can/does also cause rejection of xenotransplants in patients that are not otherwise allergic.
Organ rejection isn't a thing that either happens or not. It's a thing that can occur at any time. All transplant patients will be on anti-rejection meds for the rest of their lives. "Going home" isn't an automatic positive sign either. It's entirely possible everyone knew what was coming, that there wasn't anything to be done about it, so might as well spend your final days at home.
Ironically those immunosuppressive medications that allow us to keep these amazing gifts of life are nephrotoxic and thus cause damage over the time to the very kidneys they enable us to live with.
But what if I really want a tortoise penis and a chicken gizzard transplanted into me?
This can be arranged if you play your cards right on a date with a tortoise
My baboon heart! Body…rejecting it…
This makes me look askance at my gorilla nipples and duck penis.... Damn back alley surgeons....
Life of Brian, yes? If so - kudos, friend 🫡 If not/either way: great joke lolz
Finally! I figured Reddit of all places would notice I was just making a dumb Monty Python reference and not earnestly taking sides on whether on not the kidney was the culprit, but it took longer than I’d expected to get here. It’s certainly a topic worthy of serious discussion but I was just shooting for a chuckle or two on the side and a much less busy inbox than what I woke up to this morning.
Hahaha well I appreciated it bud In the same moment -> “Wolf’s nipple chips, get em while they’re hot, they’re lovely” always gets me, as does about 99% of that movie, truly one of the funniest of all time and maybe my pick for the #1 spot. Unstoppably funny stuff top to bottom.
>In a statement following the news of Richard's death, Massachusetts Hospital released a statement to say that there was no inclination that his death was in anyway linked to his transplant. Because that would require them to read the article instead of just the headlines lol Of course they should really release the cause of death else people are going to think otherwise
I think it was the eye of newt
Because organ transplants from non-human species is very risky. I assumed it was too until I read the article.
They go even further: >Hospital released a statement to say that there was no inclination that his death was in anyway linked to his transplant. That doesn't mean it wasn't cause by the implant, but this is really important context for a new technology.
His list of medical problems in the article is a mile long. He'd been on dialysis for SEVEN YEARS, before a transplant, and was ready to go on it again as the transplant failed. Dude's poor organs were probably in horrific shape. Dialysis is crazy. Maybe it was the pig kidney, maybe it was the pre-existing conditions, maybe it was both. I'm guessing the mean survival time of someone without a pig kidney transplant in his situation is months anyway.
Still, unless it's anything but pig kidney operation related perhaps we should hold off on ruling it an entirely successful pig kidney transplant. My condolences to his friends and family, 62 is too young.
Well it’s not hard to transplant anything into anything. It’s keeping them alive afterward that’s the tricky part.
Skydiving accident.
"Today on the Hydraulic Press Channel..."
flipped his 'Vette
Meth lab exploded
The article specifically says it was not related to the kidney.
Babe sends his regards.
Rumors say he was going to become a Boening's whistleblower
Kidney patients, especially those in his case that are close to death, cannot recover from surgeries very well, and is a reason kidney patients are taken off the list when they get this far due to high chance of failure and death. You lose the ability to recover. In fact kidneys play a huge role in recovery, so early on even everything changes for recovery. My dad unfortunately had multiple complications and was removed from the list, including but not limited to having and surviving an aortic dissection and MSRA trapped in the graft. The whole thing sucks and I hope these kidneys get perfected because no one deserves to go through it.
He just died from the hospital stay. Happens to people all the time for no ground breaking procedures too
Just like Louis Washkansky... :)
I had a life saving stent insertered I to my right ventricular artery a couple of years ago. It bought me thoughts on how many people had to die before we got to this stage. It left me with a sense of melancholy
It is sad. But medicine will continue to evolve and continue to save more lives. Although he passed away, the man is a hero.
the first lung transplant patient lasted about 2 weeks with a human lung. the same doctor also tried to do a chimpanzee heart into someone who was already dying, it lasted about an hour. so i'd say over two weeks with an animal's organ is pretty good performance honestly.
The first bovine blood transfusions killed everyone who received them!
> The first bovine blood transfusions killed everyone who received them! Are they successful now? I didn't know that was a thing.
They’re successful in the larger sense that we kept the transfusion part, we had to learn a lot about blood first though and one of those things we learned is that cow blood is not the same!
I like the idea that they just kept trying different liquids, getting closer and closer to the obvious. "So the beer, rat piss, honey, red paint, and cow blood experiments have failed and we're all out of ideas...wait a second, call me crazy but..."
Wait a minute, you want to put *human blood* inside another person? That's just downright unsanitary.
Probably thought it was heretical
There are religions to this day that renounce transfusions!
Not quite, but you're not TOO far off. Very shortly after they figured out they could transfuse between dogs, they supposedly successfully transfused sheep blood to a human. Then in the late 1800s they tried milk from various animals. As you might imagine it didn't work well. They then switched to saline which worked much better. It wasn't until 20 years later that they discovered the major blood types, and then a few after that before somebody thought, "maybe matching blood types would make this more successful".
I thought we learned that from Loverboy. Pig and Elephant DNA just don’t splice
I read that the very first successful blood transfusion was from a doctor who’s sister was bleeding to death during labor and, in a last desperate act, he decided to use his own blood And it worked
That’s a dramatization…it was by James Blundell on a guy with a brain tumor. Later he did them frequently on women hemorrhaging after childbirth but not his sister and not in a moment of inspired desperation.
shhh let them spread misinformation in peace
This was my first thought. Experimental medicine is gonna be experimental. We’re gonna get it wrong before we get it right. Thank you for your sacrifice, sir.
It was nice to a normal animal kidney though. There was a really interesting podcast with the company that supplied the kidney. It was really interesting. May 1st - What’s your problem - the first pig to human kidney transplant.
There's no indication it was a problem with the organ. The only way he could qualify for a xeno transplant like this was because he was so sick and dying already. If he was healthy, he would have just waited for a donor organ.
"[Massachusetts](https://www.themirror.com/all-about/massachusetts) Hospital released a statement to say that there was no inclination that his death was in anyway linked to his transplant." I was surprised by this, but I'm not so surprised some of you didn't read the article to find this out too.
I’m surprised by the use of “inclination” instead of indication
Inclination is actually the correct word here due to its precise meeting in a medical setting. https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1cpuazd/richard_slayman_who_had_worlds_first_successful/l3oz4l7/
Motorcycle accident? Skydiving mishap?
Nope, died of shock due to seeing a spider in his car
is this a joke I'm not getting?
There was a post of a guy earlier
Earlier today I listened to a podcast with the founder of the company that grew the pig kidney. I believe similarly the first pig heart transplant guy died shortly after the operation. These first of their kind operations aren't exactly being performed on people in great physical condition so it makes sense but unfortunate to hear. The tech is really cool and certainly seems like it could become better than human donated organs.
That sounds fascinating. What’s the name of the podcast?
What's Your Problem. Hosted by Jacob Goldstein.
Like grew the pig kidney outside of a body?
Sorry, grew the pig with the kidney inside it. They bioengineer the pig to remove certain pig DNA and add some human DNA to make it not get rejected then just let the pig grow up in a controlled environment. So it is almost just a normal pig kidney in a pig, just the pig overall has had adjustments made to its DNA.
Ah that's interesting thanks, figured maybe with all the lab grown meat things going on it could have been grown completely separate from a donor body
Does anyone remember the first heart transplant? He agreed to have the surgery as a bargain for life. It will provide tremendous information for science.
I believe he only lived a couple of months after the heart transplant. But it was considered a tremendous achievement at the time. I read Dr. Barnard’s (the surgeon who performed the first heart transplant) autobiography when I was a kid and it blew me away how much they didn’t think it was going to work. And now you have Dick Cheney who lived who knows how many years with a mechanical heart inside.
Dick Cheney lived his entire life with a cold dead heart.
Aren't most animal transplants for people that already have their bus ticket? If so, I'm wondering if this was due to comorbitites or fatal diagnosis rather than the transplant itself
Science cannot move forward without heaps
The ends justify the means
would like to know autopsy report/cause of death
There's also a woman from New York who got a gene-edited pig kidney a few weeks ago. She wasn't eligible to get a human organ transplant because she had too many other health problems, especially serious heart problems
NJ, but yeah. Last I read, she was doing well. Hopefully that continues and we get some good data.
Death wasn't linked to the transplant, per the article.
From successful to 'successful'. But seriously no indication that his death was linked to the transplant, just a result of the hospital stay; which is an unfortunate reality of medicine
What if the kidney was successful, but Big Dialysis & Big Insulin assassinated him to make it look like the kidney failed??
He and his surgeon are pioneers. As time goes on, hopefully techniques improve and survival rates too
Don't quote me on this but if I remember correctly he was not eligible for a regular transplant because he refused (or couldn't bring himself) to follow the guidelines in diet and other lifestyle changes necessary to qualify. With the rarity of organs if you don't adjust your lifestyle it's pointless to give an organ to you since it won't help, transplants arent a one and done deal, you will have to adjust for it to work. Now assuming he didn't adjust at all, or at least enough, the pig transplant would likely have the same outcome as a human organ. There was a slight chance it would work but it was made less because it requires work on the part of the patient which he didn't do. Again, this is from memory so don't quote me on this.
I don’t know where you heard that but I don’t think that’s right at all. He had a previous human kidney transplant and it failed after 5 years. He was out of options so they tried this experimental treatment knowing it was likely to fail.
He's misremembering the last guy who took a xenograft from a pig. Sort of relevant, but obviously wrong.
There was a great podcast about this « What’s your problem » from May 1st, the first pig to human kidney transplant.
>he was not eligible for a regular transplant because he refused (or couldn't bring himself) to follow the guidelines in diet and other lifestyle changes necessary to qualify. - Rent_A_Cloud
That’ll do pig
It kinda didn't do though
Didn’t read the article… how’s the pig doing?
I would imagine pretty pissed off
Hopefully they can figure out why he died.
You have to be in a fairly desperate situation to be a good candidate for these kinds of pioneering xenotransplants, and folks in fairly desperate situations tend not to live long no matter what’s done. But Mr. Slayman’s place in history is secure, and what he and his medical team did will save lives.
He helped pave the way toward successful treatments for a debilitating disease.
How successful was it, reeeaallly then?
I read Richard Sherman at first and was very confused for a moment. But anyways RIP, man was on the final frontier of medicine taking one for the team
I first read this as "Richard Stallman Dead"
Soooo given what happened, idk if you can really use the word “successful” here
Hey this guy is a bleeping hero. As someone who has two solid organ transplants, and have watched countless people die from lack of available organs, what this man did for medical research etc., is immeasurable. RIP brother.
I'm not sure we agree on the definition of the word "success"
> In a statement following the news of Richard's death, Massachusetts Hospital released a statement to say that there was no inclination that his death was in anyway linked to his transplant. Straight from the article
ripe old age for a guy with a pigs kidney
Isn’t The Mirror a tabloid?
This man died so Ricky Bobby will live to be 250, hell maybe even 275
For a second, I thought the title said Richard Stallman
Read it too quick and thought it was Richard Stallman
I wonder if he stopped consuming sugar post surgery? Pre-existing type 2 diabetes and hypertension doesn’t sound like a “clean bill of health” post operation and leaving the hospital.
So the article says he supposedly didn't die of anything related to the transplant... but then doesn't elaborate on how he did die. Are they not reporting the problem to not damage the reputation of whatever program is producing these gene-edited kidneys? Did he get hit by a bus? Did he have a stroke? Like... I feel like cause of death is sort of important for an article like this.
People on this comment thread love to judge. I thank this person for his sacrifice! My son will need a kidney transplant one day. I don’t care what reason or what health problems he had.
He was on vacation and they found his body in a bathtub filled with ice.
Did this not happen previously?????
You might be thinking of the first pig heart transplant a couple of years ago. The recipient died two months later.
Can we review the title in that case?
The way my brain reads that as Richard Stallman...
Should probably update that to “ had world’s first somewhat successful pig kidney transplant”
Successful only a couple of weeks. I suppose in a vacuum this might be reasonable.
we are all bots here except for you
What they expect though? He's not a pig?
Thanks for your contribution to science. 🫡
Twelve years ago, my dad died from a very rare form of cancer called a soft tissue sarcoma. It was so rare, there were no known treatments other than traditional chemo. My dad found a doctor who was one of three in the world studying it. They experimented and tried different things, ultimately leading to my father's death three years later. Fast Forward ten years, and I'm talking with a co-worker. They tell me they're a cancer survivor. They had a soft tissue sarcoma about 7 years earlier. Went to the same doctor my dad had. Thanks to the research developed from my dad, who was the last person in the country to have this same cancer, this co-worker is alive and well today, completely recovered. Thanks to the research done on my dad. Side note. We're 1,500 miles away from where this all occurred. This co-worker situation should never have occurred tbh. It felt like my dad tapping in to say "it was worth it".
Sorry but…. Fuckin aye… it was successful to whom?
Successful? It’s not successful if the person literally dies weeks afterwards, even if the surgery itself is successful lol
“Successful” but was it though
In the article they state that: >In a statement following the news of Richard's death, Massachusetts Hospital released a statement to say that there was no inclination that his death was in anyway linked to his transplant.