Vox: Pig kidney transplants are cool. They shouldn’t be necessary.

Tuesday, 2 April, 2024 — transplant

Dylan Matthews, writing for Vox

But the Mass General researchers went a step further when they transplanted a pigney into Rick Slayman, a 62-year-old Weymouth, Massachusetts, man who was very much alive. He luckily remains alive as of this writing and is producing urine through the piece of pork that some doctors put in him.

This is unquestionably good news for Slayman, and while routine pig kidney transplants are still a few years off, it’s obviously good for people with kidney failure to have more options.

We shouldn’t let the news distract us, however, from an uncomfortable fact: Humans could, if we wanted to, end the kidney shortage right now without any assistance from our porcine friends.

All of this.

Mass. man receives first genetically-modified pig kidney transplant

Thursday, 21 March, 2024 — transplant

Rob Stein reporting for NPR:

For the first time, surgeons have transplanted a kidney from a genetically modified pig into a living person, doctors in Boston said Thursday.

Richard Slayman, 62, of Weymouth, Mass., who is suffering from end-stage kidney disease, received the organ Saturday in a four-hour procedure, Massachusetts General Hospital announced. He is recovering well and is expected to be discharged Saturday, the hospital said.

Unless kidney transplant candidates have a living donor, there is typically a years-long backlog for a deceased-donor kidney. As in Slayman’s case, it is possible for a first transplanted kidney to also fail and require a return to dialysis and a second, or sometimes third donor kidney.

The medical science to allow for transplantation of a kidney from genetically modified pigs is a hoped for way to ameliorate the backlog. Closing the gap also potentially means that more people could potentially qualify for transplant.

End-stage renal disease is 3.8 times more common among Black people than white people in the U.S., according to federal statistics.

The transplant “represents a potential breakthrough in solving one of the more intractable problems in our field, that being unequal access for ethnic minority patients to the opportunity for kidney transplants due to the extreme donor organ shortage and other system-based barriers,” said Dr. Winfred Williams, the kidney specialist treating Slayman, who is a Black man.

First and foremost, I wish every kidney transplant candidate could and would match with a living donor. Second, I wish everyone able and willing to designate themselves a posthumous organ donor would do so. Third, I hope for animal organs to be made available thoughtfully and safely, and with the welfare of the animals raised to be donors provided for at the highest level of care.

Bethlehem Steel Stacks

Monday, 19 February, 2024 — photography

As a first since moving to Lehigh Valley area vs. visiting, I took a chunk of the President’s Day morning to walk around the Bethlehem Steel Stacks, what was the core of Bethlehem Steel. While the Hoover-Mason Trestle elevated walkway was closed due to snow, walking around at street level was plenty.

The warmer seasons are definitely busier here, but circling a decent chunk of the complex at street level was fairly pleasant.

My father-in-law worked at Bethlehem Steel before its closing. I am continually amazed at the scale of operation here, what work might have been like, and how, nearly 30-years after plant closure, just how much of South-side Bethlehem is occupied by parts of the plant.

Durham Valley snow

Saturday, 17 February, 2024 — photography

Both images are looking southwest across the Durham Valley from County Line Rd. E on Bougher Hill. The landscape looks fantastic with fresh snow. We expected some snow today, but received nine inches where we had been expecting somewhere between two and four.

Partial tree/Bethlehem Township

Thursday, 8 February, 2024 — photography

Near where I get my periodic post-transplant bloodwork.