Dozens of doctors and nurses silently lined the hospital hallway in tribute: For a history-making two months, a pig’s kidney worked normally inside the brain-dead man on the gurney rolling past them.
The dramatic experiment came to an end Wednesday as surgeons at NYU Langone Health removed the pig kidney and returned the donated body of Maurice “Mo” Miller to his family for cremation.
It marked the longest a genetically modified pig kidney has ever functioned inside a human, albeit a deceased one. And by pushing the boundaries of research with the dead, the scientists learned critical lessons they’re preparing to share with the Food and Drug Administration -– in hopes of eventually testing pig kidneys in the living.
“It’s a combination of excitement and relief,” Dr. Robert Montgomery, the transplant surgeon who led the experiment, told The Associated Press. “Two months is a lot to have a pig kidney in this good a condition. That gives you a lot of confidence” for next attempts.
I imagine they donated the kidneys and put a hybrid one in there. Then you can monitor the body.
It’s neat, but transplant ethics are really, really hard.
If the liver, heart, lungs, or other sensitive organs were viable, this experiment could easily render them inviable.
As a scientist, people doing science like this are typically well above board and kidney function is pretty simple to measure. This would also require all kinds of IRB approval that everyone would expect to be visible.
So, if the other organs were viable, they probably could easily stop the experiment and donate the organs.
I expect. I’d have to read the paper and such.
They removed one of his kidneys and put the pig one in. He had brain cancer which means all his organs were already inviable for transplant.
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