Pig kidney works in a donated body for over a month, a step toward animal-human transplants

MicroWave@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 145 points – Pig kidney works in a donated body for over a month, a step toward animal-human transplants
abcnews.go.com

New York surgeons transplanted a pig's kidney into a brain-dead man and for over a month it's worked normally

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This is really exciting news, The severe lack of viable transplant organs has been a serious hinderance to the medical profession. If the process can be perfected this has the potential to save millions of lives.

Wait, they transplanted a pig's kidney into a... corpse? How did they get authorization for that experiment exactly? The family donated the body to science? I know they'd have just kept him on dialysis if they were actually attempting to prolong his heart beating corpse status.

The possibility that pig kidneys might one day help ease a dire shortage of transplantable organs persuaded the family of Maurice “Mo” Miller from upstate New York to donate his body for the experiment.

“I struggled with it,” his sister, Mary Miller-Duffy, told the AP about her decision. But he liked helping others and “I think this is what my brother would want. So I offered my brother to them.”

"He’s going to be in the medical books, and he will live on forever,” she added.

That's nothing, I've been transplanting pig tissue into my organs for years and I'm doing fine. Some of the biggest risks come from the cooking stage but it's otherwise pleasant.