Man who received first pig kidney transplant dies

kobimo@kbin.social to World News@lemmy.world – 231 points – Richard "Rick" Slayman: Man Who Received First Pig Kidney Transplant Dies
townflex.com

Richard "Rick" Slayman: Man who received first pig kidney transplant dies, his death came just two weeks after his surgery. latest news on townflex

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Suffering from end-stage kidney disease, Richard underwent the groundbreaking procedure in March, only to depart from this world merely two months post-surgery.

The news of his demise was confirmed by Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the medical facility behind the historic transplant, on Saturday.

Either an AI wrote this or somebody needs to take the author's fucking thesaurus. He has ceased to be. He's shuffled off his mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the choir invisible. He is an Ex-pig kidney transplant recipient.

Richard passed beyond the veil Tuesday morning. His brain was made into mince-meat. He poofed into a cloud of smoke and was carried away by a wayward zephyr, destined for the clearing at the end of the path.

Homie got ded. He's ghosted, slid out his flesh jacket, closed the shop, and joined the unseen squad. Homie's no longer rockin' that pig kidney.

It was two months post surgery.

Yeah, but he got a human heart in 2018 and was diabetic.

He wasn't going to live long regardless, but what matters is what killed him and the source is pretty bad.

Two months isn't great and it's not terrible, so the details is what matters.

That source is garbage.

Seems to be based on what amounts to a single “does not currently appear that the procedure itself killed him” statement from MGH, which is generally respected.

I will wait for the actual journal article that (I sincerely hope) is yet to come.

Five years, and an additional two months following consent from a highly experimental and unique procedure that he appears to have given informed consent for because he would otherwise have died sooner beats the hell out of five years without the two months.

I could make a hell of a lot of amends in sixty days, knowing it was all I had, that I’ve had trouble making in four plus decades…. Which would make the end exponentially more peaceful and pleasant.

Anything that gives me that much time is a net positive. Not going to bother with some of the usual surgical recovery stuff if I am fully informed at that point but… Don’t want to die wishing I had had time to make that one phone call or txt that I didn’t quite get to make because we don’t get to choose the moment.

Ten yrs from now hewill be a hero for undergoing the procedure that leads to real progress.

It's incredible that this was viable in the first place. Of course these type of experimental surgeries are done on extremely sick people at the end stage of normal care. So, actually two months is nothing to scoff at. It means a successful operation. I hope autopsy will give insight. What this man did is incredibly brave and important for mankind. Hero in my books.

It was two weeks though.

Edit: nevermind, OP says two weeks, article says march. My bad.

Isn't it cheaper to harvest organs from cadavers instead of spending millions in figuring how to put pig parts into humans? Then you ask why US healthcare is so expensive.

So season 3 of Dr. Death?

Dr. Death was about gross negligence in medicine and the failure of the medical system to prevent unqualified doctors from making it through the system. There's no evidence that this study has anything to do with that

I have mixed feelings on this. On the one hand that's pretty interesting and like, hurray for saving lives. But on the other hand it seems kind of incredibly messed up to raise animals as sacrificial organ sacks.

I'm going with the first hand, no question. Human lives > animal lives. Sorry animals.

I mean technically your just saying animal lives >animal lives...

I was being more specific with one, and context does the rest of the heavy lifting!

Guy there doesn't even know when to use "your" or "you're" and you're expecting them to pick up on context?

I thought that was what my "just" was saying... /s lol

Said the animal? I forget who said that you can tell a lot about a society based solely on how it treats its animals.

Providing organs to those in need sounds like pretty great treatment!

Genuinely agree with you. I dunno. I just feel like I’d prefer we grew them rather than harvested them at this point.

I just wanted to point out that I don’t think it should be as cut and dry as a human > animal.

Oh, 100%. I imagine the research involved in this also pushes forward advances like growing organs.

If I had to make a choice between a pig dying to give an organ to a human in need, or a human dying and the pig surviving, then I'd choose the human living every time. So for me, it's as cut and dry (in that context) as human > animal.

If we don't need to kill animals to save humans because we can grow organs, then great! Do that instead. No question asked there, either. (Assuming they'd work equally as well etcetc)

FWIW, I'm also very excited for lab-grown meat and support the idea of eating less meat. I'm not about hating animals or devaluing their lives. It's just that humans living longer, healthier lives is a bigger priority to me than not harvesting animal organs, and I'm sorry if it sounds grotesque. I recognize it might be morbid, but it's still an easy decision for me.

Sorta related, I've talked about humans eating less meat and how vegetarians/vegans have the wrong approach. It's usually the animal cruilty or eat healthier approach with them, I've been saying that to ease people into the vegetarian camp they need to not try to make it a thing.

Baby steps, the way I go about it is I cook my friends delicious food and it just happens to be vegetarian. If you can get them to like a food and want the recipe it's a win, one less meatless meal they'll have occasionally. Rice and repeat and hopefully one day they'll have a handful of meatless meals a week.

I'm Mexican and we have a ton of flavorful vegetarian meals, my personally favorite dish is enchiladas de queso y mole poblano. Im not even vegetarian or vegan, I just decided one day that I should cut some meat out of my diet, after checking what I'm currently eating it turns out I already eat at least 6 meatless meals a week... All cause we just have a lot of really good vegetarian meals in my culture.

Gonna share the recipe? Or a link to a similar one? Haha

(I don't trust myself to be able to tell an authentic one from a whitewashed imitation, lol)

Mole poblano enchiladas are really easy.

If you live in a med to large city you should be able to find the Doña Maria Mole Poblano mix in your local grocery store, check their hispanic isle. It comes in a small glass container. If you live in a bigger city I recommend going to a Mexican grocery market and seeing what other brands they have, just pick whatever looks good to you can't really go wrong and I wouldn't worry about authenticity with this since there's literally thousands of variations on Mexican Mole so it's all authentic in its own way.

OK after that ramble here's a simple ingredients list.

Main ingredients. Mole Poblano Queso fresco Corn tortillas Onion

Red rice side dish. Rice Tomato paste Tomato bullion Onion Garlic

Garnish/toppings. Onion Queso fresco Cilantro/coriander Sour cream Table cream Sliced onion

With this list in mind you can go ahead and just browse through recipes online and check whatever has similar ingredients.

You wanna prep the sauce first cause it takes a while on low heat to properly smooth out.

The way my family always made them is you warm up the tortilla in a pan until it gets soft, you don't want to over cook and have them get stiff. All it needs is a couple seconds on high.

Then you chuck em into a smidge of hot oil in another pan, again for only a handful of seconds. 10 or so on each side should be fine depending on how hot the pan is, the key is to not overcook them and have them go stiff.

The you dunk them in the Mole sauce, put them on a plate, add cheese and onion inside to taste and roll em up. Add the garnishes on top and you're done.

Tbh you could just warm up the tortillas in a pan and skip the oil part completely if you want it healthier. That's just how my family always did it so that how I do them.

For the red rice just check out Mexican red rice recipe with similar ingredients and you can't go wrong.

For a non vegetarian version you could also make them out of chicken breast instead. Personally I think just queso fresco is the best, I ommit the onion since I don't like biting into raw onion but my family prefers it with.

Come one Riven, don't hold out on us with the recipe huh? We needs it.

I gotchu fam, I replied to another commenter with it check it out.

Fair warning, it's less of a recipe and more of a ramble but it does include an ingredients list.

I’m Mexican and we have a ton of flavorful vegetarian meals

While I agree, the worst restaurant I have ever been to was a vegan "Mexican" restaurant. The food was cooked without any spices or even salt! You were supposed to put this foul-smelling brown sauce of their own creation, which we declined to do. It was the most bland, tasteless food I have ever had in my life. If I wasn't so against wasting food if at all possible, I wouldn't have choked it down.

I hope that doesn't turn too many people off of actually decent vegetarian Mexican food considering it was in the middle of L.A.

Yea that's why I prefer vegetarian over vegan. A ton of the classic vegetarian dishes that are amazing rely on dairy and other animal products that aren't directly meat. From simple things like quesadillas to sopes vegetarianos and enchiladas.

It's all about spices though, I'm dissaponted in that restaurant. Mole Poblano is quite literally all spices and chilis.

Out of curiosity I googled vegetarian Mexican recipes and I'm a bit disappointed there was non of the classics that I cook on the top pages. It's a lot of nuvegetarian recipes, which there's nothing wrong with but they all seemed sorta samey.

You're gonna be blown away when you learn how animals treat each other in the wild.

It's easy to label others from a fictional high ground. If faced with death or dead pig im sure most people choose dead pig.

I don't care how they treat each other, we should hold ourselves to a higher standard. And I'm not labelling anyone here, I just said I had mixed feelings about it.

It's easier to hold a higher standard when you have all your needs met.

Less so when you're poked with giant needles 3 times a week while also having to be careful to not drown because you drank a tad too much water.

I literally don't even know what you're trying to say, I haven't cast any judgements or told anyone to do anything. Get off your soapbox.

What I'm describing is Kidney failure and dialysis - well, part of it, it's even worse than that - the things the doctors and researchers that were involved in doing this transplant are trying to cure.

The thing you say we should allow humans to go through in the name of holding ourselves to a "higher standard".

That's not what I was trying to say. I was specifically referring to you talking about how animals treat each other.

I don't want anyone to suffer which is why I have mixed feelings about this.

edit: actually go fuck yourself, I don't care, you've continuously put words in my mouth and obviously don't care about having a reasonable conversation.

And so we do! I doubt even an organ pig is going to be eviscerated alive, run to death, or asphyxiated by a bunch of sharp teeth around the neck.

How is it different from raising them for food?

They might get better treatment in these cases but I don't think it would be different. I'm vegan if that helps understand my point of view.

From my perspective, raising and killing an animal because you need to in order to survive is more forgivable than doing so just because you enjoy the taste.