Last week, doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston accomplished a medical first. They announced on Thursday that they transplanted a pig kidney into a 62-year-old patient. The patient hopes the experiment not only restores his health but also provides hope for others.
Massachusetts General Hospital calls the procedure the first time a genetically modified pig kidney has been transplanted into a living person.
Two men received heart transplants from pigs in 2022 and 2023. Sadly, both died within months.
Doctors performed the experimental pig kidney transplant on Saturday. The patient is Richard “Rick” Slayman of Weymouth, Massachusetts. Slayman is recovering well. Doctors say they expect to discharge him soon.
Slayman had already undergone a kidney transplant at the hospital in 2018. However, he had to resume dialysis last year when the organ showed signs of failure. When dialysis complications arose, his doctors suggested a pig kidney transplant, Slayman said in a statement released by the hospital.
“I saw it not only as a way to help me, but a way to provide hope for the thousands of people who need a transplant to survive,” he says.
The announcement marks the latest development in xenotransplantation. That’s the medical term for efforts to heal human patients with cells, tissues, or organs from animals.
In God’s wisdom, He made humans and animals with some similarities in the way their physical bodies function. Pigs have many physiological likenesses to humans. But only humans are made “in the image of God.” Some believe that similarities between animals and people indicate that God placed provisions for human health in the animal kingdom. But others see the great difference between image-bearing humans and animals. They raise ethical concerns about incorporating animal body parts into human beings. Are there limits to even life-saving technology in this area? Where is the line that wisdom draws?
For decades, xenotransplantation didn’t work. The human immune system immediately destroyed foreign animal tissue. More recent attempts involved pig organs that have been modified to be more humanlike. These recent changes increase hope that the altered pig parts might one day help fill a shortage of donated organs.
More than 100,000 people are on the national waiting list for a transplant, most of them kidney patients. Thousands die every year before their turn comes. Not everyone can be an organ donor. But those who can are able to help save lives—by literally loving their neighbors as themselves. (Mark 12:31)
