A transplanted pig kidney offers a grandmother hope for life without dialysis (Rob Stein on NPR, Dec 2024)
NEW YORK – Towana Looney can hardly contain her anticipation as she waits to get wheeled to an operating room at the NYU Langone Health hospital in New York City for an historic procedure.
“It’s going to change my life,” says Looney, a 53-year-old grandmother, from Gadsden, Ala.
She volunteered to become the first living person in the world to get a kidney from a new kind of genetically modified pig. Scientists hope this kind of pig will someday provide an unlimited supply of kidneys, livers, hearts and other organs that could alleviate the chronic shortage of organs for transplantation and save thousands of patients every year.
“It could completely change the management of organ failure,” says Dr. Robert Montgomery, the director of NYU Langone’s Transplant Institute, who was the lead surgeon on Looney’s operation.
Towana Looney, 53, of Gadsden, Ala., gets ready to head into the operating room at NYU Langone Health in New York City to get a genetically modified pig kidney transplant.
Looney was discharged earlier than expected from the hospital, but had to return for a few days to have her medication adjusted. Nevertheless, her doctors remain optimistic.
“It would change everything,” Montgomery says. “I think it would revolutionize medicine for sure.”
While many others share Montgomery’s optimism, the procedure remains controversial. Some worry the organs could spread pig viruses to people, setting off another pandemic. Others are uncomfortable with exploiting animals for their organs. Some worry about experimenting on patients desperate for any hope.
“I have many concerns,” says L. Syd M Johnson, a bioethicist at SUNY Upstate Medical University. “There’s a lot of hope, but hope is not scientific evidence. And it’s not a great way to do science — as a series of one-off experiments by different research teams, using different protocols, organs with different gene edits, and dying patients who have run out of options.”
But Looney has no qualms the day of her operation today. “It feels like the same day that I gave my mom a kidney,” says Looney. “I’m so excited.”
