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.
You don’t just pop into the supermarket for a kidney. Animals are probably reared in strict conditions for the research and then harvested.
You can buy kidneys in some supermarkets.
Not living ones though. Just saying.
But you’re right.
The pig embryos have to be specifically genetically modified such that their organs don’t have proteins that would cause an immune response in humans.