Surgeon transplants a pig’s kidney into a brain-dead human in groundbreaking surgery | USA TODAY

Robert Montgomery, a New York transplant surgeon, conducted a successful surgery that transplanted a pig's kidney into a brain-dead human.
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Pigs, whose organs are about the right size and can be bred easily and quickly, offer a promising alternative for organ transplants.

But before tying a person's fate to a pig's organ, Montgomery, head of the Transplant Institute at NYU Langone Health, wanted to prove that the procedure wouldn't trigger an immediate immune attack.

Jumping the species barrier is perilous. In 1984, after years of study, Leonard Bailey, a transplant surgeon at Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, thought he had overcome the immune system's rapid rejection of foreign organs.

He transplanted a baboon heart into a 12-day-old baby born with a deformed heart. Nicknamed “Baby Fae,” she died 21 days later because her blood type was incompatible with the monkey's.

Though unsuccessful, the experience was pathbreaking. The next year, Bailey performed the first human-to-human heart transplant in a baby. Bailey died in 2019 at age 76; many of his transplant patients have outlived him.

Montgomery's pig had Type O blood, which made it a universal donor. The surgery was funded by a $3.2 million grant from United Therapeutics, a biotechnology company based in Silver Spring, Maryland, involved in treatments for lung disease.

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32 comments

  1. If this can be replicated, it would truly be a game changer for so many who are languishing on dialysis every day—most of whom will die before ever receiving a transplant.

    1. @Alan Malcheski I can’t comment on the channel itself but the transplant has been verified by other outlets.

    2. Actually it can be game changer .
      Out of 100 kidney patients 70 need a transplantation and every time relatives are not ready to donate a kidney so if it is really possible than its a hoop such people who has to regularly go for dialysis.

  2. This might be a major breakthrough. We and you have all cause to celebrate this. I am absolutely fascinated!

  3. Haram NO PORK!!!🤬🤬🤬🙄😰🥶🥶🥶🥶لقد ارتكبت جرائم حرب في التبت😂😂😂😡😡😡😡🤯

  4. Dang, I read that some people have been dead up to eight hours and then brought back to life, without brain damage ….so don’t be so quick to put me in the ground

  5. Orwell was right. At the end of Animal Farm, he says, “And you couldn’t tell the pigs from the men.”

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