A Third Person Has Received a Transplant of a Genetically Engineered Pig Kidney

More than 103,000 people in the United States are on the waiting list for a transplant, with the vast majority of those needing a kidney. With human donor organs in short supply, some researchers are exploring the use of pigs as a potential source.

Now, an Alabama woman has become the third person to receive a kidney transplant from a genetically engineered pig, her doctors announced Tuesday.

Towana Looney, 53, is off of kidney dialysis after undergoing the procedure at NYU Langone Health on November 25. She was discharged from the hospital on December 6, and her doctors say she is in good health. Her surgery is the latest in a series of similar procedures known as [xenotransplantation](https://www.wired.com/story/heres-whats-next-for-pig-organ-transplants/), the practice of transplanting organs from one species to another.

Read more: [https://www.wired.com/story/a-third-person-has-received-a-transplant-of-a-genetically-engineered-pig-kidney/](https://www.wired.com/story/a-third-person-has-received-a-transplant-of-a-genetically-engineered-pig-kidney/)

If you’re gonna genetically engineer a pig to be an organ mule, the least you could is throw in some extras for him. Y’know, give him a big hog.

This is one of those things where I feel like “it’s about time”.

There was new stories going around about the possibility of take to human transplants way back in 2002, some of which made it seem like it was about to come to fruition any day now, we were only a few years away. That was 22 years ago, give or take.

I think this is a lesson for a lot of people who follow this up. The arc of science is not fast, it’s slow. Science is so crazy hard, medical advances are incredibly difficult to achieve, have a lot of safety requirements, and a lot of background work has to happen before you start doing things and humans.

And we almost always overestimate the pace of short-term advancement, the things that seem big in the news today aren’t going to happen tomorrow.

But I’m awfully happy to see this moving forward. This is fantastic, every person who is taking off the transplant list is somebody who gets to live a better quality life, and it also means one of those few available kidneys it’s more likely to end up into the hands of somebody who critically needs it and might die if they don’t get it in time.

Exciting stuff, glad to see this moving forward, not actually disappointed at the pace of research because they did the due diligence, made it safe, and are taking the necessary difficult steps to make sure that it actually works.

The longest documented survival of a pig kidney transplanted into a human was approximately two months. Here’s hoping she blows way past that mark.