8 ms·

A pig kidney has been successfully transplanted into a human for the first time

51 points by siva7 5y ago

adontz 5y ago
Is this a thing because we cannot grow human organs or because government prohibits that in developed countries? Perfect match is something grown from your own DNA. No risk of rejection, no need to drink immunosuppressants till end of life.
- DennisP 5y ago
  If we could do that we absolutely would, and people are working on it, but we're not there yet.
keymone 5y ago
would it count as cannibalism to eat such kidney?
- ahmedalsudani 5y ago
  This question will be even more pertinent in 2050, when instead of modifying pigs so that they're more similar to us, we'll be modifying Homo sapiens to stunt their intelligent. Those Homo stulti will have neither the agency nor the ability to decide their fate, but their organs will drastically improve the quality of life for sapiens. Interesting times :)
  - keymone 5y ago
    that's too grim, i think probability is much larger that we figure out a way to grow human organs inside pigs before we turn actual humans into mindless incubators.
    - ahmedalsudani 5y ago
      Perhaps it sounds grim, but it seems no different than what we're doing. Do we base our morality on the patterns of the synapses or the shape of the bodies? The former makes more sense to me. To be absolutely clear, this is not an endorsement of modifying humans for the purpose of farming organs. It's more about highlighting the thin moral line that relies on the body shape.
      - keymone 5y ago
        but then the act of depriving a being of a certain pattern of synapses that would make it immoral to harm is immoral in itself.
      - DennisP 5y ago
        The researchers in the article just modified the pig's DNA so it doesn't express a particular sugar that the human immune system doesn't like. No human DNA goes in the pig.
  - nathias 5y ago
    hyperpigs are people too!
- siva7 5y ago
  No but there has to be a new word invented
  - Cthulhu_ 5y ago
    ...Cultured Meat?
- rincebrain 5y ago
  That's more complicated than it might seem at first glance. AIUI, the modification to the pig was "just" "let's remove the genes that result in this one sugar that lots of animals but not some apes and humans have" (which is also the thing that you develop an allergy to if you're bitten by the Lone Star tick, incidentally), not "let's stick a bunch of human genes in", so _these_ organs wouldn't have much tinge for cannibalism unless you ate them post-transplant. (This article doesn't, but another one mentions one of the original intended use cases for the GalSafe pigs _is_ for eating, including by people who have the Alpha-Gal allergy.) They're _also_ working on pigs with one or more human genes spliced in for better compatibility, but that's not these.
__michaelg 5y ago
"My Name Is Peter Parker, And I've Been Pig-Man Since I Was 15 Years Old."
- __alias 5y ago
  Peter Porker*
XorNot 5y ago
There's a Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex episode featuring this idea (I'm rewatching the series right now so this was oddly timely) - the idea was a company genetically modified a pig to grow up a set of your own organs and keep the pig around in case you needed them as a type of insurance policy. Which did get me wondering where we'd got to with xenotransplantation and it looks like this is very much the result of research in that direction: the pig was genetically modified to reduce the chances of rejection. Good to see we're still doing this research, since bioprinted or pure lab-grown organs are by no means a sure-thing.
- fbanon 5y ago
  I remember that episode. The CEO of the pig company was a brain living in a metal box with legs.
- dartharva 5y ago
  I'm guessing they themselves copied from Margaret Atwood who wrote exactly the same idea in Oryx and Crake (2003)
  - Cyph0n 5y ago
    GitS did it first: it was mentioned in the manga (90s) and was adapted as part of season 1 of SAC (2002). Also, it seems the overall idea isn’t new: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghost_in_the_Shell/comments/6msddc/so_did_sacep_8_predicted_the_organ_harvesting/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghost_in_the_Shell/comments/6msddc/...
3pt14159 5y ago
I'm not saying it's rational, but I have some sort of deep seated disgust for these types of transplants. Intellectually I know we don't have enough donations to match the demand and in my own life I've given blood and signed up to be an organ donor, but there is something across species like this that just makes my stomach kinda turn.
- nkrisc 5y ago
  Why do you think that is? It doesn’t bother me, and I’m genuinely curious why you (and I’m sure others) might feel that way.
  - 3pt14159 5y ago
    Honestly, maybe it has something to do with a similar revulsion I have to bestiality. I think some of these things are hardwired.
    - nkrisc 5y ago
      For what it’s worth, I’m pretty repulsed by bestiality as well.
    - BizarroLand 5y ago
      I think it's the body horror aspect, thinking that there is a living pig-organ inside of you keeping you alive. That would freak anyone out if they thought about it. At the same time though, if it were meant to be a temporary life-saving procedure to keep you at optimal health for as long as possible then it makes more sense. I would feel a similar (if less-alien) feeling about having a deceased person's kidney in me as well, after all. I hope I am fortunate enough to never have to make that decision while still living a long and fruitful life.
- siva7 5y ago
  So a pig is not worth saving your life because this species is subpar but good enough for being eaten?
beeologystuff 5y ago
Not quite "into". The pig kidney was attached outside the body via two large blood vessels, on an unresponsive organ donor who was going off life support. Think of the ethics behind a live untested xenotransplant! But it's exciting that they got such promising results.
- HPsquared 5y ago
  I wonder how much of the difficulty was in performing the transplant itself, and how much was in justifying the procedure (i.e. working out the ethics). There must be a lot of experimental procedures ruled out on ethical grounds because they are untested and therefore are too dangerous to be tested. How common is this type of Catch-22 situation, and how is the deadlock typically broken?
  - egeozcan 5y ago
    > how is the deadlock typically broken A war breaks out and human life becomes less important, or someone/some government does it in secret, or there is something potentially catastrophic that allows some rules to loosen up a bit (like a pandemic).
  - BurningFrog 5y ago
    I've come to think the modern medical "ethics" and "Ethicist" are a huge problem. That gatekeeping kills a lot of people.
    - Ginden 5y ago
      In Poland, any major medical study on living patients must be approved by bioethics commission of local medical self-government. Somehow, almost all of them have Catholic priest as member. He studied ethics on Catholic university, so he is "qualified".
      - BurningFrog 5y ago
        It does seem that "ethicist" is a reinvention of the priest concept for a secular community.
dartharva 5y ago
Heh, pigoons from Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)!
rbanffy 5y ago
I'd totally dig having a couple extra eyes giving me the vision of a mantis shrimp.
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  As you once did the vacuous Rom, grant us eyes, grant us eyes!
  - SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
    I'd like my eyes on the outside of my skull, thanks.
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      Having high-res eyes on fingers would be handy for soldering SMD's
      - HKH2 5y ago
        How would they be integrated into your existing vision? They wouldn't be fixed in relation to your original eyes, so wouldn't that give you a headache? Why not put cameras on your fingers and link them to smartglasses?
        rbanffy 5y ago
        It’d probably integrate with the nerves on the skin and I’d need to learn how to see and interpret what those eyes are seeing. It’d be a fascinating experiment when the technology exists. > Why not put cameras on your fingers and link them to smartglasses? For practical purposes, I’m sticking with a magnifier for now.
ThinkBeat 5y ago
Would this be halal or kosher? The organ has been genetically modified from what a natural pig organ would be like. If not, would it be difficult to grow organs in some other animal? Further why not use gorillas or another animal that to me would seem closet to human?
- tokai 5y ago
  It would be halal if it wasn't from a pig I think. https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/82240/organ-transplantation https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/82240/organ-transplantatio... But it might actually be kosher. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10618731/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10618731/
  - BizarroLand 5y ago
    I think the issue with Kosher is null if it involves saving a life, right? If you're Orthodox Jewish and starving to death you would not be committing a sin to eat pork sausage. Of course, that's what your link says, so my addition is null, but still. There is some common sense in the Jewish faith.
redm 5y ago
Here's the full article for anyone who wants to read it: https://web.archive.org/web/20211021121804id_/https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/10/20/a-pig-kidney-has-been-successfully-transplanted-into-a-human-for-the-first-time/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211021121804id_/https://www.ec... I've been hearing about this coming from my nephrologist for many years. I have stage 3 kidney disease and he isn't concerned about it because by the time I need a transplant, they will be growing kidneys from my cells in pigs. Exciting to see another step forward. NIH from March: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8004187/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8004187/
BurningFrog 5y ago
Note that this is a kidney from a genetically altered line of pigs, CRISPR engineered to not be rejected by the human body. Much work probably remains.
beckman466 5y ago
damn, when are we going to see a Michael Bay The Island-esque film about an underground cloning facility through the eyes of a pig who lives there?
westcort 5y ago
This is GREAT news for people with kidney disease. I hope we will see this process improve and make transplants possible for more people.

51 points by siva7 5y ago

Is this a thing because we cannot grow human organs or because government prohibits that in developed countries? Perfect match is something grown from your own DNA. No risk of rejection, no need to drink immunosuppressants till end of life.

DennisP 5y ago
If we could do that we absolutely would, and people are working on it, but we're not there yet.

keymone 5y ago

would it count as cannibalism to eat such kidney?

ahmedalsudani 5y ago
This question will be even more pertinent in 2050, when instead of modifying pigs so that they're more similar to us, we'll be modifying Homo sapiens to stunt their intelligent. Those Homo stulti will have neither the agency nor the ability to decide their fate, but their organs will drastically improve the quality of life for sapiens. Interesting times :)
- keymone 5y ago
  that's too grim, i think probability is much larger that we figure out a way to grow human organs inside pigs before we turn actual humans into mindless incubators.
  - ahmedalsudani 5y ago
    Perhaps it sounds grim, but it seems no different than what we're doing. Do we base our morality on the patterns of the synapses or the shape of the bodies? The former makes more sense to me. To be absolutely clear, this is not an endorsement of modifying humans for the purpose of farming organs. It's more about highlighting the thin moral line that relies on the body shape.
    - keymone 5y ago
      but then the act of depriving a being of a certain pattern of synapses that would make it immoral to harm is immoral in itself.
    - DennisP 5y ago
      The researchers in the article just modified the pig's DNA so it doesn't express a particular sugar that the human immune system doesn't like. No human DNA goes in the pig.
- nathias 5y ago
  hyperpigs are people too!
siva7 5y ago
No but there has to be a new word invented
- Cthulhu_ 5y ago
  ...Cultured Meat?
rincebrain 5y ago
That's more complicated than it might seem at first glance. AIUI, the modification to the pig was "just" "let's remove the genes that result in this one sugar that lots of animals but not some apes and humans have" (which is also the thing that you develop an allergy to if you're bitten by the Lone Star tick, incidentally), not "let's stick a bunch of human genes in", so _these_ organs wouldn't have much tinge for cannibalism unless you ate them post-transplant. (This article doesn't, but another one mentions one of the original intended use cases for the GalSafe pigs _is_ for eating, including by people who have the Alpha-Gal allergy.) They're _also_ working on pigs with one or more human genes spliced in for better compatibility, but that's not these.

__michaelg 5y ago

"My Name Is Peter Parker, And I've Been Pig-Man Since I Was 15 Years Old."

__alias 5y ago
Peter Porker*

XorNot 5y ago

There's a Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex episode featuring this idea (I'm rewatching the series right now so this was oddly timely) - the idea was a company genetically modified a pig to grow up a set of your own organs and keep the pig around in case you needed them as a type of insurance policy. Which did get me wondering where we'd got to with xenotransplantation and it looks like this is very much the result of research in that direction: the pig was genetically modified to reduce the chances of rejection. Good to see we're still doing this research, since bioprinted or pure lab-grown organs are by no means a sure-thing.

fbanon 5y ago
I remember that episode. The CEO of the pig company was a brain living in a metal box with legs.
dartharva 5y ago
I'm guessing they themselves copied from Margaret Atwood who wrote exactly the same idea in Oryx and Crake (2003)
- Cyph0n 5y ago
  GitS did it first: it was mentioned in the manga (90s) and was adapted as part of season 1 of SAC (2002). Also, it seems the overall idea isn’t new: https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghost_in_the_Shell/comments/6msddc/so_did_sacep_8_predicted_the_organ_harvesting/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Ghost_in_the_Shell/comments/6msddc/...

3pt14159 5y ago

I'm not saying it's rational, but I have some sort of deep seated disgust for these types of transplants. Intellectually I know we don't have enough donations to match the demand and in my own life I've given blood and signed up to be an organ donor, but there is something across species like this that just makes my stomach kinda turn.

nkrisc 5y ago
Why do you think that is? It doesn’t bother me, and I’m genuinely curious why you (and I’m sure others) might feel that way.
- 3pt14159 5y ago
  Honestly, maybe it has something to do with a similar revulsion I have to bestiality. I think some of these things are hardwired.
  - nkrisc 5y ago
    For what it’s worth, I’m pretty repulsed by bestiality as well.
  - BizarroLand 5y ago
    I think it's the body horror aspect, thinking that there is a living pig-organ inside of you keeping you alive. That would freak anyone out if they thought about it. At the same time though, if it were meant to be a temporary life-saving procedure to keep you at optimal health for as long as possible then it makes more sense. I would feel a similar (if less-alien) feeling about having a deceased person's kidney in me as well, after all. I hope I am fortunate enough to never have to make that decision while still living a long and fruitful life.
siva7 5y ago
So a pig is not worth saving your life because this species is subpar but good enough for being eaten?

beeologystuff 5y ago

Not quite "into". The pig kidney was attached outside the body via two large blood vessels, on an unresponsive organ donor who was going off life support. Think of the ethics behind a live untested xenotransplant! But it's exciting that they got such promising results.

HPsquared 5y ago
I wonder how much of the difficulty was in performing the transplant itself, and how much was in justifying the procedure (i.e. working out the ethics). There must be a lot of experimental procedures ruled out on ethical grounds because they are untested and therefore are too dangerous to be tested. How common is this type of Catch-22 situation, and how is the deadlock typically broken?
- egeozcan 5y ago
  > how is the deadlock typically broken A war breaks out and human life becomes less important, or someone/some government does it in secret, or there is something potentially catastrophic that allows some rules to loosen up a bit (like a pandemic).
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  I've come to think the modern medical "ethics" and "Ethicist" are a huge problem. That gatekeeping kills a lot of people.
  - Ginden 5y ago
    In Poland, any major medical study on living patients must be approved by bioethics commission of local medical self-government. Somehow, almost all of them have Catholic priest as member. He studied ethics on Catholic university, so he is "qualified".
    - BurningFrog 5y ago
      It does seem that "ethicist" is a reinvention of the priest concept for a secular community.

dartharva 5y ago

Heh, pigoons from Oryx and Crake (Margaret Atwood)!

rbanffy 5y ago

I'd totally dig having a couple extra eyes giving me the vision of a mantis shrimp.

Cthulhu_ 5y ago
As you once did the vacuous Rom, grant us eyes, grant us eyes!
- SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
  I'd like my eyes on the outside of my skull, thanks.
  - rbanffy 5y ago
    Having high-res eyes on fingers would be handy for soldering SMD's
    - HKH2 5y ago
      How would they be integrated into your existing vision? They wouldn't be fixed in relation to your original eyes, so wouldn't that give you a headache? Why not put cameras on your fingers and link them to smartglasses?
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        It’d probably integrate with the nerves on the skin and I’d need to learn how to see and interpret what those eyes are seeing. It’d be a fascinating experiment when the technology exists. > Why not put cameras on your fingers and link them to smartglasses? For practical purposes, I’m sticking with a magnifier for now.

ThinkBeat 5y ago

Would this be halal or kosher? The organ has been genetically modified from what a natural pig organ would be like. If not, would it be difficult to grow organs in some other animal? Further why not use gorillas or another animal that to me would seem closet to human?

tokai 5y ago
It would be halal if it wasn't from a pig I think. https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/82240/organ-transplantation https://www.islamweb.net/en/fatwa/82240/organ-transplantatio... But it might actually be kosher. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10618731/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10618731/
- BizarroLand 5y ago
  I think the issue with Kosher is null if it involves saving a life, right? If you're Orthodox Jewish and starving to death you would not be committing a sin to eat pork sausage. Of course, that's what your link says, so my addition is null, but still. There is some common sense in the Jewish faith.

redm 5y ago

Here's the full article for anyone who wants to read it: https://web.archive.org/web/20211021121804id_/https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2021/10/20/a-pig-kidney-has-been-successfully-transplanted-into-a-human-for-the-first-time/ https://web.archive.org/web/20211021121804id_/https://www.ec... I've been hearing about this coming from my nephrologist for many years. I have stage 3 kidney disease and he isn't concerned about it because by the time I need a transplant, they will be growing kidneys from my cells in pigs. Exciting to see another step forward. NIH from March: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8004187/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8004187/

BurningFrog 5y ago

Note that this is a kidney from a genetically altered line of pigs, CRISPR engineered to not be rejected by the human body. Much work probably remains.

beckman466 5y ago

damn, when are we going to see a Michael Bay The Island-esque film about an underground cloning facility through the eyes of a pig who lives there?

westcort 5y ago

This is GREAT news for people with kidney disease. I hope we will see this process improve and make transplants possible for more people.