A Bit of Good News

Richard Slayman of Weymouth, Massachusetts was released from Massachusetts General Hospital with a fully-functioning genetically-modified transplanted pig kidney. The patient is reportedly optimistic and getting a little tired of all the jokes about bacon. He is resting comfortably in a sty near his home; whereas, the donor is resting comfortably on some sauerkraut and potatoes.

The surgery took four hours but doctors say now that they know where the kidneys are the subsequent operations will take a lot less time. Doctors admit there were distracted by reports of a spider web in the lobby that had the words, “Some Pig” and another that read, “had his kidneys removed”. Or course, none of this would’ve happened if the pig hadn’t checked the donor box on his driver’s license.

The procedure was greenlit by the Food and Drug Administration, who offered a single Expanded Access Protocol, partly for reasons of compassion but mostly because they just assumed the researchers at Massachusetts General were being sarcastic. Two previous patients had gone through the procedure and then died; or, as experimental medicine calls it, “patient-failure”…

Doctors told the press that this is an example of the effectiveness of genetic engineering and also an example of how human good news doesn’t always intersect with pig good news. Previously, the most famous animal to human procedure was James Hardy’s transplantation of a chimpanzee heart into a human in 1964. The patient was grateful to Dr. Hardy for the rest of his life, which was officially about ninety seconds still on the operating table.