Man Lives 271 Days With Pig Kidney Transplant
Left 50%
Center 0%
Right 50%
1 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
Tim Andrews, a 66-year-old American with kidney failure, received a genetically modified pig kidney at Mass General Brigham in Boston on January 25, 2025. He went 271 days without dialysis — the longest reported survival with a porcine kidney in a living human — until blood clots damaged the organ and surgeons removed it. After a brief return to dialysis, he received a human kidney that has kept him alive; researchers described the sequence in The Lancet as the first transition from a pig kidney to a subsequent human kidney transplant. In 2024, the same hospital had performed the first pig-to-human kidney transplant; that recipient, Rick Slayman, lived 52 days and died of cardiac causes the hospital said were unrelated to the graft.
Sourcing check · Fully on the record · 2 articles
2 of 2 articles cite a named source for the story. It was on the record from the first report.
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- On the record means the article cites a source by name for the story's main claim: a person, or an institution speaking officially, such as a company statement or a named agency's spokesperson. The opposite is an unnamed source. The count is how many of the counted articles cite at least one such source; the names are everyone named across them, each once however the articles spell it. Here: Mass General Brigham, Leonardo Riella, Tim Andrews, Dr. Leonardo V. Riella and Mike Curtis
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Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
Left-leaning coverage omits that the pig kidney failed inside the patient and had to be taken out. Right-leaning coverage is simply more complete on the clinical course. NBC News says doctors "replaced it with a human one" after a dialysis-free interval, presenting the graft as a safe bridge. Right-leaning coverage reports that clots wrecked the vessels. The organ was removed, and Andrews briefly went back on dialysis.
Left-leaning coverage leads with the scientific record. Right-leaning coverage puts the restored life of the patient at the center after the opening. NBC News stays with wait lists and a bridge to a human kidney. Breitbart follows Andrews to a cabin where he swims and kayaks.
Did doctors plan the human transplant as a next step, or was it a rescue after the pig kidney failed?
Bottom line
NBC News made the 271-day pig kidney sound like a working organ doctors later upgraded. The graft had already been wrecked by clots and taken out.
The receipts — 6 facts one side's coverage lacks
- Blood clots damaged the pig kidney beyond repair; it had to be removed and Andrews briefly resumed dialysis
- Andrews was hospitalized several times during the nine months he lived with the pig kidney
- Five patients at Mass General Brigham received eGenesis pig kidneys through an FDA expanded-access program
- eGenesis plans a formal clinical trial with 33 patients next year
- The donor pig had genetic edits meant to prevent severe rejection and to inactivate viruses in the pig genome
- Mass General said the case is the longest dialysis-free survival after porcine kidney xenotransplantation in a living human and the first transition to a human kidney
The Left View
NBC News frames the case as a significant step forward in xenotransplantation, quoting lead author Dr. Leonardo Riella that the organ shortage is “the greatest crisis we have right now in transplantation” and that more than 100,000 people are on the national wait list, the vast majority for a kidney. It highlights the authors’ claim that a pig kidney can “safely support renal function” “while also serving as a bridge” to a human organ, and Riella’s vision that the method could start as a way “to get patients off dialysis while they wait” and, once “long-term safety and durability” are shown, become “destination therapy in its own right.” The outlet presents the work as a potential lifesaving option for patients who cannot get a human organ in time.
The Right View
Breitbart frames the episode as a “Medical First” that gives “new hope to patients struggling with dialysis,” leading with Andrews’s account that he “was dying,” had survived two heart attacks, could not walk, and chose the experiment saying, “if I’m going to die, I might as well do something for humanity.” The piece stresses that the graft “gave me life” yet he was hospitalized several times and clots “damaged it beyond repair,” and it reports eGenesis CEO Mike Curtis saying a prior pig kidney “doesn’t seem to change how you react to human tissue at all” — something Curtis said “wasn’t a given going in.” It also notes five expanded-access recipients at the hospital, a planned 33-patient trial, patients’ view that “life on dialysis is no life,” and earlier pig-heart and pig-kidney recipients who died shortly after surgery.
Our Take (balanced)
NBC’s strongest argument is that dialysis-free function followed by a successful human transplant shows xenotransplantation can bridge the wait-list gap Riella calls transplantation’s “greatest crisis,” with more than 100,000 people waiting. Breitbart’s strongest argument is that the same course — restored daily life, but also repeated hospitalizations, clotting that ended the graft, and prior recipients’ cardiac deaths — documents real benefit alongside unfinished safety questions. The central unresolved tension is whether this record survival mainly demonstrates a workable bridge (and possible destination) therapy for organ shortage, or still-early experimental results whose durability and risks remain open.
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