He Was One Of The First People To Get A Pig Kidney And His Story Traces The Golden Age Of Transplant Medicine
Tim Andrews of Concord, New Hampshire was running out of options three years ago when doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital offered him a chance at something the world had never seen: a genetically modified pig kidney, transplanted into a living human being. Andrews became one of the first 10 people in history to undergo the experimental procedure, known as xenotransplantation, and his pig kidney kept him alive and off dialysis for 271 days, a record at the time, including a stretch when he was healthy enough to throw out the first pitch at Fenway Park. When the pig kidney eventually stopped functioning well, it was removed, and Andrews got extraordinarily lucky: he reached the top of the human kidney transplant waiting list and received a perfect match. He now has a functioning human kidney and says he is thinking about his future in terms of decades instead of days.
Andrews, now 68, is being profiled by USA Today as part of its coverage of the United States' 250th anniversary year, and his story traces an arc of transplant medicine that began with the first successful organ transplant just a few miles from where Andrews received his own in 1954. Of the 10 people who have received pig kidney transplants, only six are currently still alive, making Andrews not only the record holder for the longest survival with a pig organ, but also one of the rare individuals to bridge from xenotransplantation into a human transplant. Clinical trials for pig kidney transplants began in 2026, and the goal physicians have set is to count survival in years rather than days. The lead transplant surgeon at Mass General Brigham called this the golden age of transplantation, and Andrews, back to trading jokes with his older sister, appears to agree.
