Tim Andrews, 68, a retired grocery manager from Barrington, New Hampshire, told NBC News on Friday he could now have "decades" after living 271 dialysis-free days with a genetically edited pig kidney. [1] He received the organ at Mass General Brigham on January 25, 2025, under an FDA Expanded Access protocol. The kidney functioned immediately. [2] The Lancet paper published Thursday calls it the longest dialysis-free porcine-kidney survival in a living human and the first bridge to a human transplant. [2]

That is not a working pig organ still in place. After about six months, immunosuppression was reduced because of infection. The xenograft then developed microvascular injury and inflammation and progressed to organ failure. [2] BBC reported the pig kidney was removed in October 2025. Andrews needed dialysis for 82 days. [3] In January 2026 he received a deceased-donor human kidney. It functioned immediately. There was no evidence of sensitization. [2]

Towana Looney's prior 130-day record is context, not an additive program. Richard Slayman, the first living pig-kidney recipient at the same hospital in 2024, lived 52 days and died of cardiac causes unrelated to the graft. [1] [2] This is one Expanded Access case. It is not a waiting-list product. Miracle-organ copy will sell 271 days. The completed record is a failed pig kidney that bought time, then a human organ that took over.

-- NORA WHITFIELD, Chicago