内容摘要：It was unclear whether Kennedy knew that Edwards had gone into his clinic while infected with measles before meeting him. A spokesperson for Kennedy said he is not anti-vaccine and that he is “committed to improving children’s health in America and has re-deployed resources to Texas to help with the current outbreak.” He did not answer why the health secretary chose to meet with and praise Edwards rather than any of the other doctors in West Texas who have been treating children in the outbreak.

It was unclear whether Kennedy knew that Edwards had gone into his clinic while infected with measles before meeting him. A spokesperson for Kennedy said he is not anti-vaccine and that he is “committed to improving children’s health in America and has re-deployed resources to Texas to help with the current outbreak.” He did not answer why the health secretary chose to meet with and praise Edwards rather than any of the other doctors in West Texas who have been treating children in the outbreak.

“Why not try? That was really what we took back,” said Mike Curtis, CEO of eGenesis, one of the companies developing organs. “It was like we really almost have an obligation to try.”“The patients pushed us to go ahead,” agreed Dr. Tatsuo Kawai, a Mass General surgeon who’d been reluctant to even broach the idea – but last March, four months after that meeting, gave a longtime patient the first gene-edited pig kidney.

In Palm Springs, California, Carl McNew emailed NYU to ask about volunteering while he’s still fairly healthy.McNew donated a kidney to his husband in 2015 but later his remaining kidney began declining, something very rare in living donors. Medications and intermittent dialysis are helping but McNew knows he’ll eventually need a transplant.Carl McNew watches television with his husband Steve Hunter in Palm Springs. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)

Carl McNew watches television with his husband Steve Hunter in Palm Springs. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)“There’s just something about being part of something like that, that is so cutting-edge,” said McNew, who spotted news of NYU’s xenotransplant research in 2023 and emailed his interest.

For Louisville’s Berrios, donor scarcity isn’t the only hurdle. Born with a single kidney that failed in his late 20s, a living donor transplant restored his health for 13 years. But it failed in 2020 and he has since developed antibodies that would destroy another human kidney, what doctors call “highly sensitized.”

Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Berrios quietly slips out of his home before dawn to spend nearly four hours tethered to a dialysis machine. Getting the grueling treatments at 5 a.m. is the only way the father of two can both stay alive and hold down a fulltime job.Britain’s King Charles III, patron of the Royal Horticultural Society, and Queen Camilla visit the Chelsea Flower Show in London, Monday May 19, 2025. (Toby Melville/Pool via AP)

Catherine’s Rose by Harkness Roses named after Britain’s Princess of Wales on display at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)Catherine’s Rose by Harkness Roses named after Britain’s Princess of Wales on display at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

British actress Joanna Lumley is photographed at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)British actress Joanna Lumley is photographed at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in London, Monday, May 19, 2025. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)