内容摘要：Pig kidney recipient Towana Looney is visited by transplant surgeon Dr. Robert Montgomery at NYU Langone Health, in New York City. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)

Pig kidney recipient Towana Looney is visited by transplant surgeon Dr. Robert Montgomery at NYU Langone Health, in New York City. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)

According to the University of Maryland School of Medicine, the heart had seemed healthy for the first month but began showing signs of rejection in recent days. Faucette died Monday.In a statement released by the hospital, Faucette’s wife, Ann, said her husband “knew his time with us was short and this was his last chance to do for others. He never imagined he would survive as long as he did.”

The Maryland team last year performedof a heart from a genetically altered pig into another dying man. David Bennett survived two months before that heart failed, for reasons that aren’t completely clear althoughlater were found inside the organ. Lessons from that first experiment led to changes, including better virus testing, before the second attempt.

“Mr. Faucette’s last wish was for us to make the most of what we have learned from our experience,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, the surgeon who led the transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center, said in a statement.Attempts at animal-to-human organ transplants — called xenotransplants — have failed for decades, as people’s immune systems immediately destroyed the foreign tissue. Now scientists are trying again using pigs genetically modified to make their organs more humanlike.

Faucette, a Navy veteran and father of two from Frederick, Maryland, had been turned down for a traditional heart transplant because of other health problems when he came to the Maryland hospital, out of options and expressing a wish to spend a little more time with his family.

In mid-October, the hospital said Faucette had been able to stand and released video showing him working hard in physical therapy to regain the strength needed to attempt walking.Jasmine McDonald, a professor of epidemiology at Columbia University who has studied the health impacts of chemical hair straighteners, said the Consumer Reports study shouldn’t invoke fear but awareness about the potential harms of braiding hair, the lack of federal regulations and the minimal research.

“I think that in our culture, we sometimes normalize things to the point where we don’t see the harm ... the more that we can raise awareness that some of these cultural routines could potentially provide harm is us having the potential to stop that harm,” McDonald said.If you’re concerned about using synthetic braiding hair or straightening chemicals, there are other hairstyles to try.

You can use Brazilian wool hair instead of synthetic hair, said Gloria Okpurukre, who owns Anointed Fingers braiding salon in Fayetteville, Georgia. You can also braid your real hair, but don’t expect the same results.“The purpose of adding the hair is for volume and length,” Okpurukre said. “A lot of people, their hair starts thinning out and they need to add something to make it look nice.”