PARTON: I don’t think about my life in terms of ‘superstar.’ I’m just a workin’ girl. I always say — and it’s the truth — that I am a workhorse that looks like a show horse. But I gotta keep it all up and I enjoy all of it. … My husband always said, ‘If anybody was ever born to be a star, it’s you.’ Because he sees me loving to do all the things and playing and stuff — it’s play time for me. But I take it very serious.
Andrews’ surgery comes at ain the quest to tell if animal-to-human transplants could help ease the shortage of donated human organs. The first four pig organ transplants —
— were short-lived. But the fifth xenotransplant recipient,as prior patients, boosted the field — thriving for now 2½ months after a pig kidney transplant at NYU Langone Health in November.Doctors are moving from those one-off experiments to more formal studies. As they monitor Andrews’ recovery, doctors at Mass General Brigham have Food and Drug Administration permission to perform two additional transplants in their pilot study, using gene-edited pig kidneys supplied by biotech eGenesis.
And United Therapeutics, another developer of gene-edited pig organs, just won FDA approval for the world’s first clinical trial of xenotransplantation. Initially, six patients will receive pig kidneys — and if they fare well over six months, up to 50 additional patients will receive transplants.“This is uncharted territory,” said Mass General’s Dr. Tatsuo Kawai, who led both Andrews’ surgery and the world’s first pig kidney transplant last year. But with lessons from animal research and the prior human attempts, he said, “I’m very optimistic. And hopefully we can get to survival, kidney survival, for over two years.”
so their organs are more humanlike to address the transplant shortage. More than 100,000 people are on the U.S. transplant list, most who need a kidney, and thousands die waiting.
Andrews’ kidneys abruptly failed about two years ago, and the Concord, New Hampshire, grandfather struggled with fatigue and complications from dialysis. He’s on the transplant list but doctors warned it was a long shot. It can take seven years or more for people with Andrews’ blood type to find a matching kidney. Meanwhile, people slowly get sicker on dialysis — five-year survival is about 50% — and Andrews already had had a heart attack.“Nothing will diminish the victims’ losses, but this resolution holds Boeing financially accountable, provides finality and compensation for the families and makes an impact for the safety of future air travelers.”
Boeing on Friday declined to comment.Some relatives of the passengers who died in
, which took place off the coast of Indonesia and in Ethiopia less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, have been pushing for a public trial, the prosecution of former company officials, and more severe financial punishment for Boeing. The Justice Department noted that the victims’ families had mixed views on the proposed deal.“This kind of non-prosecution deal is unprecedented and obviously wrong for the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history,” said Paul Cassell, an attorney for many of the families in the long-running case. “My families will object and hope to convince the court to reject it.”