Pig kidney transplant fails after four months--longest so far.

 A news item in Science reports on the failure of a xenotransplant after four months.  Four months is not nothing.  So kidneys from transgenic pigs remain in the future of clinical medicine, but maybe not the imminent future..

Longest human transplant of pig kidney fails. In latest xenotransplant test, Towana Looney’s body rejects gene-edited organ after more than 4 months  11 Apr 2025 By Jon Cohen

"Towana Looney, a 53-year-old grandmother from Alabama who received a kidney from a gene-edited pig on 25 November 2024, had it removed last week after the organ suddenly stopped functioning, Science has learned. The 4 months and 9 days Looney spent with the kidney set a new record for a pig organ in a human, but it is yet another setback for the long-struggling field known as xenotransplantation.

Looney had donated one kidney to her mother and then had her remaining one fail. For 9 years she had to schedule her life around dialysis, before having the transplant done at New York University (NYU) Langone Health. She was one of two recent recipients of kidneys from pigs in which U.S. companies did elaborate gene edits to make their tissues appear less foreign to the human immune system, and xenotransplant researchers had high hopes for these pioneering surgeries. (Chinese researchers in March reported their first xenotransplant of a gene-edited pig kidney, but few details have been made public.)

...

"The United States and other countries have long waiting lists for human organs, with many in need dying before they become eligible. Xenotransplantation for decades has held the prospect of addressing this crisis, but several approaches to preventing rejection of animal organs have failed to keep them functioning beyond a few months. Now, many in the field contend that a finer understanding of what the human immune system is reacting against on pig organs, simpler and cheaper tools to do gene edits in pigs, and improved drugs that suppress the immune system herald a new era for the field.

Surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital on 25 January transplanted a gene-edited pig kidney made by a different company, eGenesis, to Tim Andrews, then 66. Andrews, who also is on immunosuppressive drugs, soon returned to his home in New Hampshire, but since has been hospitalized a few times for minor complications. Although eGenesis and Revivicor scientists have introduced several similar edits to the genomes of their pigs, such as three that eliminate pig-specific sugar molecules on cells that can trigger rejection, the kidney in Andrews has many that disable what are known as porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERVs). These remnants of ancient viruses have never caused an infection in humans, but the edits are an extra precautionary measure. Revivicor in contrast aimed to reduce that risk by selectively breeding pigs that did not have progeny with all of the genetic components necessary to reactivate PERVs."

Let's get Chai: Cannabis, now kosher for Passover

 When I was young, it was a big deal when kosher for Passover chocolate became available. (It still is--available and a big deal that is.)  But the universe of things available on Passover is still expanding, now there are kosher cannabis edibles.

The name of the merchant may have been picked while high: Tokin' Chews. 

Among their offerings is Gelt for Adults.

"Tokin' Chews is the newest venture from the team behind Tokin' Jew, where we take pride in cultivating a new type of Jewish community: those who find their identity through humor, culture, and not taking yourself too seriously.

"Tokin' Chews offers the highest quality hemp-derived, THC-infused kosher gummies. We uphold rigorous kashrut standards and use only natural, high quality ingredients.

"Whether it's merch, smoking accessories, events, or gummies, our mission is simple: take pride in being Jewish."

See also their page Too Cool for Shul

Kidneys and Controversies at Mt. Sinai hospital

 I gave a talk yesterday at Mt. Sinai hospital. They had encouraged me to talk about controversies, which I happily did.  They were a sympathetic audience (although the majority of their last five speakers would not have been:)

 

 

 

The End Kidney Deaths Act is reintroduced to the 119th Congress

 Resolved: lets be generous to nondirected kidney donors

H.R.2687 - To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to provide a refundable tax credit for non-directed living kidney donations.
119th Congress (2025-2026) |
Sponsor:    Rep. Malliotakis, Nicole [R-NY-11] (Introduced 04/07/2025)
Committees:    House - Ways and Means; Energy and Commerce 

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Earlier

Tuesday, January 21, 2025 The debate over compensating organ donors is heating up

Tuesday, August 13, 2024 End Kidney Deaths Act intoduced in Congress

 

 

Kennedy proposes to focus on chronic disease, but terminates large-scale long-running NIH Diabetes Prevention study

 The NYT has the story:

As Kennedy Champions Chronic Disease Prevention, Key Research Is Cut.  Two significant programs that invested in research on diabetes, dementia, obesity and kidney disease have ended since the start of the Trump administration. By Gina Kolata  April 7, 2025

"on Monday he is starting a tour in the Southwest to promote a program to combat chronic illness, emphasizing nutrition and lifestyle.
 

"But since Mr. Kennedy assumed his post, key grants and contracts that directly address these diseases, including obesity, diabetes and dementia, which experts agree are among the nation’s leading health problems, are being eliminated.

...

“This is a huge mistake,” said Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the co-director of the Healthcare Transformation Institute at the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine."

Decades of Diabetes Research Discontinued
"Ever since its start in 1996, the Diabetes Prevention Program has helped doctors understand this deadly chronic disease. The condition is the nation’s most expensive, affecting 38 million Americans and incurring $306 billion in one recent year in direct costs. With about 400,000 deaths in 2021, it was the eighth leading cause of death.
"The program has been terminated 

..

"On March 7, the Trump administration cut $400 million in grants and contracts to Columbia, saying Jewish students were not protected from harassment during protests over the war in Gaza. The diabetes grant was among those terminated: $16 million a year that Columbia shared across 30 medical centers. The study ended abruptly.

...

"Now much of the work cannot begin, and the part that had started remains incomplete."

After the proposal: the market for weddings

Weddings are a big business. So is the business of matching brides to wedding service providers.  But there are a lot of vendors with complaints about the Knot, the biggest matchmaker of brides and service providers.

 The New Yorker has the story:

Does the Knot Have a “Fake Brides” Problem?
The popular wedding website helps d.j.s, caterers, and florists find spouses-to-be. Some venders say they’re finding something else.  By Adam Iscoe

" In addition to hosting gift registries and wedding websites, and offering reception ideas and relationship advice (“What to Know About Walmart Wedding Cakes,” “How to Prepare for Sex on Your Wedding Night,” “Dislike Your Spouse’s Last Name? Here’s What to Do”), the Knot is used by millions of couples to find their wedding venders, who pay to advertise on it. 

...

"Each year, Americans drop roughly seventy billion dollars hosting weddings. Most people think that this is too much—that couples are overspending, that venders are overcharging, and that the wedding-industrial complex verges on unethical.

...

" running a wedding business is especially tough: there are hundreds of thousands of competitors; costs are rising, owing in part to inflation; and, for many venders, bookings and budgets have decreased by about twenty-five per cent. According to a recent industry survey, a third of all wedding venders said that they are doing poorer financially than they were a year ago. “Florists are the worst,” McIntosh said. “There are so many broke florists.”

...

"Last year, the Knot facilitated four billion dollars in consumer spending via advertising on its platforms. Most of the company’s revenue comes not from brides and grooms but from wedding venders. Nine hundred thousand venders in more than ten countries use the Knot, and many pay to be advertised to couples—“leads,” in industry parlance—seeking their services. "

CDC’s laboratory on sexually transmitted diseases is shut by Trump administration

 Statnews has the story:

CDC’s top laboratory on sexually transmitted diseases is shut by Trump administration
‘We are blind,’ researcher says, noting the lab is crucial to tracking drug-resistant gonorrhea and other diseases  By Helen Branswell April 5, 2025

"At a time when the world is down to a single drug that can reliably cure gonorrhea, the U.S. government has shuttered the country’s premier sexually transmitted diseases laboratory, leaving experts aghast and fearful about what lies ahead.

"The STD lab at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a leading player in global efforts to monitor for drug resistance in the bacteria that cause these diseases — was among the targets of major staff slashing at the CDC this past week. All 28 full-time employees of the lab were fired.

...

"A CDC white paper on antibiotic resistance released during the first Trump administration listed drug-resistant gonorrhea as one of five urgent threats facing the country. Antimicrobial resistance to that last drug that reliably works to cure gonorrhea, ceftriaxone, is rare but on the rise globally."

 

High school and higher education (30 second video)

 Someone recently sent me this old video snippet (about 30 seconds) from an interview in Stockholm in 2012.  Whenever I'm asked about my high school career I try to emphasize that I'm a big fan of education, even though I didn't finish high school.

Note to the un-Facebooked: if, like me, you don't have a facebook account, you may have to close a facebook come-on before you can see the video.

The market for rare (and signed) books

 Books inscribed by the author are stories in themselves.

Here's a story published last year in The New Yorker about the rare book market, and the art of selling.

A Controversial Rare-Book Dealer Tries to Rewrite His Own Ending
Glenn Horowitz built a fortune selling the archives of writers such as Vladimir Nabokov and Alice Walker. Then a rock star pressed charges.  By Tad Friend

"Every form of collecting is an effort to stop time, but book collecting is a singularly hopeful incarnation of that wish. It is nourished by twin beliefs: first, that our most glorious ideas and fancies have been bound together in crushed morocco or polished calf—sacred repositories that must be conserved against fire and water and forgetfulness. And, second, that ownership of great literature in its most talismanic form will ennoble you. Horowitz cultivates these credos in his clients, yet his usual practice is to wrest books from the grip of one, bestow them into the hands of another, then wrest them back for a third. When I told him that Susan Cheever, the writer and the daughter of John Cheever, said that Horowitz had paid her handsomely for her father’s inscribed novels and letters “because Glenn is a gentleman, and because he wanted to help me,” he seemed offended. “I like Susan enormously,” he assured me, “but I bought from her at prices that allowed me to sell the material profitably.” 

...

" Traditional collecting aims at first editions in “pristine” or “mint” condition; the booksellers’ wry joke is “Never judge a book by its contents.”

A user's guide to Experimental Economics, by Muriel Niederle

 Here's a magisterial handbook chapter, by Muriel Niederle

Experiments: Why, How, and A Users Guide for Producers as well as Consumers  by Muriel Niederle
NBER Working Paper 33630, DOI 10.3386/w33630,  March 2025A

Abstract:"This chapter is intended as an introduction to laboratory experiments, when to use, how to evaluate them, why they matter and what are the pitfalls when designing them. I hope that users as well as consumers will find Sections that broaden their views. I start with when an economist might want to run an experiment. I then discuss basic lessons when designing experiments. I introduce a language to start a systematic description of tools we have when designing experiments to show the importance or role of a new model or force in explaining behavior. The penultimate chapter provides an advanced toolkit for running experiments. I end this chapter with my views on pre-registration, pre-analysis plans and the need for replications, robustness tests and extensions. "

...

"While I hope to convey general lessons, I will make them more accessible and understandable by providing specific examples. These will often, though not always, come from my own papers, or from economists whose work I know exceptionally well (mostly my advisors, students or coauthors). While this may seem self-serving, the main reason is that for those experiments I know– rather than have to infer– why authors made certain choices. And one aspect of experiments that will become obvious almost immediately, is that they require the researcher to make a lot of decisions. This chapter therefore is in no way a literature survey, nor really a highlight of amazing papers. It rather showcases papers whose history I am exceptionally familiar with. I will also not provide negative examples, but rather present potential pitfalls, with one exception in Section 3.1 "

The Economist as Designer: Susan Athey's AEA presidential address

 Susan Athey, throughout her career and in her presidential address to the AEA, has added to our vision of how economists can make our way in the world.

Presidential Address: The Economist as Designer in the Innovation Process for Socially Impactful Digital Products  By Susan Athey,  American Economic Review 2025, 115(4): 1059–1099, https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.115.4.1059

"This paper provides an economic perspective on data-driven innovation in digital products, focusing on the role of complex experiments in measuring and improving social impact. The discussion highlights how tools and insights from economics contribute to each stage of the innovation process. Key contributions include identifying problems, developing theoretical frameworks, translating goals into measurable outcomes, analyzing historical data, and estimating counterfactual outcomes. The paper also surveys recently developed tools  designed to address challenges in designing and analyzing data from complex experiments "

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I'm fond of papers that consider "The Economist As..."  See e.g.

Monday, January 30, 2017 Economists as artisans, doctors, entrepreneurs...dentists, engineers and plumbers

and

The economist as engineer: Game theory, experimentation, and computation as tools for design economics,  AE Roth, Econometrica, 2002 

 

Headlines that could have been dated April 1

 This year there's one headline that stands out from all the others:

The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans
U.S. national-security leaders included me in a group chat about upcoming military strikes in Yemen. I didn’t think it could be real. Then the bombs started falling.  By Jeffrey Goldberg

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Back before the  November election, the headlines that seemed most Foolish were much more cheerful

 French pole vaulter video: Anthony Ammirati dislodges bar with penis, costing him medal opportunity at 2024 Olympics

    (And here's the video)

LAPD Raids Medical Lab For (Nonexistent) Weed, Get Gun Stuck In An MRI Machine