TL;DR
Pig kidneys have quietly become a working bridge for people stuck on dialysis. A man lived 271 days, about nine months, on one before a human kidney arrived, and two of five patients in a second program have made the same jump. No pig organ is approved anywhere, and nobody yet knows whether one can last for years instead of months. But the pig farms that would supply them are being built now, ahead of any approval, which is how a rare surgery starts turning into a routine one. For the people who wait years for a donor, that could mean the waiting list stops being a countdown.
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