Mass. doctor speaks out about groundbreaking kidney procedure, patient who died [Video]

One of the doctors who helped perform a first-of-its-kind procedure on a Massachusetts patient is speaking out about what happened and where the procedure is going from here. Richard Slayman, 62, of Weymouth, was the recipient of the world’s first successful transplant of a genetically-edited pig kidney. He died less than two months after the historic transplant.”The kidney was functioning up to the time of his passing means that this mission really did succeed,” said Mass General Dr. Winfred Williams, who was part of the team that performed the procedure. Slayman underwent surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital on March 16 and received a pig kidney with 69 genomic edits. He lived dialysis-free for 52 days following the historic procedure.Williams hailed the transplant as a success and referred to his patient as a hero. “We learned a lot about the physiology of this pig kidney as it performed in a human …