Towana Looney — 130 Days Off Dialysis with a Pig Kidney (2024)
The story
Skip to the verdict ↓Towana Looney had spent about eight years tethered to a dialysis machine, no matching human kidney in sight, when in November 2024 a surgical team at NYU Langone gave her one that had never belonged to a person. It came from a pig — its genome edited ten times over so that a human immune system might not throw it out. The open question was how long her body would keep it.
Looney, 53, was from Alabama; the surgery took place at NYU Langone Health in New York on November 25, 2024. The transplant team was led by Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, and the organ had been engineered by Revivicor, a subsidiary of United Therapeutics.
The kidney began working immediately. For the first time in years, Looney lived without dialysis. "I feel blessed," she said afterward. "I'm so grateful to be alive and thankful to have received this incredible gift." Her surgeon described her recovery as "nothing short of remarkable." Before it was over, Looney had lived with the pig kidney longer than any human in history — the longest any pig organ has functioned inside a living person.
Xenotransplantation — the transplant of organs across species — has been pursued for decades; what changed recently is the ability to edit a donor animal's genome precisely enough to blunt the human body's attack. Two earlier recipients of gene-edited pig organs had died, which is part of why the duration of Looney's case drew such attention.
After 130 days, her body began to reject the organ. The episode followed a deliberate lowering of her immunosuppressive drugs to treat an infection unrelated to the kidney — the kind of trade-off transplant medicine constantly manages — and doctors say the precise trigger is still being studied. On April 4, 2025, the kidney was removed and Looney returned to dialysis. She recovered quickly, was discharged on the fifth day after that surgery, and went home to Alabama, where her care team reported her doing well.
It happened — and nature accounts for it.
Reviewer Notes
Miracles Jar weighs each claim two ways — how extraordinary it would be, and how strong the evidence is.
Assessed by Miracles Jar AI
Documented; fully explained (engineered medicine)
The verdict: "Documented; fully explained." This entry carries no supernatural claim at all. It marks a specific corner of the map: where the evidence is overwhelming and the miraculousness is essentially zero — a wonder that is entirely the work of human hands.
Why the Miracle Meter sits at the floor
Nothing about this case is unexplained. The kidney came from a pig given ten gene edits for the express purpose of surviving in a human body, and the biology of how it worked — and, later, why it was rejected — is well understood. That is the opposite of an open anomaly. Press coverage reached for the word "miracle," but the patient and her surgeons consistently described the case in the language of gratitude and medical science. The only thing miraculous here is a figure of speech.
How a reader should hold this
The evidence is about as strong as the catalog gets: a named surgical team at a major academic hospital, an objective outcome measured in days lived off dialysis, and consistent reporting across the institution's own account and the science press. Read the low Miracle Meter the way it is meant — not as doubt that this happened (it plainly did, in extraordinary detail), but as a measure of how completely it is explained. The record and its ending are documented with equal care: a frontier therapy did something remarkable and then met a known limit. The wonder is real, and its name is medicine.
Evidence ledger — what the verdict rests on
Performed at NYU Langone Health by a named transplant team led by Dr. Robert Montgomery on November 25, 2024, and documented in the institution's own account and across major science press — a measurable surgical event, not a claim.
'Authentic' here means the event indisputably happened as reported; it carries no implication of the supernatural.
Objective, hard endpoint: the pig kidney functioned for 130 days, letting Looney live without dialysis for the first time in years — the longest any pig organ has worked in a living human being.
Nothing here is unexplained. The kidney came from a pig with ten gene edits engineered specifically to evade human rejection, and a complete biological account of how it worked is known — this is the defining reason the Miracle Meter is near the floor.
The graft was lost to acute rejection after immunosuppression was deliberately lowered to treat an unrelated infection, and was removed on April 4, 2025; she returned to dialysis. The limits of the therapy are as documented as its success.
'Miracle' in the coverage is a figure of speech, not a claim — the patient and surgeons described the case in terms of gratitude and medical science, never the supernatural.
What would raise the meter: Ruling out the remaining natural explanations — with records, follow-up, or base-rate math — would raise the meter.
What would lower it: A documented natural pathway for this outcome would move the meter down.
How we weigh every claim — the full method, deductions and all →
The natural explanation
The leading natural account for this case is skill, preparation & ordinary physics. Read what it explains — and where it stops.
Sources
Tagged by proximity to the event. Primary sources are direct or contemporaneous; tertiary are downstream retellings.
- 1.Primaryother
Official institutional account (used as a primary institutional source, not a religious document). Fetch-verified for this entry: confirms patient Towana Looney, 53, of Alabama; surgeon Dr. Robert Montgomery; transplant date November 25, 2024; a pig kidney with ten gene edits from Revivicor Inc. (a United Therapeutics subsidiary); about eight years on dialysis beforehand; and direct quotes from the patient ("I feel blessed...") and surgeon ("nothing short of remarkable").
- 2.Secondarynews
"Pig kidney transplant fails after patient rejection", NPR (Shots — Health News), 2025
Reports the outcome: the kidney was removed on April 4, 2025, after functioning 130 days; the acute rejection followed a lowering of her immunosuppression to treat an unrelated infection, with the precise trigger under investigation; she recovered, was discharged within days, and returned home to Alabama and to dialysis. Corroborated by Science/AAAS and NBC News coverage of the same removal.
- 3.Secondarynews
"Gene-edited pig kidney removed after a record 130-day function", Science (AAAS), 2025
Corroborates that Looney's was the longest a gene-edited pig kidney has functioned in a living human and that the graft was lost to rejection after 130 days. (Original headline: "Longest human transplant of pig kidney fails" — rephrased here to a factual description, since the 130-day record was not a personal failure. Direct fetch returned 403 this session; cited from its indexed summary alongside the NPR and NBC reports of the same event — re-fetch at any future edit per citation-integrity.)
- 4.Secondarynews
"Alabama woman becomes longest living recipient of pig organ transplant", NBC News, 2025
Corroborates the 'longest-living pig-organ recipient' record and that two earlier recipients of gene-edited pig organs had died, situating the milestone. (Direct fetch returned 403 this session; cited from its indexed summary — re-fetch at any future edit per citation-integrity.)
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