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Meet some of the world’s cleanest pigs, raised to grow kidneys and hearts for humans
Wide-eyed piglets rushing to check out the visitors to their unusual barn just might represent the future of organ transplantation – and there’s no rolling around in the mud here.
The first gene-edited pig organs ever transplanted into people came from animals born on this special research farm in the Blue Ridge mountains – behind locked gates, where entry requires washing down your vehicle, swapping your clothes for medical scrubs and stepping into tubs of disinfectant to clean your boots between each air-conditioned barn.
“These are precious animals,” said David Ayares of Revivicor Inc., who spent decades learning to clone pigs with just the right genetic changes to allow those first audacious experiments.
The biosecurity gets even tighter just a few miles away in Christiansburg, Virginia, where a new herd is being raised – pigs expected to supply organs for formal studies of animal-to-human transplantation as soon as next year.
Shelby Lum / AP
This massive first-of-its-kind building bears no resemblance to a farm. It’s more like a pharmaceutical plant. And part of it is closed to all but certain carefully chosen employees who take a timed shower, don company-provided clothes and shoes, and then enter an enclave where piglets are growing up.
Behind that protective barrier are some of the world’s cleanest pigs. They breathe air and drink water that’s better filtered against contaminants than what’s required for people. Even their feed gets disinfected – all to prevent them from picking up any possible infections that might ultimately harm a transplant recipient.
Shelby Lum / AP
“We designed this facility to protect the pigs against contamination from the environment and from people,” said Matthew VonEsch of United Therapeutics, Revivicor’s parent company. “Every person that enters this building is a possible pathogen risk.”
The Associated Press got a peek at what it takes to clone and raise designer pigs for their organs – including a $75 million “designated pathogen-free facility” built to meet Food and Drug Administration safety standards for xenotransplantation.
Creating pigs to ease the shortage of human organs
Thousands of Americans each year die waiting for a transplant, and many experts acknowledge there never will be enough human donors to meet the need.
Animals offer the tantalizing promise of a ready-made supply. After decades of failed attempts, companies including Revivicor, eGenesis and Makana Therapeutics are engineering pigs to be more humanlike.
So far in the U.S., there have been four “compassionate use” transplants, last-ditch experiments into dying patients — two hearts and two kidneys. Revivicor provided both hearts and one of the kidneys. While the four patients died within a few months, they offered valuable lessons for researchers ready to try again in people who aren’t quite as sick.
Now the FDA is evaluating promising results from experiments in donated human bodies and awaiting results of additional studies of pig organs in baboons before deciding next steps.
Shelby Lum / AP
They’re semi-custom organs — “we’re growing these pigs to the size of the recipient,” Ayares noted — that won’t show the wear-and-tear of aging or chronic disease like most organs donated by people.
Transplant surgeons who’ve retrieved organs on Revivicor’s farm “go, ‘Oh my god that’s the most beautiful kidney I’ve ever seen,'” Ayares added. “Same thing when they get the heart, a pink healthy happy heart from a young animal.”
Shelby Lum / AP
The main challenges: how to avoid rejection and whether the animals might carry some unknown infection risk.
The process starts with modifying genes in pig skin cells in a lab. Revivicor initially deleted a gene that produces a sugar named alpha-gal, which triggers immediate destruction from the human immune system. Next came three-gene “knockouts,” to remove other immune-triggering red flags. Now the company is focusing on 10 gene edits — deleted pig genes and added human ones that together lessen the risk of rejection and blood clots plus limit organ size.
They clone pigs with those alterations, similar to how Dolly the sheep was created.
Twice a week, slaughterhouses ship Revivicor hundreds of eggs retrieved from sow ovaries. Working in the dark with the light-sensitive eggs, scientists peer through a microscope while suctioning out the maternal DNA. Then they slip in the genetic modifications.
“Tuck it in nice and smooth,” murmurs senior researcher Lori Sorrells, pushing to just the right spot without rupturing the egg. Mild electric shocks fuse in the new DNA and activate embryo growth.
Ayares, a molecular geneticist who heads Revivicor and helped create the world’s first cloned pigs in 2000, says the technique is “like playing two video games at the same time,” holding the egg in place with one hand and manipulating it with the other. The company’s first modified pig, the GalSafe single gene knockout, now is bred instead of cloned. If xenotransplantation eventually works, other pigs with the desired gene combinations would be, too.
Shelby Lum / AP
Hours later, embryos are carried to the research farm in a handheld incubator and implanted into waiting sows.
Luxury accommodations for important pigs
On the research farm, Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin'” was serenading a piglet barn, where music acclimates the youngsters to human voices. In air-conditioned pens, the animals grunted excited greetings until it’s obvious their visitors brought no treats. The 3-week-olds darted back to the security of mom. Next door, older siblings laid down for a nap or checked out balls and other toys.
“It is luxury for a pig,” Ayares said. “But these are very valuable animals. They’re very smart animals. I’ve watched piglets play with balls together like soccer.”
About 300 pigs of different ages live on this farm, nestled in rolling hills, its exact location undisclosed for security reasons. Tags on their ears identify their genetics.
Shelby Lum / AP
“There are certain ones I say hi to,” said Suyapa Ball, Revivicor’s head of porcine technology and farm operations, as she rubbed one pig’s back. “You have to give them a good life. They’re giving their lives for us.”
A subset of pigs used for the most critical experiments – those early attempts with people and the FDA-required baboon studies – are housed in more restricted, even cleaner barns.
But in neighboring Christiansburg is the clearest signal that xenotransplantation is entering a new phase — the sheer size of United Therapeutics’ new pathogen-free facility. Inside the 77,000-square-foot building, the company expects to produce about 125 pig organs a year, likely enough to supply clinical trials.
Company video shows piglets running around behind the protective barrier, chewing on toys and nosing balls back and forth.
They were born in sort of a porcine birthing center connected to the facility, weaned a day or two later and moved into their super-clean pens to be hand-raised. In addition to the on-site shower, their caretakers must put on a new protective suit and mask before entering each suite of pig pens — another precaution against germs.
The pig zone is surrounded on all sides by security and mechanical systems that shield the animals. Outside air enters through multiple filtration systems. Giant vats hold backup supplies of drinking water. Standing over the pig rooms, VonEsch showed how pipes and vents were placed to allow maintenance and repair without any animal contact.
It will take years of clinical trials to prove whether xenotransplantation really could work. But if it succeeds, United Therapeutics’ plan is for even larger facilities, capable of producing up to 2,000 organs a year, in several places around the country.
The field is at a point where multiple kinds of studies “are telling us that there’s no train wrecks, that there’s no immediate rejection,” Ayares said. “The next two or three years are going to be super exciting.”
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At “Evryman,” a weekend getaway in the Berkshires of Massachusetts, around 50 men gather to open up about struggles that men often bury — like loneliness.
“We can just be raw and real with each other,” said John, a participant from Connecticut.
Last year, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy declared loneliness a national health epidemic, saying it poses risks as deadly as smoking. About half of U.S. adults say they’ve experienced loneliness, Murthy said in an 81-page report from his office.
The effects on men can be especially difficult to address due to gender-based stigma, Evryman co-founder Lucas Krump said.
“As men, we’ve traditionally been put in a box and given a very small range to express our emotions. There are a lot of men walking around, not necessarily overtly a loner, but feeling very lonely,” Krump said.
Roughly one in seven men say they have no close friends, according to data from the Survey Center on American Life.
Krump’s organization hopes to combat that crisis of connection by giving participants a safe space to share whatever they’re feeling.
“What men are really looking for is to belong. They want to be part of something,” Krump said.
For example, participants may open up about problems in their relationships and be surprised to find out that others are experiencing similar issues.
“There’s something about letting our guard down and having fun with the other guys. It’s hard to replace,” another participant said.
CBS News
Social Security Fairness Act could restore benefits for millions, but policies still cause hardship
At 84 years old, Evelyn Paternostro spends her days working part time as a cashier at Dollar Tree. For decades, she dedicated her life to education, serving as a teacher and principal in Louisiana. But despite years of her public service, she now struggles to make ends meet.
“People at the store ask me all the time, ‘Are you doing this for fun? Why aren’t you retired?'” she said. “Because I need to eat.”
After her husband died, Paternostro discovered she couldn’t collect his Social Security benefits due to a pair of federal policies called the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset.
These provisions reduce or eliminate Social Security benefits for millions of Americans if they receive a public pension that didn’t withhold Social Security tax. Retired teachers, firefighters and other public servants are some of the most impacted.
“I was really blindsided,” she said. “I knew I was going to have a teacher’s retirement. I was going to be part of the Louisiana Teachers Retirement System. And I never really thought about my husband’s income and what that would mean to me.”
Kati Weis / CBS News
Who is affected?
Nearly 2.8 million individuals across the United States are impacted by WEP and GPO. Its effects extend to all employees of state, county, municipal and special districts in 26 states. Teachers in 13 of those states, including specific districts in Kentucky and Georgia, also feel its impact.
In Massachusetts and certain districts in Rhode Island, not all municipal employees, but only teachers are impacted.
The purpose of these two 1980s-era programs was “so that there was no way you could ‘double dip’ into both a federal pension and Social Security,” explains Jill Schlesinger, CBS News business analyst.
The Windfall Elimination Provision affects people who qualify for Social Security benefits through their job but also receive a pension from another job where they didn’t pay into Social Security.
It may decrease their Social Security payments by up to half the value of their pension.
For example, Michelle Cosgrove’s benefits were cut in half, reduced from $866 a month.
Cosgrove spent the first half of her career as a paralegal, contributing to Social Security, before staying home to raise her children.
Later, she became a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area, paying into CalSTRS, California’s educator pension fund. However, her plans for retirement took an unexpected turn when she discovered the intricacies of the pension system.
When she retired, Cosgrove’s reduced payments affected her ability to pay bills and cover expenses.
The other program, the Government Pension Offset, further impacted Cosgrove after her husband, Mike, passed away in 2022. Despite working in the private sector for decades and contributing to Social Security, his benefits were largely inaccessible to her due to the GPO. Mike, a welding supervisor, was diagnosed with a rare cancer at 52 but continued working until his health worsened. He died at the age of 63.
If pension recipients are a widow or widower of someone who received Social Security benefits, that pension recipient may have reduced survivors benefits or may not receive benefits at all.
“If I’d have stayed home and done nothing, I’d have gotten all the money,” Cosgrove said. “Had I known this, I might not have gone into teaching. I’d have picked something different.”
The GPO mainly affects women, with 83% of those impacted by GPO being female, according data from the Congressional Research Service.
“When you see the numbers of the GPO elevated, it’s because many of those people were probably teachers and married to somebody who worked in a Social Security job,” said Joslyn DeLancey, vice president of the Connecticut Education Association. “They’re not going to get that spousal Social Security. … It’s such a messy and nuanced thing.”
Paternostro estimates she would have received $2,500 a month in Social Security benefits — about $300,000 over the last decade.
“That’s a lot of money,” she said. “That’s more money than I can imagine.”
But these policies brought a different kind of heartache for Dede Ruel, a retired school psychologist in Illinois.
She said she recently received a letter from Social Security informing her that she owed more than $13,000, reducing her Social Security checks by 21%.
According to a CBS News analysis of federal data, these policies are one of the most common reasons for Social Security overpayments, which have totaled more than $450 million in fiscal years 2017-2021.
“I have been trying to appeal it through their process and I’ve been denied at every level,” Ruel said.
Bipartisan support for the Social Security Fairness Act
The Social Security Fairness Act, one of the most bipartisan bills in Congress this session, aims to repeal WEP and GPO.
The House voted to pass the legislation Nov. 12. The Senate is expected to vote on the Social Security Fairness Act this week.
Social Security is projected to run out of funds in 2035 unless there is a change made to the fund’s cost and revenue system.
Even though supporters of the Social Security Fairness Act argue it will only drain the Social Security fund six months earlier than otherwise expected, some critics believe there are better solutions, suggesting states should restructure their retirement systems to address the root causes rather than rely on federal fixes.
“A lot of the critics say this is gonna cost a lot of money, almost $200 billion dollars over the next 10 years,” explains Schlesinger. “Critics say there is a reason why we force people to pay into the Social Security system. These are two separate systems. If we need to fix Social Security, let’s fix it. Let’s not just do a repeal which is essentially a Band-Aid.”
Rep. Garret Graves, a Republican from Louisiana who spearheaded the bill, said, “People should receive benefits based on what they paid into the system. That’s what the formula should largely be based upon. I understand the efforts back in the ’70s and ’80s, but the overcorrection has likely taken $600 to $700 billion in benefits from these folks.”
Devin Carroll, a financial planner, encounters many clients who are “completely taken by surprise.” Carroll often instructs his clients to use the Social Security Administration’s WEP calculator, a tool that calculates benefits with the impact of the WEP factored in.
Carroll explains that it can be challenging to figure out future Social Security benefits. The benefits formula includes “bend points,” which are adjusted annually based on wage inflation.
These adjustments are crucial because the actual amount of the WEP reduction is determined the year a person turns 62.
“You have to make some projections, some assumptions about forward-looking inflation, both price inflation and wage inflation,” Carroll explained. “Once you do, then you can start to work through that and use a calculator like the SSA has that will do a lot of that for you, and it will tell you what your WEP adjusted for retirement age benefit should be.”
Carroll also gets to see the impacts of these provisions firsthand. His daughter-in-law is a teacher in Texas and his son is a firefighter in Texas.
“In essence, this money has been stolen from all of us for all these years,” Paternostro said. “It’s not fair.”
contributed to this report.