Latest organ transplant milestone, Open Championship tees off: 5 Things podcast
On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: Latest organ transplant milestone: Pig hearts to brain-dead patients
Patient safety reporter Karen Weintraub explains. Plus, President Joe Biden continues his Israel trip, national correspondent Marco Della Cava explores some tips for dealing with a unique American moment, Brittney Griner's trial continues and the Open Championship tees off.
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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning, I'm Taylor Wilson, and this is 5 Things you need to know Thursday, the 14th of July, 2022. Today, pig hearts and brain-dead patients, plus the latest on Biden's trip to Israel and more.
Here are some of the top headlines:
A man has been charged with impregnating a 10-year-old Ohio girl whose travel to Indiana to seek an abortion has led to international attention. Nearly all abortions after the detection of fetal heartbeat activity became illegal in Ohio last month after the Supreme Court's ruling.
Sri Lanka's president, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, has left the Maldives after fleeing his own country amid mass protests. He was reportedly bound for Singapore. Rajapaksa and his wife fled Sri Lanka on Wednesday as protestors took over government buildings amid an economic collapse.
Inflation has reached another 40-year high. Prices increased 9.1% from a year earlier.
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With the transplant list at over one hundred thousand people, doctors are testing pig hearts with brain-dead patients. 5 Things producer, PJ Elliott, spoke with health reporter, Karen Weintraub to find out more.
Karen Weintraub:
This week, NYU Langone announced that they have done two heart transplants putting a pig heart into the body of a newly deceased person. This is someone who was declared brain dead who wanted to donate their body or their organs for transplant, but they weren't healthy enough, so their families decided to donate for this research. The researchers wanted to see what would happen when they put pig hearts into people to make sure... In the past, pig organs have caused immediate immune rejection. In this case, the pigs were gene edited to prevent that rejection, but they want to make sure that that's true, that that works before they try this in a living person who's dependent on the heart.
They followed a traditional transplant procedure just as they would do with a human, but put these pig hearts into two people in the last month or so. For about 72 hours, each both seemed to do fine. The hearts pumped, they delivered blood throughout the body. The blood pressure was normal. So it seemed like it worked. They said they learned a lot between the two surgeries. Pig hearts, the anatomy is similar, but not exactly the same, and so they learned something about the differences between the pig anatomy and the human anatomy and how to attach it safely. In one case, the pig was 160-pound pig and the guy was 220 pounds, so the heart was a little small. So they're going to try to work that out before they test it in people.
Again, they're trying to learn as much as they can in these newly deceased bodies before they take a pig heart to human heart transplants into people. So that's what this was about. It's another step toward that hope of replacing the organ shortage right now. About a hundred thousand people a year sit on an organ transplant list, and a number of them die before getting a transplant. Some aren't healthy enough to even make it on the transplant list to begin with, but they might be eligible for a pig heart at some point. Again, this is another step in that process of making pig hearts, pig organs available for human transplant.
PJ Elliott:
Karen, how willing are the families to allow the doctors to do these tests on them while still technically alive, even though they're brain dead? Also are the doctors seeing any sort of moral backlash for doing these tests?
Karen Weintraub:
The families who donated these bodies were strongly in favor of this research. The partner of one said that he would've wanted to be an organ donor. Unfortunately, he died in a car accident. His body wasn't discovered right away, so his organs were not suitable for live transplant. But she said she had no hesitation at all in volunteering him for this procedure, that he would've wanted, as she put it, to be a hero in death as he was in life and to participate in this groundbreaking research.
Taylor Wilson:
You can get a link to Karen's full story in today's episode description.
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President Joe Biden will continue his trip in Israel today featuring closed-door meetings with Israeli leaders. He'll first meet with Prime Minister Yair Lapid, who recently became head of an interim government after the previous coalition collapsed. The country is holding its fifth election in less than four years in November. Biden will also meet with former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the head of the opposition party, trying to make a comeback. Biden said that on his trip he will discuss support for the creation of an independent Palestinian nation alongside Israel. Instead of a new peace initiative, Biden is expected to encourage both sides to move closer toward a vision that works for both Israelis and Palestinians, according to his national security advisor, Jake Sullivan. Later this week, Biden will fly from Israel to Saudi Arabia.
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If you're freaking out right now over the divisiveness between neighbors, friends, and family, you're not alone. Amid Roe v. Wade, gun control, and politics causing record stress, national correspondent, Marco della Cava, and producer, PJ Elliott, talk about what tips experts are giving on how to handle that stress.
Marco della Cava:
The American Psychological Association did a poll recently back in March that showed that more than 80% of Americans feel that we are more stressed now than ever before as a result of the last two years of crazy activities from the pandemic to the insurrection, and that's sort of leading into the things we're dealing with now, with the shootings and things like that. So if you're feeling stressed, the message is you're not alone.
PJ Elliott:
What do experts say about what should we do to deal with the political divisiveness that's surrounding everybody right now?
Marco della Cava:
It's a two-pronged approach from experts. One is to try and actually find common ground with people, people you might disagree with, talk about parenting, talk about your kids, to find a common ground that maybe then lets you have more broader discussions about other political issues. But the other piece of advice they give is really focus on yourself. Practice self-care, make sure you're eating well, you're staying hydrated, and even, they say, pick up a hobby or two, or set out to achieve something around the house and get it done because just that feeling of accomplishment is going to keep you level headed.
We spoke with a prominent historian who just points out that in the past, Americans have sort of swung from one extreme to the other in terms of being united and generally rallying around the frat flag and each other during World War II to then being very divided in the '60s, then getting conservative again in the Reagan '80s and so forth. So his point was saying, look, this is partly our nature, and we just have to get through these times and find the places in which we share common ground and work from there.
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Taylor Wilson:
Brittney Griner is due back in a Russian court today. Things resume after she last week pleaded guilty to drug possession charges. Griner was arrested in February at a Russian airport after authorities said they found cartridges with hashish oil in her luggage. Griner's guilty plea could be an effort to speed up court proceedings so any negotiations to bring her back to the US could move forward. The plea also may have been part of a strategy to get a more lenient sentence. Griner faces potentially up to 10 years in prison, and her detainment has been made more complicated by Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which came just weeks after her arrest. There have been reports that Russia may be pushing for a trade of a notorious arms dealer in a prisoner exchange.
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Golf's British Open tees off today for the 150th time. The tournament also called the Open Championship takes place this year at the so-called Home of Golf, the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland, the 30th time that course has hosted. The field includes defending champion, Collin Morikawa, and three-time open champ, Tiger Woods, making just his third professional start after a car accident nearly cost him his leg last year. You can catch all the action on the Open's website or today's first round beginning at 4:00 AM Eastern time and running through the morning on USA.
You can find 5 Things seven mornings a week right here or wherever you're listening right now. Thanks to PJ Elliott for his great work on the show, and I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Brittney Griner trial continues, British Open begins: 5 things podcast
