Scientists developed a way to freeze a large mammal’s kidney, which could ease organ shortages in the future. First, they had to see if their method would work in a pig.On the last day of March, surgeons at Massachusetts General Hospital began an operation that they hoped might lead to a permanent change in how kidneys are transplanted in people.That morning’s patient was not a person. It was a pig, lying anesthetized on a table. The pig was missing one kidney and needed an implant.While kidneys typically must be transplanted within 24 to 36 hours, the kidney going into the pig had been removed 10 days before, frozen and then thawed early that morning.Never before had anyone transplanted a frozen organ into a large animal. There was so much that could go wrong.“I think there is about a 50 percent chance that it will work,” Korkut Uygun, a professor of surgery and a leader of the team, said before the surgery. Dr. Uygun is on the scientific advisory board of Sylvatica Biotech Inc., a company that is developing freezing methods to preserve organs.But the promise from freezing and storing organs is great.There is a severe and ongoing shortage of kidneys for transplants — more than 92,000 people are on waiting lists. One reason is that the window of 24 to 36 hours is so brief that it limits the number of recipients who are good matches.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Patients with advanced skin cancer could be fast-tracked to take part in a “revolutionary” trial of a new cancer vaccine.

Have We Been Thinking About A.D.H.D. All Wrong? With diagnoses at a record high, some experts have begun to question […]

The health secretary has chipped away at the idea that immunizing children against measles and other diseases is a public health good.During his Senate confirmation hearings to be health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. presented himself as a supporter of vaccines. But in office, he and the agencies he leads have taken far-reaching, sometimes subtle steps to undermine confidence in vaccine efficacy and safety, public health experts say.The National Institutes of Health halted funding for researchers who study vaccine hesitancy and hoped to find ways to overcome it. It also canceled programs intended to discover new vaccines to prevent future pandemics.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shelved an advertising campaign for the flu shot. Mr. Kennedy has said inaccurately that the scientists who advise the C.D.C. on vaccines have “severe, severe conflicts of interest” in promoting the products and cannot be trusted.The Health and Human Services Department cut billions of dollars to state health agencies, including funds needed to modernize state programs for childhood immunization. Mr. Kennedy said in a televised interview on Wednesday that he was unaware of this widely reported development.The Food and Drug Administration canceled an open meeting on flu vaccines with scientific advisers, later holding it behind closed doors. A top official paused the agency’s review of Novavax’s Covid vaccine. In a televised interview last week, Mr. Kennedy said falsely that similarly created vaccines don’t work against respiratory viruses.Some scientists said they saw a pattern: an effort to erode support for routine vaccination, and for the scientists who have long held it up as a public health goal.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

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To stop the spread of an infectious disease like measles, you don’t have to vaccinate everyone. But you do have […]

In a speech broadcast to the Food and Drug Administration’s Maryland campus on Friday morning, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. introduced himself as the nation’s health secretary with a meandering speech touching on everything from birds of prey to pollution in Lake Erie to the C.I.A.Mr. Kennedy told the agency staff members, in the throes of losing 20 percent of their work force under his overhaul of the Health and Human Services Department, to boldly avoid the impulse to protect the corporations they regulate.The layoffs, voluntary departures and cutbacks in funding have already decimated divisions that govern oversight of tobacco, the drug approval process, testing of cow’s milk and cheese for avian flu, and food safety that monitors and protects consumers from food-borne illnesses.In his remarks on Friday, Mr. Kennedy blamed the F.D.A. for failing to embrace raw milk, ivermectin and stem cell treatments, views he has voiced before.He suggested that the reason the agency did not approve “alternative medicines” was because of its subservience to well-heeled corporations. Agency veterans have argued that alternative products often fail to pass the standards for safety and efficacy.He urged the staff to resist the temptation to serve a small group of wealthy companies at the cost of public health.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Medicare spending on “skin substitutes” reached $10 billion last year. A leading seller made a large donation to President Trump’s election campaign.The Trump administration announced Friday it would delay the implementation of a Biden-era rule meant to restrict coverage of unproven and costly bandages known as skin substitutes.The policy will be delayed until 2026, allowing companies to continue setting high prices for new products, taking advantage of a loophole in Medicare rules. The companies sell those bandages at a discount to doctors, who then charge Medicare the full sticker price and pocket the difference, The New York Times reported on Thursday.Medicare spending on the coverings soared to over $10 billion in 2024, up from $1.6 billion in 2022, according to an analysis done by Early Read, an actuarial firm that evaluates costs for large health companies. Some experts said the bandage spending was one of the largest examples of waste in the history of Medicare, the insurance program for seniors.A super PAC for President Trump’s election campaign had received a $2 million donation from Extremity Care, a leading seller of skin substitutes. Mr. Trump has twice criticized the policy on social media, saying it would hurt patients who use the products on diabetic sores.“‘Crooked Joe’ rammed through a policy that would create more suffering and death for diabetic patients on Medicare,” Mr. Trump posted on Truth Social in March.Extremity Care had also criticized the plan, arguing that it would disrupt supply chains, eliminate innovation and increase costs for both doctors and patients. The company, which has said that it adheres to high ethical standards, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the policy’s new delay.More than 120 skin substitutes are on the market. They cost $5,089 per square inch on average, The Times found, with the most expensive exceeding $23,000.The Biden-era rule would have restricted Medicare coverage to a small subset of products that have been shown to be effective in randomized clinical trials. The new policy applies to patients using the bandages on foot and leg sores, known as ulcers, which can be caused by diabetes or poor circulation.Medicare said in a statement Friday that as part of the transition to a new administration, it would be reviewing the policy. During that time, it said it “believes it is important to maintain patient access to skin substitute products with high quality evidence of effectiveness.”The MASS Coalition, a group that supports the skin substitute industry, said it was “pleased” with the delay, which it said would give the Trump administration time to evaluate the policy change. A spokeswoman, Preeya Noronha Pinto, said the group is looking forward to working with Medicare “on a coverage policy and payment reform that ensures access to skin substitutes.”

Towana Looney lived with the kidney longer than any other transplant patient had tolerated an organ from a genetically modified animal.Surgeons removed a genetically engineered pig’s kidney from an Alabama woman after she experienced acute organ rejection, NYU Langone Health officials said on Friday.Towana Looney, 53, lived with the kidney for 130 days, which is longer than anyone else has tolerated an organ from a genetically modified animal. She has resumed dialysis, hospital officials said.Dr. Robert Montgomery, Ms. Looney’s surgeon and the director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, said that the so-called explant was not a setback for the field of xenotransplantation — the effort to use organs from animals to replace those that have failed in humans.“This is the longest one of these organs has lasted,” he said in an interview, adding that Ms. Looney had other medical conditions that might have complicated her prognosis.“All this takes time,” he said. “This game is going to be won by incremental improvements, singles and doubles, not trying to swing for the fences and get a home run.”Further treatment of Ms. Looney might have salvaged the organ, but she and her medical team decided against it, Dr. Montgomery said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.