Surgeons successfully transplant genetically edited pig kidney into U.S. man [Video]

A New Hampshire man fought for the chance at a pig kidney transplant, spending months getting into good enough shape to be part of a small pilot study of a highly experimental treatment.

His effort paid off: Tim Andrews, 66, is only the second person known to be living with a pig kidney. Andrews is free from dialysis, Massachusetts General Hospital announced Friday, and recovering so well from the Jan. 25 transplant that he left the hospital a week later.

“When I woke up in the recovery room, I was a new man,” Andrews told The Associated Press.

Andrews’s surgery comes at a turning point in the quest to tell if animal-to-human transplants could help ease the shortage of donated human organs. The first four pig organ transplants — two hearts and two kidneys — were short-lived.

But the fifth xenotransplant recipient, an Alabama woman not nearly as sick as …