内容摘要：“We’re out here every single day,” said Aguirre, pausing to call out to an empty farm, checking for residents. “To gain trust of the Mennonites – because they’re reserved and closed-off people – you have to meet them where they’re at, show a friendly face.”

“We’re out here every single day,” said Aguirre, pausing to call out to an empty farm, checking for residents. “To gain trust of the Mennonites – because they’re reserved and closed-off people – you have to meet them where they’re at, show a friendly face.”

Carl McNew watches television with his husband Steve Hunter in Palm Springs. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)“There’s just something about being part of something like that, that is so cutting-edge,” said McNew, who spotted news of NYU’s xenotransplant research in 2023 and emailed his interest.

For Louisville’s Berrios, donor scarcity isn’t the only hurdle. Born with a single kidney that failed in his late 20s, a living donor transplant restored his health for 13 years. But it failed in 2020 and he has since developed antibodies that would destroy another human kidney, what doctors call “highly sensitized.”Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Berrios quietly slips out of his home before dawn to spend nearly four hours tethered to a dialysis machine. Getting the grueling treatments at 5 a.m. is the only way the father of two can both stay alive and hold down a fulltime job.But dialysis doesn’t fully replace kidney function – people slowly get sicker. So even as Berrios tried an experimental therapy to tamp down his problem antibodies, he told NYU he’s interested in a pig kidney.

FDA rules require that pig organs be extensively tested in monkeys or baboons before humans. And while researchers have extended those primates’ survival to a year, sometimes longer, they were desperate for experience with people. After all, the pig organs are genetically altered to be more humanlike, not more baboon-like., surgeons first tested pig organs in bodies of the

donated for scientific research.

And patients given pig organs so far have been “compassionate use” transplants, experiments that FDA allows in select emergency cases for people out of other options.Four of Wyoming’s independent pharmacies closed last year, said Melinda Carroll, legislative director of the state’s pharmacy association. Two more, one independent and one chain, closed so far this year.

Jones plans to hold out in Basin. He owns two other businesses there — a café next to the pharmacy and a grocery store, for which he cashed in some of his retirement accounts to keep it from closing.But some 25% of the prescriptions he fills today are reimbursed for less than what he bought the medications for. Jones said he lost $30,000 between the beginning of the year and mid-May.

Hence, the uncashed checks.“I’m working for free a lot,” he said. “And I don’t mind. I love to serve the community. But I kind of resent having to do that because of large corporations, huge pharmacy benefit managers, that are making millions of dollars a year.”