Pigs Save Sea Lion, Human

A little over a year ago, a sea lion named Cronutt, a resident at Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, was in trouble. After being exposed to neurotoxins in an algal and bacterial bloom off the coast of California, Cronutt started having seizures: uncontrolled electrical activity that shocked his brain, causing tremors and confusion. He couldn’t eat and his situation was dire.

His condition desperate, Cronutt was enrolled in an experimental treatment using neuron cells taken from pig embryos. The procedure, pioneered by Dr Scott Baraban, University of California San Francisco, had been used successfully on epileptic mice.

Some 200,000 brain cells were injected into four regions of Cronutt’s hippocampus.

In the weekend before his surgery, Cronutt had 11 seizures. Today, more than a year later, he has none and is thriving – eating, responsive to handlers, he’s even made friends with his sea lion neighbor, Missy. This is great for Cronutt and maybe for humans, since this kind of transplant will be looked at as a possible treatment for epilepsy patients.

In unrelated pigs-are-awesome news, a 57-year-old man just received the first pig heart transplant. The genetically modified pig’s heart had been developed in the lab, one more example of our increasing reliance on our porcine friends for medical miracles. Pig heart valves are now routinely accepted by human recipients, pig pancreas cells are used to treat diabetics, and pig skin is sometimes used as temporary grafts for burn patients.

Maybe we should start treating them a little nicer, like not tossing live piglets into boiling water and sticking large sows into tiny creates. California voters passed legislation that would allow sows to stand up and turn around. This has to be legislated?

Photo credit: Dianne Cameron & Shawn Johnson