>> This is a kidney baby shower.
(laughing)
(dramatic music)
>> Nina is I think making history
>> Mixing mine with bright green
color for organ donation.
>> She is
>> Chocolate lollipops
>> Paving the way for other people
to be able to donate and then receive kidneys
by being the first one to do it.
>> So I have been living with HIV for 35 years.
This is the first time that we will have
a living kidney donor who also is living
with HIV and it will be transplanted
into another person living with HIV.
>> My name is Dimetria, I'm going to get your vitals.
>> So Nina acquired HIV as an infant
from a blood transfusion.
Completely unaware of this
her family was completely unaware of this.
Nobody knew that she had gotten this
until she was eight years old.
At the age of eight, she started meticulous treatment
of her HIV and that has been controlled her entire life.
>> You are what?
You're donating a kidney.
>> Mmhhmm.
>> (gasps)
>> To somebody else living with HIV.
>> What?
>> I think people had their concerns
but they knew better than to voice them to me.
(laughs)
They knew that this was a medical decision
I was making for myself.
I was experienced in making medical decisions.
They knew that I had thought about this
for a number of years.
>> The old stigmatized view of HIV
is that people who have HIV are sick,
they have a lot of diseases
and they're on their way to death.
That today is not the case at all.
Anti-retro viral therapy has gotten so good
that HIV today is just a condition
and you live a full and healthy life
and Nina is a prime example of this.
She is in perfect health.
She is meticulous with her care of her HIV.
She is a marathon runner.
>> Good Morning, Becky King, I'm Dr. Segev's fellow.
>> And she went through and passed
eight months of testing that we did
to make sure her kidney function is okay,
her lung function is okay,
her heart function is okay.
We did a biopsy of the kidney.
We checked her kidney numbers.
We checked everything about her
and there is nothing that seems to indicate
that she would have any risk
of kidney disease down the road.
>> Morning.
>> Good morning.
>> You ready?
>> Yeah, are you ready?
(laughing)
>> I'm ready.
>> The last three years Johns Hopkins
and about more than 20 other transplant centers
across the US have done transplants
with deceased donor HIV positive kidneys
and transplanted those into patients
who were HIV positive and in need of kidneys.
And so now that we know that these deceased
donor kidneys from HIV positive donors are safe
and tolerable for recipients living with HIV,
this is kind of the next frontier of living donation
and see if we can give that a shot.
>> Alright, hands up, hands up.
And then the beauty pageant wave.
There you go. There you go.
>> World famous, coming through.
>> This is really a celebration
of decades of work in HIV, biology, and medicine.
Interestingly, what we learn from doing transplants
of people who have HIV using donors who have HIV
is leading us closer to a cure for HIV
and should we ever have a cure for HIV
then people with HIV can donate to anybody.
>> Well the important thing to know
is there are over 100,000 people in America
waiting on an organ transplant
and the bulk of those are people waiting for
a kidney and about 20 people die per day waiting.
If you're HIV positive you're nearly twice as likely
to die while waiting compared to somebody
who's a transplant candidate who's not living with HIV
so having access to these organs
means that they could be transplanted quicker
and then everybody moves up the waitlist
when you take somebody living with HIV off
the diseased donor waitlist.
>> Oh yeah.
>> You know, when you do something like this
the team taking care of the person
are pioneers in a way
but the person, Nina, is an incredible pioneer
and she's taking all the risk.
We've done the science but she's really,
she's the hero in this story.
>> I'm just a community-minded person
and I think that everyone's life is valid
and having such a long life with HIV
when society is consistently othering you
and trying to point out the ways
in which you are different
this was something that I could do
to show people that I was the same.
Look at this cool kidney pin I got.
>> By saying, not only am I okay,
but I can give a part of my body to somebody
and save their lives as well,
that's really exciting.
>> We're not in the 1980's anymore
and doing something like this I think
will bring people's perceptions into the 21st century.
(soft music)