Dec 18, 2024

You know the Christmas season is in full gear when Santa Clauses start making it into the news updates.

This Santa Claus made the news in a good way (for him, at least). It's in the report below.

Thanks for reading,

Ike

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Alabama's Towana Looney donated a kidney to her mother 25 years ago, according to an Associated Press report. She later had complications with her remaining kidney and eventually went on dialysis. She developed antibodies that doctors say would've rejected any donated kidney.

Well, she had heard about the pig-organ research being done at UAB Hospital that we've reported here before. These gene-edited pig transplants are still in the experimental phase. Previous recipients have died within a couple months of receiving a pig kidney or heart.

Eventually Looney was approved by the FDA to receive a pig-kidney implant at New York University Hospital after she spent eight years on dialysis. She was only the fifth American to receive a gene-edited pig transplant.

The surgeon said that moments after the procedure was done, the kidney turned a healthy color and began working. A month later, doctors say she's doing better than the other recipients and has even come off dialysis. The plan is for her to return to Alabama in three months.

Meantime, if the kidney fails, she can go back on dialysis. Let's hope for the best, but her case has already helped move forward what is expected to become a lifesaving technology.

In one day last week, if you recall, President Joe Biden delivered Get Out of Jail Free cards like he worked for Parker Brothers.

We mentioned an Alabama woman who was among the 39 people Biden pardoned. On the same day he commuted the sentences of 1,499 others, including a Huntsville physician who became known as a "pill mill doctor," reports AL.com's Heather Gann.

Shelinder Aggarwal was sentenced to 15 years in prison back in 2017. He was a pain management doctor in Huntsville, where he illegally prescribed controlled substances and conducted fraud involving $9.5 million in unneeded and unused urine tests.

In 2012, pharmacies filled more than 110,000 prescriptions issued by Aggarwal. That's a clip of more than 2,000 a week.

In his plea agreement he acknowledged that the DEA considered him the "biggest pill-pusher in North Alabama" and that he had patients "dropping like flies."

The Prescription Drug Monitoring Program for Alabama rated him Alabama's most prolific prescriber in 2012, with the No. 2 prescriber writing only a third as many prescriptions.

FOX54 confirmed that the Aggarwal listed on the clemency list was indeed the former Huntsville doctor and reported that he's currently at a halfway house and will be released Dec. 22.

A suspected car thief in Jefferson County tried to flee on foot but was apprehended by Santa Claus.

It wasn't the real Santa Claus, of course, who's too busy this time of year to fight crime in Alabama.

AL.com's Carol Robinson reports that deputies answered an alert for a stolen Nissan Altima, located it and stopped it. A passenger surrendered, they said, but the driver ran into some woods.

Soon after that, they saw the suspect being escorted back by the man dressed in red from his head to his foot -- one Larry Williams, who happens to be a retired deputy volunteering at a nearby church.

The suspect landed on the naughty list and in the Jefferson County Jail on charges of first-degree receiving stolen property and attempting to elude a police officer.

200

That was the estimated fish kill near a popular recreational area in Helena.

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