Surgeons at Johns Hopkins Medical Center have successfully transplanted a liver and kidney from one deceased HIV+ donor and transplanted them into two HIV+ recipients. The LA Times reports: The transplant surgeries, which used organs donated by the family of an HIV-positive woman, ended a 25-year stretch in which the organs of HIV-infected people willing to donate them were rejected for use in transplants. The experimental procedure follows the 2013 enactment of the HIV Organ Policy Equity Act, or HOPE, which repealed the ban on using such organs for transplantation. “This is an unbelievably exciting day for our hospital and our team, but more importantly for patients living with both HIV and end-stage organ disease,” said Dr. Dorry L. Segev, the Johns Hopkins surgeon who performed the surgeries. “For these individuals, this could mean a new chance at life.” Segev, professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, also played a key role in designing and pushing the legislation that ended a 1988 prohibition on transplantation of HIV-infected organs. Dr. Christine Durand, an infectious disease specialist at Johns Hopkins who now oversees the two transplant patients’ care, said both of the recent transplant patients are doing well. [...]