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Speaker 1: Hey, friends, just a heads up that we're talking about

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Speaker 1: organ shortages today and will touch on topics like death

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Speaker 1: and animal research. So decide if this is an appropriate

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Speaker 1: episode for you or your kiddos. According to Donate Life America,

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Speaker 1: over one hundred thousand people are on the organ transplant waitlist.

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Speaker 1: Approximately every eight minutes, another person is added to this list,

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Speaker 1: So while you are listening to our show, approximately five

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Speaker 1: people will have been told that their life depends on

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Speaker 1: receiving a new organ. That weight might be quite long.

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Speaker 1: Some folks will wait years before that organ becomes available,

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Speaker 1: and during that weight the quality of their life could

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Speaker 1: be quite poor. And unfortunately, not everyone on this waitlist

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Speaker 1: is going to get an organ in time. Every day,

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Speaker 1: about thirteen people on the waitlist will pass away because

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Speaker 1: an organ was not made available soon enough. So what

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Speaker 1: are our options. Well, today we're going to talk about

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Speaker 1: one of those options that's looking more and more promising

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Speaker 1: every day, and that option is zeno transplantation. That is

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Speaker 1: taking organs from a non human animal pigs in this case,

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Speaker 1: and implanting them into humans. This requires a fair bit

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Speaker 1: of genetic engineering, and today we'll chat about how that's done.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.

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Speaker 2: Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and me and

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Speaker 2: my microbes consider myself one hundred percent human.

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Speaker 1: Hi, I'm a Kelly Wiener Smith. I study parasites and space,

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Speaker 1: and yes, the community that makes up me is all me,

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Speaker 1: and I feel great about it.

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Speaker 2: Some one wonder and ask Katrina this question whether my

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Speaker 2: microbes would be offended to be considered human because you know,

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Speaker 2: they don't have the human DNA, but they are part

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Speaker 2: of me.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I feel like you could actually have

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Speaker 1: a pretty interesting philosophical argument about what you really means,

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Speaker 1: because you know, when we had Katrina on the show,

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Speaker 1: she was talking about how bacteria sort of communicate with

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Speaker 1: our brain via the vagus nerve vegas nerve. We both

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Speaker 1: know I don't pronounce things correctly, ever, and so you know,

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Speaker 1: I had to what extent your well being and behavior

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Speaker 1: is influenced by what kinds of bacteria you have at

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Speaker 1: the moment. I think it is a fascinating question. And

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Speaker 1: so I contain multitudes.

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Speaker 2: And maybe if you had different multitudes, you could pronounce

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Speaker 2: things differently or better. Even right, I don't.

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Speaker 1: Think anything could help me with that. Ever, I've always

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Speaker 1: been this way no matter what my microbiome was up to.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to ask Katrina to engineer some superbug to

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Speaker 2: help you with your pronunciation.

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Speaker 1: I would happily pay for that. That would be a

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Speaker 1: So when I have to do the audiobook readings for

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Speaker 1: my books, I'm always like, ah, this is going to

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Speaker 1: be a disaster.

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Speaker 2: But in general, I love when questions in science bump

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Speaker 2: up against philosophical issues, you know, that make us ask

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Speaker 2: questions like what do we really mean by your body?

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Speaker 2: And it's not that hard to get there, you know,

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Speaker 2: you can just even ask like, well, where does your

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Speaker 2: body end? You know, is it at your skin, at

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Speaker 2: your hair, a millimeter past it? It's your fuzzy personal

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Speaker 2: space boundary. You know, it's not that hard to get

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Speaker 2: stuck in weird philosophical questions.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and organ transplants, whether it's from one human to

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Speaker 1: another or zeno transplantation, which we're talking about today, which

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Speaker 1: is when you take organs from a non human animal

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Speaker 1: and put them into a human. You know, causes a

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Speaker 1: lot of philosophical questions or at least a lot of

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Speaker 1: sort of emotional turmoil. There are stories about people who

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Speaker 1: have gotten face transplants, for example, just feeling very uncomfortable

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Speaker 1: looking at their face in the mirror. There's a story

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Speaker 1: of one person who had a hand transplant and he

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Speaker 1: ended up wanting the hand remove moved because he just

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Speaker 1: was like, this is not my hand and it's just

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Speaker 1: too weird. I'm not emotionally, I can't handle this.

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Speaker 2: You can't handle it nice.

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Speaker 1: Oh I didn't even get how clever even when I'm

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Speaker 1: not trying.

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Speaker 2: Man, Well, I was just going to raise that issue,

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Speaker 2: like it's really a ship of theseus question. You know,

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Speaker 2: if you get somebody else's liver, you feel like you're

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Speaker 2: still you. What if you've got somebody else's liver and

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Speaker 2: pancreas and heart and legs and arms and everything else

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Speaker 2: except the brain, would you still be you? I think

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Speaker 2: we mostly consider ourselves to be our brain, which is

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Speaker 2: I don't know if that's philosophically naive or sophisticated or not.

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Speaker 2: But the face is weird. Right to be in somebody

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Speaker 2: else's face. That must feel strange.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, that must feel strange. I still feel like, you know,

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Speaker 1: for a lot of people, it must be a huge relief,

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Speaker 1: depending on what happened to them to put them in

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Speaker 1: the position where they needed a face transplant.

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Speaker 2: Oh right, Yeah, I thought you were just saying, like,

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Speaker 2: I'm not that happy with my face either, so would

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Speaker 2: be a relief to have somebody else's face over here.

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Speaker 1: I spent too much time in the sun. I could

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Speaker 1: use a face with less evidence of that. But this

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Speaker 1: is the face I got, and I'm going to stick

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Speaker 1: with it. But yeah, you know, I as somebody who

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Speaker 1: is working their way through paramenopause, and there are days

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Speaker 1: where I'm feeling grumpy. I'm so interested in this question

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Speaker 1: about like what makes you who you are, and like

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Speaker 1: how your hormones influence the way that you behave or

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Speaker 1: maybe how the bacteria that are releasing stuff, how that

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Speaker 1: influences the way you behave. I think it's a really

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Speaker 1: fascinating question that ties in with this question of like,

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Speaker 1: you know, to what extent does it matter if the

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Speaker 1: you parts have your genome in their nucleus or not.

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Speaker 1: It's complicated. What do you think if you had lungs, hearts, kidneys,

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Speaker 1: liver from somebody else, how would you feel about that?

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Speaker 2: I would feel a little bit like I had some

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Speaker 2: of them inside of me. Yeah, and I wonder how

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Speaker 2: parents feel when their children's organs are reused after a

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Speaker 2: tried to accident. Do they feel like, you know, little

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Speaker 2: Timmy's heart is still beating and so we have still

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Speaker 2: some part of him, I wonder, or if they just

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Speaker 2: feel like that was a gift to help somebody else live.

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Speaker 2: I don't know.

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Speaker 1: It's fascinating, yeah, yeah, no, fascinating, And it must be

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Speaker 1: very emotionally complicated. I imagine lots of people have different feelings.

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Speaker 1: I think if I was in that situation, I would

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Speaker 1: be glad that other families were spared the pain that

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Speaker 1: I was going through and that, you know, our family

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Speaker 1: was able to give that to them. But it would be, yeah,

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Speaker 1: really complicated. So today our topic is a bit of

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Speaker 1: a downer, But a lot of.

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Speaker 2: Those philosophical issues can be partially sidestepped if you're not

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Speaker 2: talking about a human to human gift, right, If you're

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Speaker 2: talking about getting an organ from another animal, and this

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Speaker 2: different set of philosophical issues, right, if you're getting it

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Speaker 2: from a pig or from a baboon, and are they

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Speaker 2: sentient and can they consent? And do they have rights

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Speaker 2: and all this sort of stuff, But you do avoid

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Speaker 2: the question of like taking organs from another person and

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Speaker 2: then being part of you. So tell us, Kelly, how

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Speaker 2: do we get started on this question?

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Speaker 1: Well, the reason we got started on this question is

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Speaker 1: because a listener, Jane, who's a pastor, wrote and wanted

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Speaker 1: to know what kind of philosophical issues come up when

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Speaker 1: you're using you know, pig organs, transgenic pig organs to

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Speaker 1: keep people alive. So let's go ahead and listen to

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Speaker 1: Jane's question and then we'll jump into talking about what

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Speaker 1: xeno transplantation is and how it works.

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Speaker 3: Hi, Daniel and Kelly, this is Jane from Redcar, England.

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Speaker 3: I've got a question which is more philosophical and scientific.

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Speaker 3: There's been a lot of news about transgenic pigs created

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Speaker 3: for transplantation. The idea is that their genome becomes more

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Speaker 3: and more human so that they trigger less rejection. My

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Speaker 3: question is, at what point do we need to start

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Speaker 3: treating them as human and therefore with more respect. Not

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Speaker 3: that we always treat other humans with the respect, but

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Speaker 3: that's a different question. I'm excited by the opportunities this offers,

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Speaker 3: but I'm also conflicted by the ethics. I look forward

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Speaker 3: to hearing your take on this. Thank you, for a

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Speaker 3: great show.

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Speaker 1: All right, So Jane and I had a pretty interesting

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Speaker 1: conversation over email about the you know, the ethics of

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Speaker 1: this question. And I guess I'm a little bit of

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Speaker 1: a negative Nelly. I'm not sure anything is going to

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Speaker 1: put a dent in the way we treat animals that

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Speaker 1: we also eat. But it made me want to do

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Speaker 1: a whole episode on zeno transplantation because there has in

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Speaker 1: the news recently been some pretty exciting updates in this field,

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Speaker 1: and so I thought this would be a great chance

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Speaker 1: to sort of catch up on that research.

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Speaker 2: All right, so let's get started. Why do we even

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Speaker 2: consider taking organs from pigs? I mean, obviously I would

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Speaker 2: prefer human organ if I'm going to receive a transplant.

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Speaker 2: Why do we consider other species?

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Speaker 1: Well, there's just not enough of the human organs. So

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Speaker 1: last year there were forty eight thousand transplants that happened

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Speaker 1: in the United States, and so that's a lot, and

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Speaker 1: that's fantastic, but it's less than fifty percent of the

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Speaker 1: number of people who are on the list and need organs.

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Speaker 1: So there's this massive difference between the number of people

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Speaker 1: who get organs and the number of people who need them,

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Speaker 1: and there's probably even more people who need them, but

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Speaker 1: they're not on the weight list for a variety of reasons.

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Speaker 1: It could be that it just seems unlikely that an

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Speaker 1: organ that's the right match will come through for them

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Speaker 1: on time, and so some people who would like new organs,

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Speaker 1: you know, don't even put themselves on the weight list.

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Speaker 1: So if we had a lot of organs, then there's

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Speaker 1: a lot more people who would be in a good position.

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Speaker 1: So where do we get the organs we have now?

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Speaker 1: So this is something we've already sort of hinted at

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Speaker 1: in this episode. When somebody passes away, for example, in

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Speaker 1: a car accident, they're organs. The organs that you know

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Speaker 1: are still in good shape can be given to other

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Speaker 1: people who need them if you can find people who

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Speaker 1: are a good match. So being a good match. We

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Speaker 1: have different blood types, you know, if you go in

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Speaker 1: to donate blood, they'll tell you what your blood type is. Essentially,

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Speaker 1: we've got stuff that stick out on our cells, and

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Speaker 1: if your stuff that sticks out on your cells looks

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Speaker 1: different the stuff that sticks out on someone else's cells,

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Speaker 1: then your body's going to recognize that as foreign and

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Speaker 1: the immune system is going to go after it and

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Speaker 1: kill it. So the organ that you get needs to

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Speaker 1: look like an organ that would have been in your

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Speaker 1: body to begin with. Otherwise the immune system is going

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Speaker 1: to go nuts.

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Speaker 2: Fascinating, And then does having a good match guarantee that

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Speaker 2: the immune system is going to be cool or do

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Speaker 2: you still need to take immune suppressants your whole life.

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Speaker 1: You still need to take immunosupressants your whole life, which

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Speaker 1: means you might be at greater risk of things like infections. Also,

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Speaker 1: I think immunosuppressants make it slightly more likely that you

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Speaker 1: could get cancer later in your life. But you know,

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Speaker 1: if the surgery goes well, then your life will be extended,

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Speaker 1: even though you'll have these problems to deal with.

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Speaker 2: I remember, in our conversation about type one diabetes, Katrina

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Speaker 2: was saying that you could cure type one diabetes by

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Speaker 2: getting a pancreaus donation. But then you have immunosuppression, and

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Speaker 2: that's pretty hard for somebody who's very young.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and even today sometimes we don't get that immunosuppression

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Speaker 1: level completely correct. And so if you give people too

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Speaker 1: many immunosuppressive drugs, then you know, people can get horrible

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Speaker 1: diseases and then they can pass away from those diseases.

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Speaker 1: It's a very delicate balance, and so a fair bit

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Speaker 1: of your life from then on out goes towards trying

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Speaker 1: to like modulate your immune systems so that you don't

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Speaker 1: get sick, but you don't reject this organ.

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Speaker 2: And what organs are mostly the ones being donated? Is

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Speaker 2: it mostly like kidneys and livers?

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Speaker 1: Yeah, mostly kidneys, and then after that livers, and sometimes

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Speaker 1: you'll get lungs or hearts. I think kidneys are so

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Speaker 1: common because if you have a problem with your kidney,

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Speaker 1: you can stay on dialysis. So dialysis is essentially a

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Speaker 1: machine that cleans your blood, does the job that kidneys

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Speaker 1: would have done, and so you can stay alive for

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Speaker 1: years on this machine. It's not a great quality of life,

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Speaker 1: but you can wait for years for an organ to

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Speaker 1: come along, whereas it's harder to get machines that replace

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Speaker 1: our heart or our lungs or our liver. You can

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Speaker 1: do that, but it's not the kind of thing that

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Speaker 1: you can do for like years at a time. And

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Speaker 1: so kidneys are an easy ish organ to deal with

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Speaker 1: or to wait for replacement. And another way that we

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Speaker 1: get organs are through living donors, and so if you

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Speaker 1: happen to have an identical twin who you get along with,

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Speaker 1: and they're willing to give you one of their kidneys.

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Speaker 1: If you two are a blood match, which you would

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Speaker 1: be if you were identical twins, then they can donate

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Speaker 1: one of their kidneys to you and they can still

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Speaker 1: live with just one kidney, and then you get one

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Speaker 1: of their kidneys. But say you don't have an identical

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Speaker 1: twin and it turns out that your siblings and no

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Speaker 1: one in your family is a good match, then for

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Speaker 1: a while there you were kind of out of luck.

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Speaker 1: But recently this system has been created called matching markets.

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Speaker 1: So essentially, if I needed a kidney and Zach was like,

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Speaker 1: I'll give you one of mine, and he's not that nice,

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Speaker 1: I'm not sure he would, but no, I'm kidding, No,

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Speaker 1: I'm kidding, he'd give me his kidney. But so if

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Speaker 1: Zach was like, well, I'll give you my kidney, but

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Speaker 1: it turned out we weren't a match, we could enter

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Speaker 1: our names into a matching market and if somebody else

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Speaker 1: had a you know, a sibling, a boyfriend, whatever, who

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Speaker 1: was a match to me, And it turned out that

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Speaker 1: Zach was a match to them, then we could create

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Speaker 1: that loop and we could switch the kidney, so I

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Speaker 1: would get you know, that boyfriend's kidney, Zach would give

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Speaker 1: his kidney to you know, the other boyfriend, and then

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Speaker 1: we would manage to make the loop that way. And

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Speaker 1: you can get really complicated loops where people are swapping

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Speaker 1: organs and you know, I think more than twenty of

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Speaker 1: these pairs have gone through these loops. And so by

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Speaker 1: having a bunch of people who are willing to donate,

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Speaker 1: you can make a lot of matches in this system,

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Speaker 1: and so some of the matches come from that, but

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Speaker 1: those can be a little bit complicated because if everybody

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Speaker 1: owes a kidney to somebody else, then you want to

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Speaker 1: try to do those surgeries as much as possible at

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Speaker 1: the exact same time, so that nobody wakes up in

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Speaker 1: the morning and is like, never mind, I'm too nervous,

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Speaker 1: I'm not going to do it, and then one person's

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Speaker 1: gotten a kidney, and now somebody else is sort of

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Speaker 1: left in the lurch.

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Speaker 2: You want to like them all in beds in a row.

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Speaker 2: You're just like, ask the kidney.

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Speaker 1: Over to the left, right, Yeah, something like that, And

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Speaker 1: so I think two percent of the time, you do

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Speaker 1: have an instance where somebody will come in and you know,

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Speaker 1: it's not necessarily that they like they've changed their mind

283
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Speaker 1: or they got too scared to go through with it.

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Speaker 1: Sometimes it's just like, hey, actually, it turns out that

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Speaker 1: we discovered they have I don't know, some disease, and

286
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Speaker 1: so they can no longer donate that organ. And so

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Speaker 1: there's good reason for not being able to do it.

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Speaker 1: But every once in a while you get a good

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Speaker 1: Samaritan who doesn't necessarily know somebody who needs a kidney,

290
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Speaker 1: but they're just willing to donate one, and then you

291
00:14:24,680 --> 00:14:28,240
Speaker 1: can get this whole match set off and you can

292
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Speaker 1: start doing a bunch of kidney transfers between people. So

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Speaker 1: anyway there is a bunch of people who are alive

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Speaker 1: and donate their kidneys, and because we only need one,

295
00:14:36,120 --> 00:14:39,080
Speaker 1: you can do this. It happens less often with livers,

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Speaker 1: so you can live with just part of a liver,

297
00:14:41,960 --> 00:14:44,880
Speaker 1: so you could donate part of it. But this surgery

298
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Speaker 1: is a little bit more high risk, and so it's

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Speaker 1: asking a lot more than just asking someone to give

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Speaker 1: you one of their kidneys.

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Speaker 2: And what are the ethics around this because people have

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Speaker 2: these very valuable resources which can save somebody else's life.

303
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Speaker 2: But obviously you need their consent, but it feels like

304
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Speaker 2: they could all be pressured into it. It reminds me

305
00:15:02,440 --> 00:15:04,760
Speaker 2: of the questions people raise around end of life stuff.

306
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Speaker 2: Or it's like, yeah, it's great if people get to

307
00:15:06,920 --> 00:15:09,920
Speaker 2: decide when they exit, but do you want grandma to

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Speaker 2: be pressured into the grave by her nephew who needs

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Speaker 2: the inheritance? Right? Right? And so there's tricky issues.

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Speaker 1: There, aren't there, Yeah, really tricky issues. And there was

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Speaker 1: for a while, all right. So I'm pulling way back

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Speaker 1: in my memory from when I was writing soonish, I

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Speaker 1: think I'm going to get all of this right. But

314
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Speaker 1: I ran used to allow legal selling of organs, and

315
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Speaker 1: it did seem to be the case that the poor

316
00:15:33,840 --> 00:15:36,520
Speaker 1: were getting exploited, and they were often not getting paid

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Speaker 1: very much for their organs, and then when they had

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Speaker 1: trouble of their own, for example, maybe they had a

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Speaker 1: problem with their remaining kidney, they couldn't afford the care

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Speaker 1: that they needed, oh gosh, And so that system was

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Speaker 1: not working very well. There are folks who recommend, you know,

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Speaker 1: in the US, for example, you had a system where

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Speaker 1: if somebody is willing to donate their kidney, it doesn't

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Speaker 1: go to a person in particular, Like some super rich

325
00:16:01,440 --> 00:16:05,720
Speaker 1: person couldn't say I want Daniel's kidney in particular, but

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Speaker 1: Daniel could say, you know, for a million dollars, which

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Speaker 1: is about the cost of dialysis for a year. So

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Speaker 1: like you can imagine a insurance company maybe saying, all right,

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Speaker 1: we'll give Daniel a million dollars so that this other

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Speaker 1: patient of ours doesn't have to be on dialysis for

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Speaker 1: three years, and we promise that if Daniel ever has

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Speaker 1: a problem with his remaining kidney, he goes to the

333
00:16:28,800 --> 00:16:32,360
Speaker 1: top of the list and he always gets free medical

334
00:16:32,360 --> 00:16:35,920
Speaker 1: care for anything related to kidney problems. But there's this

335
00:16:36,000 --> 00:16:39,320
Speaker 1: concept of repugnance in economics, and there's some trades that

336
00:16:39,360 --> 00:16:41,880
Speaker 1: people feel comfortable with and some trades that people don't

337
00:16:41,880 --> 00:16:45,360
Speaker 1: feel comfortable with, and trading organs sort of falls into

338
00:16:45,360 --> 00:16:49,320
Speaker 1: the category of repugnant. People just kind of feel uncomfortable

339
00:16:49,320 --> 00:16:51,120
Speaker 1: about it. For the reason that you identified. There's so

340
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Speaker 1: many ways to do it that feel ethically complicated, and

341
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Speaker 1: you can absolutely imagine that people who are the most

342
00:16:57,040 --> 00:16:59,520
Speaker 1: likely to donate their organs, or people who are in

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Speaker 1: financial straits and wouldn't be doing it otherwise, but absolutely

344
00:17:03,760 --> 00:17:05,560
Speaker 1: feel like they need to do it to like, you know,

345
00:17:05,640 --> 00:17:08,520
Speaker 1: pay their bills or something. So it gets complicated. But

346
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Speaker 1: in the US you are not allowed to pay for organs.

347
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Speaker 2: And do you think it happens anyway?

348
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Speaker 1: Probably?

349
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Speaker 2: I mean, it definitely happens in the dystopian science fiction

350
00:17:17,160 --> 00:17:18,960
Speaker 2: that I read. I don't know if that means it

351
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Speaker 2: happens in reality.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, you know, when I was reading the Space

353
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Speaker 1: Settlement literature, they cited the expanse a lot as though

354
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Speaker 1: that was actually happening. So if it's happening in dystopian

355
00:17:26,560 --> 00:17:29,280
Speaker 1: science fiction, it's probably happening in real life.

356
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Speaker 2: Well, since we're talking about science fiction, why can't we

357
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Speaker 2: avoid this problem by figuring out how to grow organs ourselves?

358
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Speaker 2: Like why do you need a whole human being just

359
00:17:37,640 --> 00:17:40,000
Speaker 2: to create a human kidney. Why can't you just grow

360
00:17:40,040 --> 00:17:42,399
Speaker 2: a kidney in a vat somewhere or like three D

361
00:17:42,520 --> 00:17:44,600
Speaker 2: print a kidney or something like that.

362
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Speaker 1: Yeah, so people are working on that. So the idea

363
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Speaker 1: here is that you extract some cells from a person,

364
00:17:49,400 --> 00:17:52,480
Speaker 1: you grow up their own cells, and then you like

365
00:17:52,560 --> 00:17:54,520
Speaker 1: extrude them through a three D printer or do some

366
00:17:54,560 --> 00:17:57,560
Speaker 1: other sort of complicated technique to create an organ out

367
00:17:57,600 --> 00:17:59,959
Speaker 1: of their own cells. If this worked, you wouldn't need

368
00:18:00,080 --> 00:18:03,000
Speaker 1: to be on immunosuppressive drugs. It would be amazing. But

369
00:18:03,080 --> 00:18:08,359
Speaker 1: the problem is that our organs are exquisitely complicated, and

370
00:18:08,680 --> 00:18:12,720
Speaker 1: even just things like delivering nutrients and removing waste, which

371
00:18:12,760 --> 00:18:16,240
Speaker 1: you know we usually do with our vasculature our blood vessels,

372
00:18:16,720 --> 00:18:19,600
Speaker 1: is really hard to recreate with a three D printer,

373
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Speaker 1: like on the microscale, And so right now we're good

374
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Speaker 1: at printing what are called organoids. They're like slabs of

375
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Speaker 1: organ and so that's good for like testing out drugs

376
00:18:28,080 --> 00:18:30,879
Speaker 1: and stuff. So you know, if your liver drug kills

377
00:18:30,920 --> 00:18:33,760
Speaker 1: your little liver slab, you probably don't move on to

378
00:18:33,840 --> 00:18:36,320
Speaker 1: the stage where you're trying it out on humans. But

379
00:18:36,480 --> 00:18:39,320
Speaker 1: at the moment, it's not good enough to replace any organs.

380
00:18:39,320 --> 00:18:42,800
Speaker 1: People are working on that. There's some really amazing work

381
00:18:43,000 --> 00:18:47,199
Speaker 1: to create like vasculature out of like sinered sugar, So

382
00:18:47,280 --> 00:18:50,679
Speaker 1: you fuse the sugar so it looks like vasculature, and

383
00:18:50,680 --> 00:18:53,720
Speaker 1: then you seed it with blood vessel cells and those

384
00:18:53,720 --> 00:18:56,800
Speaker 1: blood vessel cells grow around the sugar and then you

385
00:18:56,880 --> 00:18:59,520
Speaker 1: put hot water through there and you dissolve the sugar away,

386
00:18:59,520 --> 00:19:02,120
Speaker 1: and your left with vasculature whoa, and then you can

387
00:19:02,440 --> 00:19:04,040
Speaker 1: put like liver cells around that.

388
00:19:04,200 --> 00:19:06,280
Speaker 2: But all this talk of sugar, I'm just imagining like

389
00:19:06,280 --> 00:19:08,200
Speaker 2: a cotton candy kidney or something.

390
00:19:09,359 --> 00:19:12,040
Speaker 1: Yum. Oh, we got to we kind of got to cannibalism.

391
00:19:12,280 --> 00:19:13,080
Speaker 1: I think you know.

392
00:19:15,040 --> 00:19:15,960
Speaker 2: I tricked you into it.

393
00:19:16,160 --> 00:19:18,960
Speaker 1: That's all right, that's right, Okay, So let's take a break,

394
00:19:19,000 --> 00:19:20,680
Speaker 1: and then when we come back from the break, we'll

395
00:19:20,720 --> 00:19:25,240
Speaker 1: talk about xeno transplantation, where you're forgetting about human organs

396
00:19:25,280 --> 00:19:27,920
Speaker 1: altogether and instead we're just seeing if we can use

397
00:19:28,000 --> 00:19:52,840
Speaker 1: organs from other animals. Okay, So, xeno transplantation, which is

398
00:19:52,880 --> 00:19:56,200
Speaker 1: when you use organs from other animals in human bodies,

399
00:19:56,680 --> 00:19:59,480
Speaker 1: has a pretty long history. We're going to stick with

400
00:19:59,520 --> 00:20:02,080
Speaker 1: the history in the twentieth century. And you know, I

401
00:20:02,080 --> 00:20:05,399
Speaker 1: should say that the history of this field is august

402
00:20:05,600 --> 00:20:08,719
Speaker 1: and amazing, and the scientific work that's been done is fantastic.

403
00:20:08,920 --> 00:20:11,720
Speaker 1: But I am going to start with the guy who

404
00:20:11,840 --> 00:20:16,800
Speaker 1: was implanting testicles for anti aging, because I'm me and

405
00:20:16,840 --> 00:20:18,399
Speaker 1: that's obviously where I had to start.

406
00:20:18,520 --> 00:20:21,800
Speaker 2: But you're saying these experiments are maybe not representative of

407
00:20:21,840 --> 00:20:23,760
Speaker 2: the scientific calimber of the whole field.

408
00:20:23,920 --> 00:20:26,080
Speaker 1: I mean, it was pretty representative of science in the

409
00:20:26,160 --> 00:20:28,159
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties. But you know, I don't want you to

410
00:20:28,240 --> 00:20:30,359
Speaker 1: judge the whole field based on this story I'm about

411
00:20:30,359 --> 00:20:32,160
Speaker 1: to tell, all right, tell us the story, all right.

412
00:20:32,160 --> 00:20:35,800
Speaker 1: So Sergey Varnoff in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties,

413
00:20:35,840 --> 00:20:38,680
Speaker 1: he was doing these experiments. He was a Russian emigray

414
00:20:38,800 --> 00:20:42,960
Speaker 1: living in Paris, and he was implanting slices of chimp

415
00:20:43,040 --> 00:20:48,880
Speaker 1: and baboon testicles into human males as an anti aging thing.

416
00:20:49,240 --> 00:20:51,280
Speaker 2: Where into human males, like.

417
00:20:51,320 --> 00:20:53,480
Speaker 1: Near the testicles, it would be like you'd get a

418
00:20:53,520 --> 00:21:00,000
Speaker 1: little slice of chimp nard behind yours and sorry everybody.

419
00:21:00,440 --> 00:21:02,919
Speaker 1: And there were some people who reported afterwards that they

420
00:21:03,080 --> 00:21:07,159
Speaker 1: felt more virile and alive, and I suspect that that

421
00:21:07,359 --> 00:21:11,920
Speaker 1: was entirely placebo effect. And they're lucky they didn't get

422
00:21:12,000 --> 00:21:15,520
Speaker 1: massive infections in their testicles from these foreign cells being

423
00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:19,159
Speaker 1: placed in that so delicate of an area.

424
00:21:19,200 --> 00:21:21,199
Speaker 2: But were they like wired up with blood vessels and

425
00:21:21,200 --> 00:21:23,040
Speaker 2: stuff so they could live or it was just like

426
00:21:23,080 --> 00:21:24,160
Speaker 2: a chunk of dead.

427
00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:26,080
Speaker 1: Flesh yeah, it was a chunk of dead flesh that

428
00:21:26,160 --> 00:21:29,320
Speaker 1: was definitely going to die, super gross. It was not

429
00:21:29,359 --> 00:21:31,879
Speaker 1: going to be like producing more testosterone or anything like

430
00:21:31,920 --> 00:21:33,720
Speaker 1: that the way they had done it. And if you

431
00:21:33,760 --> 00:21:36,159
Speaker 1: went to the US, there was like a charlatan who

432
00:21:36,200 --> 00:21:38,240
Speaker 1: I believe he was pretending to be a medical doctor,

433
00:21:38,280 --> 00:21:42,520
Speaker 1: and he was giving folks testicles from like super viral goats.

434
00:21:42,880 --> 00:21:45,000
Speaker 2: This is like zombie goat testicles. This is not good.

435
00:21:45,040 --> 00:21:47,720
Speaker 2: I don't understand why anybody would say yes to this.

436
00:21:48,400 --> 00:21:49,920
Speaker 1: So, I mean, I don't feel like this is a

437
00:21:49,960 --> 00:21:53,080
Speaker 1: metaphor we need to double down on. But I would say,

438
00:21:53,080 --> 00:21:56,720
Speaker 1: these goat testicles aren't like coming back to life inside

439
00:21:56,800 --> 00:21:59,320
Speaker 1: of this human, you know. I think they're just like

440
00:21:59,640 --> 00:22:03,000
Speaker 1: they're they're in there and they decay away and if

441
00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:05,760
Speaker 1: you're lucky, it won't cause a massive infection, right, and

442
00:22:05,800 --> 00:22:08,439
Speaker 1: that's the best case scenario. All right. So then this

443
00:22:08,480 --> 00:22:10,600
Speaker 1: got dropped for a while because this wasn't really working out.

444
00:22:11,119 --> 00:22:15,200
Speaker 1: In the nineteen sixties, we try transplanting chimpanzees and bonobo

445
00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:19,560
Speaker 1: kidneys into humans directly. One woman lived with the chimpanzee

446
00:22:19,600 --> 00:22:21,960
Speaker 1: kidney for about nine months wow, which was a pretty

447
00:22:22,000 --> 00:22:24,639
Speaker 1: long time to have your life extended. But in general

448
00:22:24,720 --> 00:22:28,960
Speaker 1: these surgeries don't work because human immune systems reject these

449
00:22:29,040 --> 00:22:31,879
Speaker 1: foreign organs, and so some people the rejection takes a

450
00:22:31,920 --> 00:22:35,440
Speaker 1: little longer, others it happens more quickly. But it becomes

451
00:22:35,440 --> 00:22:40,120
Speaker 1: clear that just straight up implantation of kidney and banobo

452
00:22:40,280 --> 00:22:43,080
Speaker 1: organs into a human is not going to solve our problems.

453
00:22:43,200 --> 00:22:46,240
Speaker 2: Well, we heard earlier that not even all human kidneys work. Right,

454
00:22:46,280 --> 00:22:47,879
Speaker 2: if I need a transplant, I can't just get a

455
00:22:47,960 --> 00:22:50,919
Speaker 2: random human. I need a specific human that's probably not

456
00:22:50,960 --> 00:22:54,080
Speaker 2: going to trigger my immune system. So that makes it

457
00:22:54,160 --> 00:22:56,840
Speaker 2: sound very unlikely that any chimp would work. But when

458
00:22:56,840 --> 00:22:59,160
Speaker 2: they do this, do they like choose a chimp that's

459
00:22:59,280 --> 00:23:01,199
Speaker 2: less likely to trigger an immune system, and do you

460
00:23:01,200 --> 00:23:04,000
Speaker 2: have like a chimp match. You know, some chimps were

461
00:23:04,000 --> 00:23:05,400
Speaker 2: better for donating kidneys.

462
00:23:05,520 --> 00:23:08,359
Speaker 1: So at this point we didn't really understand blood types,

463
00:23:08,520 --> 00:23:11,040
Speaker 1: and so we were just kind of hoping that chimpanzees

464
00:23:11,080 --> 00:23:13,600
Speaker 1: were closely related enough to humans that this would work.

465
00:23:13,880 --> 00:23:16,199
Speaker 1: It was a little bit after this where we started

466
00:23:16,240 --> 00:23:19,479
Speaker 1: to figure out that oh, hey, even within species, like

467
00:23:19,480 --> 00:23:22,439
Speaker 1: with dogs, if you transfer organs from one dog to another,

468
00:23:22,760 --> 00:23:25,720
Speaker 1: sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't, and it took a

469
00:23:25,720 --> 00:23:28,360
Speaker 1: while for us to figure out that that all depended

470
00:23:28,400 --> 00:23:31,280
Speaker 1: on blood types. And so once we figured that out,

471
00:23:31,320 --> 00:23:33,360
Speaker 1: I think it was in dogs. I read this great

472
00:23:33,359 --> 00:23:36,720
Speaker 1: book called Spare about the history of organ transplantation. They

473
00:23:36,720 --> 00:23:39,280
Speaker 1: talk about blood type and how we figured that stuff

474
00:23:39,280 --> 00:23:42,159
Speaker 1: out in more detail if anybody's interested. But once we

475
00:23:42,240 --> 00:23:44,439
Speaker 1: figured it out in humans, we realized, Okay, so this

476
00:23:44,480 --> 00:23:47,440
Speaker 1: isn't going to work with chimpanzees. They're two distantly related,

477
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:50,080
Speaker 1: same with bonobos. Even with humans, you need to figure

478
00:23:50,080 --> 00:23:52,640
Speaker 1: out blood types. But I told you at the start

479
00:23:52,640 --> 00:23:55,920
Speaker 1: of the episode that we've made some progress in zeno transplantation,

480
00:23:56,560 --> 00:23:59,040
Speaker 1: and the way that we've done that is by genetically

481
00:23:59,080 --> 00:24:02,639
Speaker 1: engineering pigs so that they look more human.

482
00:24:03,080 --> 00:24:06,439
Speaker 2: That's really interesting, Kelly. I wouldn't choose pigs necessarily. Tell me,

483
00:24:06,520 --> 00:24:09,520
Speaker 2: why would we choose pigs to be our organ farmers.

484
00:24:09,640 --> 00:24:15,040
Speaker 1: That's such a great question, Daniel. So chimpanzees and bonobos

485
00:24:15,040 --> 00:24:17,240
Speaker 1: are more closely related to us, so they seem like

486
00:24:17,240 --> 00:24:20,160
Speaker 1: a more obvious choice. But they've got a couple problems.

487
00:24:20,200 --> 00:24:22,280
Speaker 1: So first of all, they're smaller than us, so their

488
00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:25,479
Speaker 1: organs are smaller. And that was a problem in some

489
00:24:25,560 --> 00:24:28,360
Speaker 1: of the surgeries that were tried earlier. The chimp kidneys

490
00:24:28,400 --> 00:24:32,679
Speaker 1: were too small, chimp hearts too small. But additionally, people

491
00:24:33,119 --> 00:24:38,480
Speaker 1: feel much more uncomfortable about euthanizing chimpanzees and bonobos because

492
00:24:38,480 --> 00:24:40,720
Speaker 1: they're more closely related to us, So there was this

493
00:24:40,800 --> 00:24:43,640
Speaker 1: idea that they would be more of an ethical backlash.

494
00:24:43,760 --> 00:24:46,640
Speaker 1: But perhaps even more than that, chimpanzees and bonobos take

495
00:24:46,680 --> 00:24:49,440
Speaker 1: a long time to reach sexual maturity, and then they

496
00:24:49,440 --> 00:24:52,360
Speaker 1: only have a few babies at a time, so you'd

497
00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:54,720
Speaker 1: have to scale up in a way that would be

498
00:24:54,800 --> 00:24:57,000
Speaker 1: very difficult, and we've never really done before to have

499
00:24:57,160 --> 00:25:00,240
Speaker 1: enough chimpanzees and bonobos to meet the knee.

500
00:25:00,440 --> 00:25:03,000
Speaker 2: You're talking about chimped farming, right. You're saying that it's

501
00:25:03,040 --> 00:25:05,760
Speaker 2: hard to get a big population. Yeah, wow, So you

502
00:25:05,800 --> 00:25:08,679
Speaker 2: want something that grows quickly and has babies young so

503
00:25:08,720 --> 00:25:12,280
Speaker 2: that you can get that exponential factor go it early.

504
00:25:12,520 --> 00:25:15,080
Speaker 1: Yikes, right, and your face is telling me that you

505
00:25:15,160 --> 00:25:18,520
Speaker 1: feel uncomfortable about this suggestion, which almost everybody else did.

506
00:25:19,160 --> 00:25:21,480
Speaker 1: The final nail in the coffin is that those more

507
00:25:21,480 --> 00:25:24,879
Speaker 1: closely related organisms are more likely to have diseases that

508
00:25:24,920 --> 00:25:27,120
Speaker 1: could jump from them to us, making this a little

509
00:25:27,119 --> 00:25:31,160
Speaker 1: bit scarier. So pigs are an organism that we already

510
00:25:31,200 --> 00:25:35,720
Speaker 1: know how to grow in like sort of production level. Yeah,

511
00:25:36,200 --> 00:25:39,920
Speaker 1: so they reach sexual maturity when they're young, they have

512
00:25:40,400 --> 00:25:43,520
Speaker 1: lots of babies. We know how to keep them alive.

513
00:25:43,680 --> 00:25:46,960
Speaker 1: We understand these organisms fairly well. We've got like their

514
00:25:47,000 --> 00:25:51,720
Speaker 1: genome and their organs are like fairly similar in size

515
00:25:51,760 --> 00:25:54,160
Speaker 1: to humans in a lot of ways, and so we've

516
00:25:54,200 --> 00:25:57,200
Speaker 1: sort of settled on pigs as our best bet as

517
00:25:57,280 --> 00:26:00,680
Speaker 1: starting material to tinker with to make organs to keep

518
00:26:00,720 --> 00:26:01,160
Speaker 1: us alive.

519
00:26:01,440 --> 00:26:03,760
Speaker 2: I don't know if that logic really holds. It's like,

520
00:26:04,359 --> 00:26:07,080
Speaker 2: this is ethically dubious, so let's do it on a

521
00:26:07,119 --> 00:26:11,240
Speaker 2: creature we're already mistreating ethically, right, Like we already treat

522
00:26:11,240 --> 00:26:14,320
Speaker 2: pigs as if they're objects, and so therefore it's okay

523
00:26:14,359 --> 00:26:16,679
Speaker 2: to treat them as objects, where it's not okay to

524
00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:20,680
Speaker 2: treat chimps as objects because we don't do that already, yes,

525
00:26:20,800 --> 00:26:22,600
Speaker 2: Or is it just about being closer to us? Is

526
00:26:22,600 --> 00:26:25,920
Speaker 2: this another like speciesism thing? Like how much of humanity's

527
00:26:25,960 --> 00:26:27,760
Speaker 2: rights do you get? Chimps get a little bit and

528
00:26:27,800 --> 00:26:28,920
Speaker 2: pigs get almost none?

529
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:31,120
Speaker 1: Yes, I mean I think everything that you just said

530
00:26:31,280 --> 00:26:34,240
Speaker 1: is uncomfortable but true. But you've told me in a

531
00:26:34,240 --> 00:26:37,600
Speaker 1: previous episode that you have accepted that humans are just

532
00:26:37,640 --> 00:26:39,920
Speaker 1: sort of like a level above the other animals and

533
00:26:39,960 --> 00:26:43,040
Speaker 1: you are okay with eating them. And I feel like

534
00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:46,640
Speaker 1: you're not consistently applying that philosophy right now.

535
00:26:46,960 --> 00:26:51,480
Speaker 2: No, you're right, because consistently applying that philosophy means arbitrarily

536
00:26:51,560 --> 00:26:55,240
Speaker 2: labeling humans as better. And the point you just made

537
00:26:55,240 --> 00:26:58,399
Speaker 2: with chimps and bonobos is that there's a spectrum, right

538
00:26:58,520 --> 00:27:00,680
Speaker 2: and like where do you draw the line? And now

539
00:27:00,720 --> 00:27:03,280
Speaker 2: you have to have a fuzzy delineation of how much

540
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:05,959
Speaker 2: of this like special glowy rights that you put on

541
00:27:05,960 --> 00:27:08,320
Speaker 2: people and how much do you not? And what if

542
00:27:08,320 --> 00:27:10,840
Speaker 2: somebody had a half pig half human hybrid, what would

543
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:12,960
Speaker 2: they get? You know? And so yes, I am not

544
00:27:13,000 --> 00:27:16,240
Speaker 2: prepared to answer these questions. My philosophical framework here is

545
00:27:16,320 --> 00:27:17,120
Speaker 2: quite naive.

546
00:27:18,680 --> 00:27:21,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think a lot of this stuff is complicated.

547
00:27:21,400 --> 00:27:24,280
Speaker 1: Like you know, if you go to some countries they

548
00:27:24,320 --> 00:27:26,920
Speaker 1: eat guinea pigs and it's like nothing. But if you

549
00:27:27,400 --> 00:27:29,760
Speaker 1: told a child in the US that you were gonna

550
00:27:29,800 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 1: have guinea pig for dinner, they'd probably be very upset

551
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:35,439
Speaker 1: because we think of those animals as pets and not food.

552
00:27:35,880 --> 00:27:37,320
Speaker 1: And so I think a lot of it depends on

553
00:27:37,400 --> 00:27:39,960
Speaker 1: what you grew up feeling comfortable with. Like I know

554
00:27:40,040 --> 00:27:43,040
Speaker 1: some people who won't eat bunnies because they're too cute,

555
00:27:43,160 --> 00:27:46,439
Speaker 1: but they will eat pigs because they think they're not cute.

556
00:27:46,440 --> 00:27:48,479
Speaker 1: But I think pigs are cute, and I think anyway,

557
00:27:48,560 --> 00:27:51,400
Speaker 1: humans have very complicated feelings. But pigs are an organism

558
00:27:51,400 --> 00:27:53,960
Speaker 1: that I think a lot of people have decided is

559
00:27:54,000 --> 00:27:57,000
Speaker 1: okay to eat, although I know that there are you know,

560
00:27:57,080 --> 00:27:59,280
Speaker 1: cultures and religions for which that's not the case.

561
00:27:59,359 --> 00:28:01,280
Speaker 2: And at least we're not committing any more crimes. We're

562
00:28:01,280 --> 00:28:04,720
Speaker 2: committing more crimes on each individual, but we're not committing

563
00:28:04,720 --> 00:28:07,720
Speaker 2: crimes on more individuals. We're already raising these folks for meat,

564
00:28:08,119 --> 00:28:10,120
Speaker 2: and so might as well harvest their organs.

565
00:28:10,359 --> 00:28:15,040
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not that easy actually, So in the US

566
00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:18,840
Speaker 1: we're very uncomfortable with eating genetically modified foods, and in

567
00:28:18,880 --> 00:28:22,600
Speaker 1: the European Union, I think it may even be completely prohibited.

568
00:28:23,119 --> 00:28:26,080
Speaker 1: And so I don't actually know if these pigs, after

569
00:28:26,119 --> 00:28:30,760
Speaker 1: having their organs harvested, would be sent out to become bacon.

570
00:28:30,880 --> 00:28:34,639
Speaker 1: For example, I will say that if the companies that

571
00:28:34,720 --> 00:28:37,160
Speaker 1: made these pigs said, you know, we're going to sell

572
00:28:37,200 --> 00:28:41,040
Speaker 1: pork from these animals that we used their organs for transplants,

573
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:44,960
Speaker 1: and it's safe we eat it ourselves, then that would

574
00:28:44,960 --> 00:28:46,840
Speaker 1: be the pork that I would buy. But I don't

575
00:28:46,880 --> 00:28:49,000
Speaker 1: actually know that that's how it would play out, all right, So.

576
00:28:48,960 --> 00:28:51,520
Speaker 2: Then the key concept is that these aren't just normal

577
00:28:51,560 --> 00:28:54,280
Speaker 2: farm pigs. These are pigs have been genetically engineered to

578
00:28:54,360 --> 00:28:57,920
Speaker 2: make fair organs better for transplanting into humans. How do

579
00:28:58,000 --> 00:29:00,480
Speaker 2: you do that? Do you just like randomly breed pigs

580
00:29:00,680 --> 00:29:02,719
Speaker 2: or can we actually go in and tinker with the DNA?

581
00:29:03,000 --> 00:29:05,160
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're gonna have to tinker with the DNA

582
00:29:05,200 --> 00:29:07,200
Speaker 1: because if you don't tinker with the DNA, you're always

583
00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:09,960
Speaker 1: going to have this immune system problem. And so recently

584
00:29:10,160 --> 00:29:13,120
Speaker 1: we got this major advance in tinkering with DNA. I'm

585
00:29:13,120 --> 00:29:15,000
Speaker 1: sure just about everybody has heard of this. This is

586
00:29:15,120 --> 00:29:19,320
Speaker 1: the CRISPER CAST nine system. So CRISPER stands for clustered

587
00:29:19,400 --> 00:29:23,680
Speaker 1: regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. I'm sure everybody's going to

588
00:29:23,760 --> 00:29:27,920
Speaker 1: remember that the women who found this Jennifer Dudna and

589
00:29:27,960 --> 00:29:32,240
Speaker 1: Emmanuel Chapatier. What you do French stuff? Right? How do

590
00:29:32,280 --> 00:29:32,960
Speaker 1: you say that name?

591
00:29:33,120 --> 00:29:34,040
Speaker 2: That sounded pretty good.

592
00:29:34,120 --> 00:29:36,480
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, fantastic. You know I've I've been working on

593
00:29:36,520 --> 00:29:38,040
Speaker 1: French and du a lingo.

594
00:29:37,760 --> 00:29:38,560
Speaker 2: To your microbiome.

595
00:29:38,680 --> 00:29:41,200
Speaker 1: Okay. So they got the Noball Prize for this work.

596
00:29:41,280 --> 00:29:46,920
Speaker 1: And so essentially this system is snagged from bacteria's immune system.

597
00:29:47,160 --> 00:29:51,360
Speaker 1: So the way this works is that bacteria remember, not

598
00:29:51,480 --> 00:29:53,600
Speaker 1: the same way that we remember things, but they remember

599
00:29:53,680 --> 00:29:57,280
Speaker 1: a virus that has infected them by essentially, when they

600
00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:00,680
Speaker 1: find that virus, they grab a piece of the virus's

601
00:30:00,720 --> 00:30:04,080
Speaker 1: genetic material and they stick it into their own genome.

602
00:30:04,480 --> 00:30:07,000
Speaker 1: And now whenever that viral sequence is found in their

603
00:30:07,000 --> 00:30:10,280
Speaker 1: body again, Crisper goes and cuts it to break it up.

604
00:30:10,360 --> 00:30:12,480
Speaker 2: So it's like a little bacterial immune system that like

605
00:30:12,520 --> 00:30:15,480
Speaker 2: a library of viral codes that they've seen before that

606
00:30:15,520 --> 00:30:15,840
Speaker 2: they're like.

607
00:30:15,840 --> 00:30:18,800
Speaker 1: This is bad, kill it, right, So you essentially have

608
00:30:19,000 --> 00:30:23,600
Speaker 1: a system that can recognize certain sequences of genetic code

609
00:30:23,920 --> 00:30:25,600
Speaker 1: and then it goes in there and it cuts it.

610
00:30:25,680 --> 00:30:28,800
Speaker 1: And so it's like targeted molecular scissors. And so we

611
00:30:28,920 --> 00:30:31,680
Speaker 1: can use this. We can say Okay, here's a pig,

612
00:30:32,000 --> 00:30:34,080
Speaker 1: and here is the code for a gene that we

613
00:30:34,120 --> 00:30:36,840
Speaker 1: want to tinker with. And so you can tell Crisper like,

614
00:30:37,040 --> 00:30:39,240
Speaker 1: go in there and cut it at the spots where

615
00:30:39,280 --> 00:30:40,680
Speaker 1: we want you to cut it, and now you can

616
00:30:40,760 --> 00:30:44,880
Speaker 1: deactivate a gene or when it cuts a gene. The

617
00:30:44,920 --> 00:30:47,960
Speaker 1: way the DNA responds is it repairs itself by sort

618
00:30:48,000 --> 00:30:50,240
Speaker 1: of joining the two ends back together after you've made

619
00:30:50,240 --> 00:30:53,320
Speaker 1: the cut. But you can before it joins itself back

620
00:30:53,320 --> 00:30:55,640
Speaker 1: together sort of slip in a new gene or some

621
00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:58,080
Speaker 1: new genetic code. And so in that way you can

622
00:30:58,480 --> 00:31:02,239
Speaker 1: both remove things or add things in specific locations that

623
00:31:02,280 --> 00:31:02,680
Speaker 1: you want.

624
00:31:03,000 --> 00:31:06,360
Speaker 2: Man, biological engineering is incredible. I can't believe this ever

625
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:09,280
Speaker 2: works because it's not like I imagine you'd need like

626
00:31:09,440 --> 00:31:12,200
Speaker 2: tiny little tweezers and you're like moving it into place

627
00:31:12,320 --> 00:31:14,000
Speaker 2: just right. But you can't do that right. You just

628
00:31:14,040 --> 00:31:16,680
Speaker 2: have like a test tube with solution and you jiggle

629
00:31:16,720 --> 00:31:18,960
Speaker 2: it and you hope everything lines up. It's crazy.

630
00:31:19,200 --> 00:31:21,760
Speaker 1: It's so crazy. I cannot believe that it works, but

631
00:31:21,920 --> 00:31:25,440
Speaker 1: it does. It's absolutely amazing. But so the next step

632
00:31:25,720 --> 00:31:28,560
Speaker 1: from there I found sort of confusing, and I was

633
00:31:28,640 --> 00:31:31,560
Speaker 1: reading the scientific papers I wasn't following, So I wrote

634
00:31:31,720 --> 00:31:36,160
Speaker 1: e Genesis, which is a company that makes genetically modified

635
00:31:36,200 --> 00:31:38,440
Speaker 1: pig organs in addition to making a bunch of other stuff.

636
00:31:38,640 --> 00:31:40,840
Speaker 2: This is non science fiction. They exist in our world.

637
00:31:40,960 --> 00:31:42,840
Speaker 1: E Genesis exists in our world. That's right.

638
00:31:42,960 --> 00:31:43,160
Speaker 3: Wow.

639
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:45,720
Speaker 1: And I wrote them. I wrote for you know, their

640
00:31:45,760 --> 00:31:48,320
Speaker 1: media contacts or whatever. And I was like, I don't

641
00:31:48,320 --> 00:31:51,120
Speaker 1: speak molecular biology. I can't figure out exactly what was

642
00:31:51,120 --> 00:31:53,600
Speaker 1: done here. Can you connect me with someone who can

643
00:31:53,720 --> 00:31:56,840
Speaker 1: explain it? And so they connected me to Wenning Chin,

644
00:31:57,240 --> 00:31:59,959
Speaker 1: who was the senior author on the Nature paper described

645
00:32:00,120 --> 00:32:03,719
Speaker 1: how they made these genetically modified pigs amazing. She was

646
00:32:03,800 --> 00:32:06,880
Speaker 1: so fantastic to talk to and so excited about this research.

647
00:32:07,240 --> 00:32:10,880
Speaker 1: So she told me that there's three different classes of

648
00:32:11,400 --> 00:32:12,760
Speaker 1: genetic changes that they made.

649
00:32:13,480 --> 00:32:15,680
Speaker 2: So first, wait, hold on, did you talk to her

650
00:32:15,840 --> 00:32:18,400
Speaker 2: and see a video or just over the phone over zoom?

651
00:32:18,480 --> 00:32:21,160
Speaker 2: And did you see her only like you know, chest

652
00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:24,560
Speaker 2: up or full body chest up? Okay, So she could

653
00:32:24,560 --> 00:32:26,560
Speaker 2: have had like you know, pig legs under the table

654
00:32:26,600 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 2: and you wouldn't even know.

655
00:32:27,640 --> 00:32:29,640
Speaker 1: I had no idea where you were going with this.

656
00:32:31,520 --> 00:32:33,440
Speaker 2: I mean, you're talking to somebody at a company who's

657
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:37,760
Speaker 2: like doing cutting edge like human animal weirdness. So like,

658
00:32:37,800 --> 00:32:39,080
Speaker 2: I mean, you're not curious.

659
00:32:39,400 --> 00:32:42,080
Speaker 1: I had no reason to believe that she was anything

660
00:32:42,160 --> 00:32:46,479
Speaker 1: other than a you know, woman with no animal parts,

661
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:52,200
Speaker 1: and she was wonderful. So all right, okay, they had

662
00:32:52,240 --> 00:32:54,880
Speaker 1: made three different classes of edits. The first thing they

663
00:32:54,880 --> 00:32:56,800
Speaker 1: did was they removed all the pervs.

664
00:32:56,640 --> 00:32:57,880
Speaker 2: The what's pervs.

665
00:32:58,160 --> 00:33:04,479
Speaker 1: The pervs. Pervs are poor sign anddogenous retroviruses. So the

666
00:33:04,920 --> 00:33:08,280
Speaker 1: pig genome has some viruses in it, and most of

667
00:33:08,320 --> 00:33:11,600
Speaker 1: the time those viruses are either helpful. For example, they

668
00:33:11,640 --> 00:33:14,080
Speaker 1: help with things like placenta formation, and we're going to

669
00:33:14,120 --> 00:33:16,520
Speaker 1: have cap Ohannan on the show in the future to

670
00:33:16,560 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 1: talk about how that works. But they also have some

671
00:33:19,840 --> 00:33:23,960
Speaker 1: other viruses that are able to start replicating themselves at

672
00:33:24,040 --> 00:33:26,160
Speaker 1: like sort of random times that we don't really understand

673
00:33:26,200 --> 00:33:28,680
Speaker 1: how they choose when they want to start replicating themselves.

674
00:33:28,880 --> 00:33:33,240
Speaker 1: And we've put these viral particles in plates with human

675
00:33:33,280 --> 00:33:35,840
Speaker 1: cells and it looks like they can infect those human cells.

676
00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:37,760
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you.

677
00:33:37,800 --> 00:33:40,239
Speaker 1: Really don't want to get a pig organ and then

678
00:33:40,320 --> 00:33:43,120
Speaker 1: discover that you are filled with pervs and that you

679
00:33:43,200 --> 00:33:44,680
Speaker 1: are going to die from those viruses.

680
00:33:44,840 --> 00:33:46,720
Speaker 2: Nobody wants a purview organ for sure.

681
00:33:46,840 --> 00:33:50,600
Speaker 1: No, no, absolutely not. No. There's so much material we

682
00:33:50,640 --> 00:33:53,440
Speaker 1: could work with here, but anyway, we won't get to

683
00:33:53,440 --> 00:33:57,000
Speaker 1: too gross. And so they cut out the poor sign

684
00:33:57,080 --> 00:34:01,120
Speaker 1: anddogenous retroviruses to make it so that wouldn't be a problem.

685
00:34:01,200 --> 00:34:03,440
Speaker 1: They had to be pretty clever about how they did

686
00:34:03,440 --> 00:34:05,680
Speaker 1: the cutting, but they made it so that they feel

687
00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:07,960
Speaker 1: like this is no longer a risk to people who

688
00:34:07,960 --> 00:34:11,160
Speaker 1: get these organs. Then the next thing they had to

689
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:16,080
Speaker 1: do was remove stuff on the pig cells that our

690
00:34:16,120 --> 00:34:19,160
Speaker 1: immune system could use to say, hey, that doesn't belong

691
00:34:19,200 --> 00:34:22,239
Speaker 1: to me. So pig cells have some sugars on them,

692
00:34:22,719 --> 00:34:26,080
Speaker 1: and that's because pigs and humans, you know, diverge something

693
00:34:26,120 --> 00:34:28,880
Speaker 1: like eighty million years ago. We've gone on very separate paths,

694
00:34:28,920 --> 00:34:31,680
Speaker 1: and so our cells look different. And so what they

695
00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:34,440
Speaker 1: did was they went in and they removed these sugars

696
00:34:34,480 --> 00:34:38,440
Speaker 1: from the cells. They essentially depigged these cells so that

697
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:40,480
Speaker 1: our immune system would be less likely to see it

698
00:34:40,520 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 1: and be like, you don't belong here. And then the

699
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:46,759
Speaker 1: next set of changes that they made were essentially humanizing

700
00:34:46,800 --> 00:34:50,080
Speaker 1: the pig cells. So now on the cells they added

701
00:34:50,160 --> 00:34:53,000
Speaker 1: stuff to make them look more human again so that

702
00:34:53,040 --> 00:34:55,600
Speaker 1: the immune system wouldn't respond. And so my question when

703
00:34:55,640 --> 00:34:58,600
Speaker 1: she told me about that was, well, if we have

704
00:34:58,640 --> 00:35:02,040
Speaker 1: to worry about our immune s system attacking cells with

705
00:35:02,200 --> 00:35:05,640
Speaker 1: pig sugars, why don't you have to worry about the

706
00:35:05,680 --> 00:35:08,359
Speaker 1: pig bodies attacking the human sugars when the pigs are

707
00:35:08,360 --> 00:35:09,280
Speaker 1: growing these organs.

708
00:35:09,360 --> 00:35:11,839
Speaker 2: That was my question too. Yeah, well, but it's such a.

709
00:35:11,800 --> 00:35:15,000
Speaker 1: Cool answer, and I should have known the answer as

710
00:35:15,000 --> 00:35:18,120
Speaker 1: someone who works sort of adjacent to immunology. But anyway,

711
00:35:18,160 --> 00:35:21,839
Speaker 1: the answer is that if you are a fetus, the

712
00:35:21,880 --> 00:35:24,960
Speaker 1: things that you're exposed to when you're a fetus are

713
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 1: what your body expects. And so if you grow a

714
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:32,680
Speaker 1: pig from the starting point, like as an embryo, with

715
00:35:32,920 --> 00:35:36,400
Speaker 1: these human sugars, it's immune system is like, oh sweet,

716
00:35:36,400 --> 00:35:38,799
Speaker 1: these sugars belong here, and it doesn't attack them.

717
00:35:38,920 --> 00:35:42,120
Speaker 2: There's no ingrained knowledge in the immune system is just

718
00:35:42,239 --> 00:35:44,360
Speaker 2: trained on examples from when your fetus. It's like a

719
00:35:44,400 --> 00:35:45,320
Speaker 2: blank neural network.

720
00:35:45,360 --> 00:35:49,640
Speaker 1: That's right, that's amazing. Yeah, And so like if fraternal twins,

721
00:35:49,640 --> 00:35:52,160
Speaker 1: so twins that aren't exactly identical, like if they share

722
00:35:52,200 --> 00:35:55,239
Speaker 1: a blood supply, you're more likely to be able to

723
00:35:55,280 --> 00:35:59,719
Speaker 1: do transplants between them because they had that stuff in

724
00:35:59,760 --> 00:36:03,400
Speaker 1: the vironments, so their immune systems less likely to attack it. Incredible. Okay,

725
00:36:03,480 --> 00:36:06,439
Speaker 1: so those are the three changes that were made. Let's

726
00:36:06,440 --> 00:36:08,279
Speaker 1: take a break, and when we come back, I'll tell

727
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 1: you about what they did once they had crispired all

728
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:34,399
Speaker 1: of that stuff into existence. All right. So what Egenesis

729
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:37,160
Speaker 1: did is they collected cells from the ears of one

730
00:36:37,239 --> 00:36:41,200
Speaker 1: hundred different pigs. They ran their crisper magic to make

731
00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:43,919
Speaker 1: all of those three different classes of changes we talked about.

732
00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:47,080
Speaker 1: They ended up making sixty nine changes total. They took

733
00:36:47,080 --> 00:36:52,000
Speaker 1: an egg from pigs, they pulled out the nucleus in

734
00:36:52,080 --> 00:36:55,880
Speaker 1: the egg, and they put in the genetic material that

735
00:36:55,920 --> 00:36:58,880
Speaker 1: they had just created so with all of the changes,

736
00:36:59,440 --> 00:37:02,040
Speaker 1: and then they grew that up into a pig.

737
00:37:02,080 --> 00:37:05,080
Speaker 2: All right. So because before we're talking about genetic information

738
00:37:05,160 --> 00:37:07,200
Speaker 2: sort of in the abstract. It's just like you have

739
00:37:07,400 --> 00:37:09,440
Speaker 2: DNA in a vial, but it's not part of a cell.

740
00:37:09,800 --> 00:37:11,840
Speaker 2: You're just like writing the code. Now you got to

741
00:37:11,880 --> 00:37:14,640
Speaker 2: load that code into the hardware, so like the whole

742
00:37:14,640 --> 00:37:15,600
Speaker 2: pig cell runs it.

743
00:37:15,800 --> 00:37:18,759
Speaker 1: Yes, cool, And so they did that, and so now

744
00:37:18,800 --> 00:37:23,720
Speaker 1: they have pigs that are adults and are growing these organs,

745
00:37:24,400 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 1: and they have all the genetic changes that they put

746
00:37:27,000 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 1: in there. And now when these pigs have babies, they

747
00:37:29,560 --> 00:37:32,560
Speaker 1: will also have these genetic changes. So now you have

748
00:37:32,800 --> 00:37:36,719
Speaker 1: lines of pigs that are making organs that should be

749
00:37:36,760 --> 00:37:38,000
Speaker 1: able to go into humans.

750
00:37:38,040 --> 00:37:40,640
Speaker 2: All right, So the first pig is an adult as

751
00:37:40,680 --> 00:37:44,920
Speaker 2: the normal like piggy pervy organs, but you've put cells

752
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:48,680
Speaker 2: into it that have the edited DNA, and its children

753
00:37:49,160 --> 00:37:51,480
Speaker 2: will have that edited DNA and they will grow up

754
00:37:51,600 --> 00:37:54,319
Speaker 2: and generate the organs without the pervy bits. Is that right?

755
00:37:54,440 --> 00:37:54,640
Speaker 3: Yeah?

756
00:37:54,680 --> 00:37:57,359
Speaker 1: Yeah, So you could take a cell from that pig's ear,

757
00:37:57,960 --> 00:37:59,960
Speaker 1: use Crisper cast nine to make a bunch of edit

758
00:38:00,040 --> 00:38:03,080
Speaker 1: it's inside of that cell. Then take the nucleus out

759
00:38:03,120 --> 00:38:05,439
Speaker 1: of that cell and put it in an egg from

760
00:38:05,520 --> 00:38:07,880
Speaker 1: any pig really could be the same one that you

761
00:38:07,920 --> 00:38:10,480
Speaker 1: took the ear stuff from. Oh, and then you use

762
00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:12,080
Speaker 1: that egg to grow up new pigs.

763
00:38:12,239 --> 00:38:15,360
Speaker 2: All right, wow, and so does it work? Do we

764
00:38:15,440 --> 00:38:19,200
Speaker 2: have baby pigs growing human kidneys or or human is kidneys.

765
00:38:19,520 --> 00:38:22,040
Speaker 1: Well, so the way that you test this stuff, so

766
00:38:22,200 --> 00:38:24,960
Speaker 1: first you tend to try these organs out in like

767
00:38:25,120 --> 00:38:28,920
Speaker 1: macaques or baboons, so you try them out in closely

768
00:38:29,000 --> 00:38:32,920
Speaker 1: related primates and if it works okay in them, then

769
00:38:32,920 --> 00:38:34,720
Speaker 1: you can say, all right, maybe we're ready to jump

770
00:38:34,840 --> 00:38:37,800
Speaker 1: to humans. Sometimes you have an additional step in between,

771
00:38:38,280 --> 00:38:41,280
Speaker 1: where you have a human who has had an accident

772
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:45,080
Speaker 1: and they've experienced brain death, but their organs are still working,

773
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:46,759
Speaker 1: and so then you put them on life support and

774
00:38:46,800 --> 00:38:49,719
Speaker 1: you can put a genetically modified organ in them and

775
00:38:49,760 --> 00:38:52,160
Speaker 1: see how their body responds. And so that's a way

776
00:38:52,239 --> 00:38:52,920
Speaker 1: to see.

777
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:55,000
Speaker 2: You treat them as like a science experiment. Wow.

778
00:38:55,239 --> 00:38:57,640
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a not so nice way of putting it.

779
00:38:57,680 --> 00:38:59,759
Speaker 1: I would say, you know, if I were in that

780
00:38:59,800 --> 00:39:03,760
Speaker 1: sea situation and someone has to decide, does Kelly's body

781
00:39:04,480 --> 00:39:07,000
Speaker 1: get used to try to like figure out this life

782
00:39:07,080 --> 00:39:10,319
Speaker 1: saving technique and that's her last contribution to the world, Like,

783
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:12,279
Speaker 1: I would hope that somebody would say yes, because that

784
00:39:12,400 --> 00:39:15,120
Speaker 1: I mean, that feels like it sucks that I died,

785
00:39:15,560 --> 00:39:18,200
Speaker 1: but it would be amazing if I could help build

786
00:39:18,640 --> 00:39:21,359
Speaker 1: the argument that was needed so that we could start

787
00:39:21,440 --> 00:39:24,640
Speaker 1: using this amazing life saving technique in other people.

788
00:39:24,719 --> 00:39:26,600
Speaker 2: And so so yes basically.

789
00:39:26,480 --> 00:39:29,160
Speaker 1: So yes, yes, but you know, families get asked ahead

790
00:39:29,160 --> 00:39:31,759
Speaker 1: of time. You know, it's all of this stuff fascinating.

791
00:39:31,920 --> 00:39:34,759
Speaker 1: It has complicated ethical approvals that are needed ahead of time.

792
00:39:34,800 --> 00:39:38,399
Speaker 1: But so E Genesis did get permission from the Food

793
00:39:38,400 --> 00:39:41,680
Speaker 1: and Drug Administration to try these organs out. I believe

794
00:39:41,680 --> 00:39:44,520
Speaker 1: that they're still getting tried out under what's called compassionate use.

795
00:39:44,880 --> 00:39:47,880
Speaker 1: So it's getting tried out on patients who I believe

796
00:39:47,920 --> 00:39:49,600
Speaker 1: are not able to get on the wait list for

797
00:39:49,640 --> 00:39:51,480
Speaker 1: one reason or another. Like you know, for example, to

798
00:39:51,560 --> 00:39:54,560
Speaker 1: have a blood type that is pretty rare, it's hard

799
00:39:54,560 --> 00:39:57,719
Speaker 1: to find someone who's compatible. The probability that they will

800
00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:00,319
Speaker 1: be on the wait list for longer than and they're

801
00:40:00,360 --> 00:40:04,320
Speaker 1: likely to survive is high. And so we're trying it

802
00:40:04,360 --> 00:40:06,880
Speaker 1: out on these folks, yeah, because it's a good option

803
00:40:06,960 --> 00:40:09,680
Speaker 1: for them given the options they have. And so these

804
00:40:09,719 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 1: folks tend to be fifty five to seventy years old

805
00:40:12,719 --> 00:40:14,960
Speaker 1: and they're unlikely to get an organ in the next

806
00:40:15,000 --> 00:40:17,319
Speaker 1: five years. So two of these surgeries have been done,

807
00:40:17,680 --> 00:40:21,080
Speaker 1: and so far both of the people have survived. I

808
00:40:21,080 --> 00:40:24,680
Speaker 1: think these surgeries were done in like February or March,

809
00:40:24,719 --> 00:40:27,839
Speaker 1: and it's June now, and as far as I could

810
00:40:27,880 --> 00:40:31,480
Speaker 1: tell searching through Google, the folks who received these organs

811
00:40:31,520 --> 00:40:35,480
Speaker 1: are still alive and still doing well, which is so amazing.

812
00:40:35,560 --> 00:40:39,160
Speaker 1: And then there's another company called United Therapeutics, and they

813
00:40:39,239 --> 00:40:42,719
Speaker 1: also have used Crisper to modify pig organs. They only

814
00:40:42,760 --> 00:40:45,440
Speaker 1: did ten edits. It sounds like maybe they're keeping their

815
00:40:45,440 --> 00:40:48,799
Speaker 1: fingers crossed that those retroviruses aren't a problem. I don't

816
00:40:48,800 --> 00:40:51,120
Speaker 1: think they did as many edits to those, but this

817
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:54,360
Speaker 1: is all sort of information that isn't made public. Exactly

818
00:40:54,400 --> 00:40:57,439
Speaker 1: what edits you make probably, so anyway, they've also done

819
00:40:57,440 --> 00:41:01,800
Speaker 1: some transplant experiments using their organs. One of the patients

820
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:05,080
Speaker 1: who had one of these genetically modified organs had it

821
00:41:05,160 --> 00:41:07,520
Speaker 1: for four months and then her body started to reject

822
00:41:07,520 --> 00:41:09,680
Speaker 1: it for unknown reasons and it had to be removed.

823
00:41:10,120 --> 00:41:12,880
Speaker 1: So it's possible some more tinkering is going to need

824
00:41:12,920 --> 00:41:15,160
Speaker 1: to get done with the pig organs, or we need

825
00:41:15,200 --> 00:41:16,960
Speaker 1: to do a little bit more work figuring out the

826
00:41:17,040 --> 00:41:20,840
Speaker 1: right amount of suppressive drugs. But you know, these organs

827
00:41:20,840 --> 00:41:23,680
Speaker 1: are being trialed out, and if these initial trials go well,

828
00:41:23,960 --> 00:41:26,960
Speaker 1: then the pool of people who could join trials to

829
00:41:27,040 --> 00:41:31,359
Speaker 1: test these organs out will expand. And so that's where

830
00:41:31,360 --> 00:41:33,200
Speaker 1: we are right now. We're kind of trying it out

831
00:41:33,200 --> 00:41:34,880
Speaker 1: to see if we figured out all the changes we

832
00:41:34,920 --> 00:41:35,359
Speaker 1: need to make.

833
00:41:35,480 --> 00:41:37,640
Speaker 2: This feels like we're on the cusp of something really big.

834
00:41:37,719 --> 00:41:40,480
Speaker 2: I mean, if this works, it could really change what

835
00:41:40,560 --> 00:41:43,440
Speaker 2: it means to wait for an organ. How many people

836
00:41:43,520 --> 00:41:46,719
Speaker 2: die waiting for organs. Yeah, it could really change the

837
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:49,680
Speaker 2: experience of being human and the experience of being pig unfortunately.

838
00:41:49,920 --> 00:41:52,240
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So these pigs need to be grown

839
00:41:52,280 --> 00:41:57,080
Speaker 1: in facilities where they are absolutely not going to encounter

840
00:41:57,120 --> 00:42:01,200
Speaker 1: additional viruses. So, for example, sometimes the flu can jump

841
00:42:01,280 --> 00:42:03,560
Speaker 1: from birds to people. Sometimes it can jump from pigs

842
00:42:03,560 --> 00:42:05,000
Speaker 1: to people. So you want to make sure that your

843
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:07,839
Speaker 1: pigs are not encountering any new flu strains. So they

844
00:42:07,880 --> 00:42:12,040
Speaker 1: need to be in these like incredibly biosecure facilities. But yes,

845
00:42:12,160 --> 00:42:14,640
Speaker 1: once you grow up enough of them and you expand

846
00:42:14,680 --> 00:42:19,319
Speaker 1: the facilities, hopefully, you know, with a lot of procedures

847
00:42:19,360 --> 00:42:22,480
Speaker 1: that are ethically you know, compassionate for the lives of

848
00:42:22,480 --> 00:42:25,879
Speaker 1: the pigs, you could have organs that are ready at

849
00:42:25,960 --> 00:42:28,279
Speaker 1: just about any time. So you know, somebody who has

850
00:42:28,360 --> 00:42:31,440
Speaker 1: kidney issues wouldn't have to face down a few years

851
00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:33,920
Speaker 1: of dialysis with the quality of their life is much lower.

852
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:36,600
Speaker 1: You know, they could discover they need a new kidney

853
00:42:36,640 --> 00:42:38,560
Speaker 1: and they could, you know, have it a month later

854
00:42:38,680 --> 00:42:39,399
Speaker 1: or something like that.

855
00:42:39,640 --> 00:42:42,719
Speaker 2: Yeah, these kidneys are not tailored to an individual human, right,

856
00:42:42,760 --> 00:42:47,160
Speaker 2: they're generically modified so that they're more acceptable to humans broadly.

857
00:42:47,200 --> 00:42:49,400
Speaker 2: But we know the humans are different, right, and some

858
00:42:49,480 --> 00:42:52,920
Speaker 2: humans reject or accept different kidneys. Is it possible that

859
00:42:53,000 --> 00:42:55,200
Speaker 2: some kinds of people will be able to accept pigkinnys

860
00:42:55,239 --> 00:42:55,960
Speaker 2: and others won't.

861
00:42:56,400 --> 00:42:59,440
Speaker 1: I think yes. I think that is a live option.

862
00:42:59,600 --> 00:43:02,520
Speaker 1: So the the woman who had the United Therapeutics kidney

863
00:43:03,080 --> 00:43:05,879
Speaker 1: who eventually rejected it, I think we don't understand why

864
00:43:05,920 --> 00:43:09,280
Speaker 1: she rejected it. It could be that there's some incompatibility

865
00:43:09,320 --> 00:43:12,520
Speaker 1: issue that you know, might be specific to her. Maybe

866
00:43:12,520 --> 00:43:14,799
Speaker 1: we will need to personalize these organs a bit more.

867
00:43:14,880 --> 00:43:17,360
Speaker 1: And I'm sure the three D printing people are saying,

868
00:43:17,680 --> 00:43:19,640
Speaker 1: if you print with your own cells, this will never

869
00:43:19,680 --> 00:43:22,279
Speaker 1: be a problem, when you know that technology isn't here

870
00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:24,400
Speaker 1: yet either. So yes, it could be that more tinkering

871
00:43:24,440 --> 00:43:27,359
Speaker 1: needs to get done. It would have been beautiful if

872
00:43:27,480 --> 00:43:31,839
Speaker 1: everyone who got these genetically modified pig organs accepted them

873
00:43:31,840 --> 00:43:35,040
Speaker 1: with no problems right from the start, But that's that's

874
00:43:35,040 --> 00:43:36,239
Speaker 1: not where we are right now, and.

875
00:43:36,200 --> 00:43:38,719
Speaker 2: Our pig's the only place this is happening. Is there

876
00:43:38,760 --> 00:43:40,800
Speaker 2: any other species that's in contention?

877
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:43,719
Speaker 1: Nope, just pigs. Wow, as far as I can tell.

878
00:43:43,880 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, So maybe society will get divided in the future

879
00:43:46,440 --> 00:43:49,000
Speaker 2: into people who can accept pig organs and people who can't,

880
00:43:49,000 --> 00:43:50,680
Speaker 2: the piggy people and the non piggy people.

881
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:52,880
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, a little bit of levity and

882
00:43:52,920 --> 00:43:55,560
Speaker 1: our otherwise sort of bummer of an episode. But so

883
00:43:55,800 --> 00:43:58,080
Speaker 1: I've got a question you might not know the answer to.

884
00:43:58,239 --> 00:44:01,680
Speaker 1: So there are some cultures that can't eat pork. So

885
00:44:01,760 --> 00:44:04,360
Speaker 1: my husband is Jewish and he's a vegetarian too, so

886
00:44:04,360 --> 00:44:06,200
Speaker 1: it's sort of a non starter. But do you think

887
00:44:06,239 --> 00:44:09,560
Speaker 1: there'd be any rules about accepting organs?

888
00:44:09,920 --> 00:44:12,239
Speaker 2: That is a great question and what I don't know

889
00:44:12,280 --> 00:44:14,160
Speaker 2: the answer to. And one reason that it's a great

890
00:44:14,239 --> 00:44:16,880
Speaker 2: question is that I'm sure the Rabbis will have a

891
00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:20,160
Speaker 2: lot of fun arguing about it, because Rabbis have a

892
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:22,279
Speaker 2: lot of fun arguing about stuff like this, you know, like,

893
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:24,840
Speaker 2: can you turn on the light switch on Saturday? No?

894
00:44:25,239 --> 00:44:27,320
Speaker 2: Can you hire someone to turn on the light switch?

895
00:44:27,880 --> 00:44:28,040
Speaker 3: No?

896
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:30,480
Speaker 2: But can you pay them to do something else and

897
00:44:30,520 --> 00:44:32,600
Speaker 2: then they turn on the light switch. Yes, so there's

898
00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:35,480
Speaker 2: all these like creative ways to like find loopholes to

899
00:44:35,719 --> 00:44:38,440
Speaker 2: satisfy all the requirements, and I think they get a

900
00:44:38,440 --> 00:44:41,280
Speaker 2: lot of joy in arguing about it. So this seems

901
00:44:41,320 --> 00:44:43,239
Speaker 2: like a really juicy question for them.

902
00:44:45,000 --> 00:44:47,520
Speaker 1: That's right, that's right, And I have to admit, like

903
00:44:47,600 --> 00:44:50,919
Speaker 1: I feel a bit uncomfortable. Okay, So since I moved

904
00:44:50,920 --> 00:44:52,960
Speaker 1: on a farm, I have had a much harder time

905
00:44:53,040 --> 00:44:57,000
Speaker 1: eating meat because I encounter the animals that I'm eating

906
00:44:57,040 --> 00:45:00,239
Speaker 1: a lot more, and I have been very surprised by

907
00:45:00,320 --> 00:45:05,120
Speaker 1: how dynamic their personalities are, and how good they are

908
00:45:05,120 --> 00:45:07,320
Speaker 1: with their babies, and how.

909
00:45:07,320 --> 00:45:09,040
Speaker 2: They obviously feel joy and pain.

910
00:45:09,280 --> 00:45:12,799
Speaker 1: That's right, Yes, yes, Seeing like goats get zoomies and

911
00:45:12,960 --> 00:45:16,440
Speaker 1: frolic around a field, You're like, ah, I really enjoy

912
00:45:16,640 --> 00:45:21,160
Speaker 1: you in my euro And now I feel complicated about that.

913
00:45:21,440 --> 00:45:24,560
Speaker 1: But you know, if my daughter needed an organ and

914
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:28,000
Speaker 1: it was between a pig and my daughter, I wouldn't

915
00:45:28,000 --> 00:45:30,319
Speaker 1: have a hard time with that choice. And I guess

916
00:45:30,360 --> 00:45:33,120
Speaker 1: same with me. So Jane at the start of this

917
00:45:33,200 --> 00:45:36,520
Speaker 1: episode asked if we were to start treating pigs with

918
00:45:36,560 --> 00:45:42,360
Speaker 1: more respect if they became a major source for our organs. Don't. Actually,

919
00:45:42,360 --> 00:45:44,440
Speaker 1: I don't see that happening, to be honest, I think the.

920
00:45:44,360 --> 00:45:47,439
Speaker 2: Opposite is true. No, I think the more useful they are,

921
00:45:47,520 --> 00:45:50,319
Speaker 2: the more we convince ourselves that they're just things and

922
00:45:50,360 --> 00:45:51,120
Speaker 2: not like people.

923
00:45:51,360 --> 00:45:55,440
Speaker 1: Yeah. So for me, the more I encounter farm animals,

924
00:45:55,600 --> 00:45:58,360
Speaker 1: the more I want to either not eat them or

925
00:45:58,440 --> 00:46:01,279
Speaker 1: only eat animals that had really good lives, Like I

926
00:46:01,320 --> 00:46:04,759
Speaker 1: feel more and more uncomfortable about factory farms. But I

927
00:46:04,760 --> 00:46:08,320
Speaker 1: think that most of us are not seeing or engaging

928
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:11,520
Speaker 1: with these animals that we end up eating or you know,

929
00:46:11,600 --> 00:46:14,920
Speaker 1: that are part of the various processes for products that

930
00:46:14,960 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 1: we use in our lives, like leather or whatever. And

931
00:46:17,440 --> 00:46:21,719
Speaker 1: so I don't see us treating animals nicer as long

932
00:46:21,719 --> 00:46:24,960
Speaker 1: as we are not encountering them more and like needing

933
00:46:25,000 --> 00:46:26,920
Speaker 1: to see what it looks like to get this done.

934
00:46:27,520 --> 00:46:29,680
Speaker 1: I hope that we'll treat them ethically. It does seem

935
00:46:29,760 --> 00:46:31,840
Speaker 1: like over time there have been more rules for treating

936
00:46:31,880 --> 00:46:35,040
Speaker 1: animals ethically and trying to give them a nice life

937
00:46:35,280 --> 00:46:37,880
Speaker 1: for as long as they've got it. But I, yeah,

938
00:46:38,480 --> 00:46:40,080
Speaker 1: I don't think this is going to change things.

939
00:46:40,480 --> 00:46:43,640
Speaker 2: Well, let's take a positive view if we have pigs

940
00:46:43,680 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 2: that can grow organs for humans. It means more humans survive,

941
00:46:46,760 --> 00:46:50,000
Speaker 2: and it means more jobs for philosophers to figure out

942
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:52,719
Speaker 2: whether or not we are bad people, and jobs for

943
00:46:52,840 --> 00:46:56,880
Speaker 2: rabbis to answer these questions. So everybody wins except the pigs.

944
00:46:56,880 --> 00:46:57,240
Speaker 2: I guess.

945
00:46:57,320 --> 00:46:59,880
Speaker 1: Yeah. Okay, Well, so I'd like to end on a

946
00:46:59,880 --> 00:47:04,239
Speaker 1: slightly high notes. So first of all, I don't know

947
00:47:04,280 --> 00:47:05,759
Speaker 1: if this is a high note, but we already eat

948
00:47:05,760 --> 00:47:07,799
Speaker 1: a lot of pigs, so this is apparently something where

949
00:47:08,080 --> 00:47:11,560
Speaker 1: for the most part, already comfortable with. But let's focus

950
00:47:11,600 --> 00:47:14,680
Speaker 1: for a second on how much amazing stuff we had

951
00:47:14,680 --> 00:47:16,640
Speaker 1: to learn to get where we are today. You know,

952
00:47:16,719 --> 00:47:22,600
Speaker 1: like we are harnessing bacteria's immune response to create organs

953
00:47:22,600 --> 00:47:25,680
Speaker 1: that could save the lives of like over one hundred

954
00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:27,919
Speaker 1: thousand people who are on the wait list right now.

955
00:47:28,360 --> 00:47:30,759
Speaker 1: It is amazing to me that we have figured out

956
00:47:30,800 --> 00:47:33,680
Speaker 1: how to get this far, like just the many giants

957
00:47:33,680 --> 00:47:35,799
Speaker 1: whose shoulders we had to stand on to get to

958
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:38,880
Speaker 1: where we are today. And if this works, the suffering

959
00:47:38,960 --> 00:47:42,200
Speaker 1: of many, many, many people could be alleviated, a lot

960
00:47:42,239 --> 00:47:44,960
Speaker 1: more people could survive, and the people who are waiting

961
00:47:44,960 --> 00:47:47,600
Speaker 1: for organs would have a much higher quality of life.

962
00:47:48,120 --> 00:47:50,799
Speaker 1: I can't help but be inspired. Even though you know

963
00:47:50,880 --> 00:47:53,399
Speaker 1: everything that has to do with humans seems like it's

964
00:47:53,400 --> 00:47:54,360
Speaker 1: ethically complicated.

965
00:47:54,680 --> 00:47:57,000
Speaker 2: It does. Yeah. On the other hand, I want to

966
00:47:57,040 --> 00:47:58,799
Speaker 2: live and I want my kids to live.

967
00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:02,520
Speaker 1: Yes, amen, And this might be a path towards making

968
00:48:02,560 --> 00:48:05,280
Speaker 1: that happen for a lot of people. So I'm wishing

969
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:08,200
Speaker 1: them luck. And thank you to Wenningchin for chatting with

970
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:11,200
Speaker 1: me and for making me even more excited about this.

971
00:48:11,320 --> 00:48:13,360
Speaker 1: Your enthusiasm was contagious.

972
00:48:13,520 --> 00:48:15,480
Speaker 2: And thank you very much to Jane for sending us

973
00:48:15,520 --> 00:48:18,080
Speaker 2: your question. And if you have a question about any

974
00:48:18,200 --> 00:48:20,520
Speaker 2: kind of science you'd like to hear us breakdown, please

975
00:48:20,560 --> 00:48:23,319
Speaker 2: write to us questions at Daniel and Kelly dot org.

976
00:48:23,480 --> 00:48:26,319
Speaker 1: And let's close out by seeing what Jane thought about

977
00:48:26,360 --> 00:48:27,279
Speaker 1: our episode.

978
00:48:28,320 --> 00:48:31,320
Speaker 3: Hi, Daniel and Kelly, I'm so glad that my question

979
00:48:31,400 --> 00:48:35,239
Speaker 3: spot such a super interesting discussion. Did you answer my

980
00:48:35,360 --> 00:48:40,040
Speaker 3: question well, yes, but by giving me even more ethical

981
00:48:40,080 --> 00:48:44,160
Speaker 3: and philosophical conundrums to worry about. I can't comment on

982
00:48:44,200 --> 00:48:48,120
Speaker 3: the rabbi's response, but as a Christian pastor, I hold

983
00:48:48,160 --> 00:48:51,560
Speaker 3: a high view of humanity. I've been on the ukogn

984
00:48:51,640 --> 00:48:55,560
Speaker 3: done a register for decades, and it really suddens me

985
00:48:55,800 --> 00:48:59,520
Speaker 3: that there are not enough people willing to donate organs

986
00:48:59,560 --> 00:49:02,799
Speaker 3: that they've finished with. I just worry that this will

987
00:49:02,840 --> 00:49:07,680
Speaker 3: be one more exciting scientific breakthrough which is pushed through

988
00:49:07,760 --> 00:49:12,960
Speaker 3: without serious ethical consideration. Thank you so much, Kelly for

989
00:49:13,040 --> 00:49:17,400
Speaker 3: looking into this and sharing your wonder and enthusiasm with us.

990
00:49:17,400 --> 00:49:28,360
Speaker 1: All Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio.

991
00:49:28,560 --> 00:49:30,080
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992
00:49:30,200 --> 00:49:33,120
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993
00:49:33,360 --> 00:49:36,000
Speaker 2: have about this Extraordinary Universe.

994
00:49:36,080 --> 00:49:39,040
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995
00:49:39,040 --> 00:49:42,040
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996
00:49:42,080 --> 00:49:42,480
Speaker 1: back to you.

997
00:49:42,760 --> 00:49:46,279
Speaker 2: We really mean it. We answer every message. Email us

998
00:49:46,320 --> 00:49:48,759
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999
00:49:48,600 --> 00:49:50,680
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1000
00:49:50,760 --> 00:49:54,560
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1001
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1002
00:49:57,040 --> 00:49:58,560
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1003
00:49:58,800 --> 00:50:00,359
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