WEBVTT - Xenotransplantation 0:00:00.040 --> 0:00:02.560 Hey, friends, just a heads up that we're talking about 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:06.080 organ shortages today and will touch on topics like death 0:00:06.160 --> 0:00:09.600 and animal research. So decide if this is an appropriate 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:27.960 episode for you or your kiddos. According to Donate Life America, 0:00:28.040 --> 0:00:31.640 over one hundred thousand people are on the organ transplant waitlist. 0:00:32.200 --> 0:00:36.000 Approximately every eight minutes, another person is added to this list, 0:00:36.360 --> 0:00:39.040 So while you are listening to our show, approximately five 0:00:39.120 --> 0:00:41.839 people will have been told that their life depends on 0:00:42.000 --> 0:00:45.600 receiving a new organ. That weight might be quite long. 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:49.280 Some folks will wait years before that organ becomes available, 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:52.080 and during that weight the quality of their life could 0:00:52.120 --> 0:00:55.840 be quite poor. And unfortunately, not everyone on this waitlist 0:00:55.920 --> 0:00:58.240 is going to get an organ in time. Every day, 0:00:58.280 --> 0:01:01.200 about thirteen people on the waitlist will pass away because 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:04.399 an organ was not made available soon enough. So what 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:07.400 are our options. Well, today we're going to talk about 0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:10.400 one of those options that's looking more and more promising 0:01:10.440 --> 0:01:14.640 every day, and that option is zeno transplantation. That is 0:01:15.080 --> 0:01:19.039 taking organs from a non human animal pigs in this case, 0:01:19.440 --> 0:01:22.720 and implanting them into humans. This requires a fair bit 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.160 of genetic engineering, and today we'll chat about how that's done. 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:29.600 Welcome to Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe. 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.120 Hi, I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist, and me and 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:48.760 my microbes consider myself one hundred percent human. 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:53.280 Hi, I'm a Kelly Wiener Smith. I study parasites and space, 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:56.720 and yes, the community that makes up me is all me, 0:01:57.120 --> 0:01:58.320 and I feel great about it. 0:02:00.000 --> 0:02:02.720 Some one wonder and ask Katrina this question whether my 0:02:02.840 --> 0:02:06.160 microbes would be offended to be considered human because you know, 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:08.560 they don't have the human DNA, but they are part 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:08.760 of me. 0:02:09.160 --> 0:02:10.720 Yeah, you know, I feel like you could actually have 0:02:10.720 --> 0:02:16.240 a pretty interesting philosophical argument about what you really means, 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:18.960 because you know, when we had Katrina on the show, 0:02:19.000 --> 0:02:21.880 she was talking about how bacteria sort of communicate with 0:02:21.960 --> 0:02:24.880 our brain via the vagus nerve vegas nerve. We both 0:02:24.960 --> 0:02:28.720 know I don't pronounce things correctly, ever, and so you know, 0:02:28.800 --> 0:02:32.359 I had to what extent your well being and behavior 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:35.000 is influenced by what kinds of bacteria you have at 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:37.320 the moment. I think it is a fascinating question. And 0:02:37.360 --> 0:02:40.440 so I contain multitudes. 0:02:39.960 --> 0:02:42.240 And maybe if you had different multitudes, you could pronounce 0:02:42.280 --> 0:02:45.040 things differently or better. Even right, I don't. 0:02:44.880 --> 0:02:47.880 Think anything could help me with that. Ever, I've always 0:02:47.919 --> 0:02:50.880 been this way no matter what my microbiome was up to. 0:02:51.160 --> 0:02:54.000 I'm going to ask Katrina to engineer some superbug to 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:55.480 help you with your pronunciation. 0:02:57.400 --> 0:03:00.040 I would happily pay for that. That would be a 0:03:00.440 --> 0:03:03.480 So when I have to do the audiobook readings for 0:03:03.639 --> 0:03:05.760 my books, I'm always like, ah, this is going to 0:03:05.800 --> 0:03:06.440 be a disaster. 0:03:07.280 --> 0:03:10.640 But in general, I love when questions in science bump 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:13.639 up against philosophical issues, you know, that make us ask 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:16.400 questions like what do we really mean by your body? 0:03:16.919 --> 0:03:18.720 And it's not that hard to get there, you know, 0:03:18.760 --> 0:03:20.880 you can just even ask like, well, where does your 0:03:20.919 --> 0:03:23.799 body end? You know, is it at your skin, at 0:03:23.840 --> 0:03:27.280 your hair, a millimeter past it? It's your fuzzy personal 0:03:27.320 --> 0:03:30.519 space boundary. You know, it's not that hard to get 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:32.760 stuck in weird philosophical questions. 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:35.640 Yeah, and organ transplants, whether it's from one human to 0:03:35.680 --> 0:03:39.000 another or zeno transplantation, which we're talking about today, which 0:03:39.000 --> 0:03:41.360 is when you take organs from a non human animal 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:44.880 and put them into a human. You know, causes a 0:03:44.880 --> 0:03:47.080 lot of philosophical questions or at least a lot of 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:50.120 sort of emotional turmoil. There are stories about people who 0:03:50.160 --> 0:03:54.200 have gotten face transplants, for example, just feeling very uncomfortable 0:03:54.240 --> 0:03:56.000 looking at their face in the mirror. There's a story 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:58.440 of one person who had a hand transplant and he 0:03:58.560 --> 0:04:01.520 ended up wanting the hand remove moved because he just 0:04:01.640 --> 0:04:03.480 was like, this is not my hand and it's just 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:06.440 too weird. I'm not emotionally, I can't handle this. 0:04:06.760 --> 0:04:08.240 You can't handle it nice. 0:04:08.760 --> 0:04:11.720 Oh I didn't even get how clever even when I'm 0:04:11.720 --> 0:04:12.280 not trying. 0:04:12.360 --> 0:04:15.080 Man, Well, I was just going to raise that issue, 0:04:15.120 --> 0:04:17.600 like it's really a ship of theseus question. You know, 0:04:18.320 --> 0:04:21.120 if you get somebody else's liver, you feel like you're 0:04:21.120 --> 0:04:23.520 still you. What if you've got somebody else's liver and 0:04:23.560 --> 0:04:27.359 pancreas and heart and legs and arms and everything else 0:04:27.480 --> 0:04:29.920 except the brain, would you still be you? I think 0:04:29.920 --> 0:04:33.960 we mostly consider ourselves to be our brain, which is 0:04:34.040 --> 0:04:37.160 I don't know if that's philosophically naive or sophisticated or not. 0:04:37.279 --> 0:04:39.520 But the face is weird. Right to be in somebody 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:41.800 else's face. That must feel strange. 0:04:42.000 --> 0:04:44.440 Yeah, that must feel strange. I still feel like, you know, 0:04:44.440 --> 0:04:46.760 for a lot of people, it must be a huge relief, 0:04:47.000 --> 0:04:48.960 depending on what happened to them to put them in 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:50.760 the position where they needed a face transplant. 0:04:50.839 --> 0:04:52.800 Oh right, Yeah, I thought you were just saying, like, 0:04:53.040 --> 0:04:56.719 I'm not that happy with my face either, so would 0:04:56.720 --> 0:04:59.480 be a relief to have somebody else's face over here. 0:05:00.000 --> 0:05:02.320 I spent too much time in the sun. I could 0:05:02.400 --> 0:05:05.360 use a face with less evidence of that. But this 0:05:05.440 --> 0:05:06.920 is the face I got, and I'm going to stick 0:05:06.960 --> 0:05:09.279 with it. But yeah, you know, I as somebody who 0:05:09.360 --> 0:05:12.880 is working their way through paramenopause, and there are days 0:05:12.880 --> 0:05:16.120 where I'm feeling grumpy. I'm so interested in this question 0:05:16.200 --> 0:05:19.560 about like what makes you who you are, and like 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:22.839 how your hormones influence the way that you behave or 0:05:22.880 --> 0:05:25.400 maybe how the bacteria that are releasing stuff, how that 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:27.479 influences the way you behave. I think it's a really 0:05:27.920 --> 0:05:30.960 fascinating question that ties in with this question of like, 0:05:31.320 --> 0:05:33.320 you know, to what extent does it matter if the 0:05:33.440 --> 0:05:37.599 you parts have your genome in their nucleus or not. 0:05:38.000 --> 0:05:42.800 It's complicated. What do you think if you had lungs, hearts, kidneys, 0:05:42.920 --> 0:05:46.200 liver from somebody else, how would you feel about that? 0:05:46.720 --> 0:05:48.599 I would feel a little bit like I had some 0:05:48.760 --> 0:05:52.800 of them inside of me. Yeah, and I wonder how 0:05:53.440 --> 0:05:59.680 parents feel when their children's organs are reused after a 0:05:59.720 --> 0:06:02.800 tried to accident. Do they feel like, you know, little 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:05.200 Timmy's heart is still beating and so we have still 0:06:05.320 --> 0:06:08.240 some part of him, I wonder, or if they just 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:10.760 feel like that was a gift to help somebody else live. 0:06:11.400 --> 0:06:11.880 I don't know. 0:06:11.920 --> 0:06:14.920 It's fascinating, yeah, yeah, no, fascinating, And it must be 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.480 very emotionally complicated. I imagine lots of people have different feelings. 0:06:18.600 --> 0:06:20.280 I think if I was in that situation, I would 0:06:20.279 --> 0:06:24.120 be glad that other families were spared the pain that 0:06:24.160 --> 0:06:26.159 I was going through and that, you know, our family 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:29.280 was able to give that to them. But it would be, yeah, 0:06:29.400 --> 0:06:32.560 really complicated. So today our topic is a bit of 0:06:32.560 --> 0:06:33.920 a downer, But a lot of. 0:06:33.839 --> 0:06:37.400 Those philosophical issues can be partially sidestepped if you're not 0:06:37.440 --> 0:06:40.520 talking about a human to human gift, right, If you're 0:06:40.560 --> 0:06:43.320 talking about getting an organ from another animal, and this 0:06:43.520 --> 0:06:46.159 different set of philosophical issues, right, if you're getting it 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:48.640 from a pig or from a baboon, and are they 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:51.039 sentient and can they consent? And do they have rights 0:06:51.040 --> 0:06:53.240 and all this sort of stuff, But you do avoid 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:56.000 the question of like taking organs from another person and 0:06:56.040 --> 0:06:58.760 then being part of you. So tell us, Kelly, how 0:06:58.760 --> 0:06:59.960 do we get started on this question? 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:02.080 Well, the reason we got started on this question is 0:07:02.080 --> 0:07:05.640 because a listener, Jane, who's a pastor, wrote and wanted 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.440 to know what kind of philosophical issues come up when 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:12.240 you're using you know, pig organs, transgenic pig organs to 0:07:12.320 --> 0:07:14.360 keep people alive. So let's go ahead and listen to 0:07:14.440 --> 0:07:17.360 Jane's question and then we'll jump into talking about what 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:19.840 xeno transplantation is and how it works. 0:07:20.200 --> 0:07:23.720 Hi, Daniel and Kelly, this is Jane from Redcar, England. 0:07:24.200 --> 0:07:27.560 I've got a question which is more philosophical and scientific. 0:07:28.080 --> 0:07:31.400 There's been a lot of news about transgenic pigs created 0:07:31.440 --> 0:07:35.680 for transplantation. The idea is that their genome becomes more 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:39.400 and more human so that they trigger less rejection. My 0:07:39.600 --> 0:07:43.320 question is, at what point do we need to start 0:07:43.400 --> 0:07:47.800 treating them as human and therefore with more respect. Not 0:07:47.880 --> 0:07:50.480 that we always treat other humans with the respect, but 0:07:50.560 --> 0:07:55.240 that's a different question. I'm excited by the opportunities this offers, 0:07:55.240 --> 0:07:58.720 but I'm also conflicted by the ethics. I look forward 0:07:58.760 --> 0:08:01.680 to hearing your take on this. Thank you, for a 0:08:01.720 --> 0:08:02.280 great show. 0:08:02.720 --> 0:08:04.640 All right, So Jane and I had a pretty interesting 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:08.280 conversation over email about the you know, the ethics of 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.240 this question. And I guess I'm a little bit of 0:08:11.280 --> 0:08:14.480 a negative Nelly. I'm not sure anything is going to 0:08:14.520 --> 0:08:17.280 put a dent in the way we treat animals that 0:08:17.280 --> 0:08:20.600 we also eat. But it made me want to do 0:08:20.640 --> 0:08:24.000 a whole episode on zeno transplantation because there has in 0:08:24.040 --> 0:08:28.320 the news recently been some pretty exciting updates in this field, 0:08:28.440 --> 0:08:30.360 and so I thought this would be a great chance 0:08:30.400 --> 0:08:31.920 to sort of catch up on that research. 0:08:32.000 --> 0:08:34.880 All right, so let's get started. Why do we even 0:08:34.960 --> 0:08:38.240 consider taking organs from pigs? I mean, obviously I would 0:08:38.280 --> 0:08:41.160 prefer human organ if I'm going to receive a transplant. 0:08:41.600 --> 0:08:43.319 Why do we consider other species? 0:08:43.559 --> 0:08:46.080 Well, there's just not enough of the human organs. So 0:08:47.040 --> 0:08:51.000 last year there were forty eight thousand transplants that happened 0:08:51.040 --> 0:08:53.240 in the United States, and so that's a lot, and 0:08:53.280 --> 0:08:56.920 that's fantastic, but it's less than fifty percent of the 0:08:57.000 --> 0:08:59.720 number of people who are on the list and need organs. 0:09:00.160 --> 0:09:03.440 So there's this massive difference between the number of people 0:09:03.440 --> 0:09:05.720 who get organs and the number of people who need them, 0:09:06.120 --> 0:09:08.960 and there's probably even more people who need them, but 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:11.800 they're not on the weight list for a variety of reasons. 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:15.200 It could be that it just seems unlikely that an 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:17.400 organ that's the right match will come through for them 0:09:17.440 --> 0:09:21.080 on time, and so some people who would like new organs, 0:09:21.160 --> 0:09:22.920 you know, don't even put themselves on the weight list. 0:09:23.000 --> 0:09:26.760 So if we had a lot of organs, then there's 0:09:26.800 --> 0:09:28.760 a lot more people who would be in a good position. 0:09:28.880 --> 0:09:31.160 So where do we get the organs we have now? 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:33.959 So this is something we've already sort of hinted at 0:09:33.960 --> 0:09:37.160 in this episode. When somebody passes away, for example, in 0:09:37.200 --> 0:09:41.000 a car accident, they're organs. The organs that you know 0:09:41.240 --> 0:09:43.400 are still in good shape can be given to other 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:45.680 people who need them if you can find people who 0:09:45.720 --> 0:09:48.320 are a good match. So being a good match. We 0:09:48.400 --> 0:09:50.280 have different blood types, you know, if you go in 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:53.360 to donate blood, they'll tell you what your blood type is. Essentially, 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:56.280 we've got stuff that stick out on our cells, and 0:09:56.760 --> 0:09:59.400 if your stuff that sticks out on your cells looks 0:09:59.440 --> 0:10:02.240 different the stuff that sticks out on someone else's cells, 0:10:02.600 --> 0:10:04.880 then your body's going to recognize that as foreign and 0:10:04.920 --> 0:10:06.640 the immune system is going to go after it and 0:10:06.720 --> 0:10:09.480 kill it. So the organ that you get needs to 0:10:09.520 --> 0:10:12.199 look like an organ that would have been in your 0:10:12.200 --> 0:10:14.320 body to begin with. Otherwise the immune system is going 0:10:14.360 --> 0:10:14.880 to go nuts. 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.000 Fascinating, And then does having a good match guarantee that 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:20.560 the immune system is going to be cool or do 0:10:20.600 --> 0:10:23.840 you still need to take immune suppressants your whole life. 0:10:24.120 --> 0:10:26.680 You still need to take immunosupressants your whole life, which 0:10:26.720 --> 0:10:31.120 means you might be at greater risk of things like infections. Also, 0:10:31.200 --> 0:10:34.200 I think immunosuppressants make it slightly more likely that you 0:10:34.240 --> 0:10:37.040 could get cancer later in your life. But you know, 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:39.880 if the surgery goes well, then your life will be extended, 0:10:39.960 --> 0:10:42.079 even though you'll have these problems to deal with. 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:45.000 I remember, in our conversation about type one diabetes, Katrina 0:10:45.080 --> 0:10:47.679 was saying that you could cure type one diabetes by 0:10:47.720 --> 0:10:51.680 getting a pancreaus donation. But then you have immunosuppression, and 0:10:51.720 --> 0:10:53.920 that's pretty hard for somebody who's very young. 0:10:54.320 --> 0:10:57.480 Yeah, and even today sometimes we don't get that immunosuppression 0:10:57.600 --> 0:11:00.640 level completely correct. And so if you give people too 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:04.400 many immunosuppressive drugs, then you know, people can get horrible 0:11:04.440 --> 0:11:07.359 diseases and then they can pass away from those diseases. 0:11:07.800 --> 0:11:10.040 It's a very delicate balance, and so a fair bit 0:11:10.080 --> 0:11:12.520 of your life from then on out goes towards trying 0:11:12.559 --> 0:11:14.680 to like modulate your immune systems so that you don't 0:11:14.679 --> 0:11:16.920 get sick, but you don't reject this organ. 0:11:17.160 --> 0:11:20.160 And what organs are mostly the ones being donated? Is 0:11:20.200 --> 0:11:21.720 it mostly like kidneys and livers? 0:11:21.920 --> 0:11:25.400 Yeah, mostly kidneys, and then after that livers, and sometimes 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:29.160 you'll get lungs or hearts. I think kidneys are so 0:11:29.400 --> 0:11:32.800 common because if you have a problem with your kidney, 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:35.520 you can stay on dialysis. So dialysis is essentially a 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.040 machine that cleans your blood, does the job that kidneys 0:11:38.040 --> 0:11:40.520 would have done, and so you can stay alive for 0:11:40.640 --> 0:11:43.440 years on this machine. It's not a great quality of life, 0:11:43.720 --> 0:11:46.079 but you can wait for years for an organ to 0:11:46.160 --> 0:11:49.400 come along, whereas it's harder to get machines that replace 0:11:49.480 --> 0:11:52.040 our heart or our lungs or our liver. You can 0:11:52.080 --> 0:11:53.400 do that, but it's not the kind of thing that 0:11:53.440 --> 0:11:55.640 you can do for like years at a time. And 0:11:55.679 --> 0:11:59.640 so kidneys are an easy ish organ to deal with 0:11:59.720 --> 0:12:02.480 or to wait for replacement. And another way that we 0:12:02.520 --> 0:12:05.280 get organs are through living donors, and so if you 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:08.920 happen to have an identical twin who you get along with, 0:12:09.440 --> 0:12:11.600 and they're willing to give you one of their kidneys. 0:12:12.000 --> 0:12:13.640 If you two are a blood match, which you would 0:12:13.679 --> 0:12:15.760 be if you were identical twins, then they can donate 0:12:15.800 --> 0:12:18.000 one of their kidneys to you and they can still 0:12:18.040 --> 0:12:20.520 live with just one kidney, and then you get one 0:12:20.520 --> 0:12:24.040 of their kidneys. But say you don't have an identical 0:12:24.080 --> 0:12:26.040 twin and it turns out that your siblings and no 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:28.439 one in your family is a good match, then for 0:12:28.480 --> 0:12:30.320 a while there you were kind of out of luck. 0:12:30.760 --> 0:12:35.320 But recently this system has been created called matching markets. 0:12:35.679 --> 0:12:39.040 So essentially, if I needed a kidney and Zach was like, 0:12:39.200 --> 0:12:41.240 I'll give you one of mine, and he's not that nice, 0:12:41.240 --> 0:12:43.640 I'm not sure he would, but no, I'm kidding, No, 0:12:43.679 --> 0:12:45.920 I'm kidding, he'd give me his kidney. But so if 0:12:45.960 --> 0:12:47.560 Zach was like, well, I'll give you my kidney, but 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:49.760 it turned out we weren't a match, we could enter 0:12:49.840 --> 0:12:52.959 our names into a matching market and if somebody else 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:57.240 had a you know, a sibling, a boyfriend, whatever, who 0:12:57.360 --> 0:13:00.160 was a match to me, And it turned out that 0:13:00.280 --> 0:13:03.920 Zach was a match to them, then we could create 0:13:03.960 --> 0:13:06.080 that loop and we could switch the kidney, so I 0:13:06.080 --> 0:13:08.640 would get you know, that boyfriend's kidney, Zach would give 0:13:08.640 --> 0:13:12.480 his kidney to you know, the other boyfriend, and then 0:13:12.640 --> 0:13:15.600 we would manage to make the loop that way. And 0:13:15.640 --> 0:13:19.040 you can get really complicated loops where people are swapping 0:13:19.160 --> 0:13:22.600 organs and you know, I think more than twenty of 0:13:22.840 --> 0:13:25.959 these pairs have gone through these loops. And so by 0:13:26.000 --> 0:13:27.800 having a bunch of people who are willing to donate, 0:13:28.000 --> 0:13:29.920 you can make a lot of matches in this system, 0:13:30.400 --> 0:13:32.280 and so some of the matches come from that, but 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:35.360 those can be a little bit complicated because if everybody 0:13:35.360 --> 0:13:38.040 owes a kidney to somebody else, then you want to 0:13:38.040 --> 0:13:41.120 try to do those surgeries as much as possible at 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:43.720 the exact same time, so that nobody wakes up in 0:13:43.760 --> 0:13:46.360 the morning and is like, never mind, I'm too nervous, 0:13:46.400 --> 0:13:47.880 I'm not going to do it, and then one person's 0:13:47.880 --> 0:13:49.880 gotten a kidney, and now somebody else is sort of 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:51.120 left in the lurch. 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:53.319 You want to like them all in beds in a row. 0:13:53.480 --> 0:13:54.920 You're just like, ask the kidney. 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.760 Over to the left, right, Yeah, something like that, And 0:13:58.040 --> 0:13:59.760 so I think two percent of the time, you do 0:13:59.880 --> 0:14:02.920 have an instance where somebody will come in and you know, 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:05.640 it's not necessarily that they like they've changed their mind 0:14:05.679 --> 0:14:07.280 or they got too scared to go through with it. 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:10.160 Sometimes it's just like, hey, actually, it turns out that 0:14:10.240 --> 0:14:12.760 we discovered they have I don't know, some disease, and 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:15.080 so they can no longer donate that organ. And so 0:14:15.640 --> 0:14:17.319 there's good reason for not being able to do it. 0:14:17.400 --> 0:14:18.640 But every once in a while you get a good 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:22.480 Samaritan who doesn't necessarily know somebody who needs a kidney, 0:14:22.480 --> 0:14:24.680 but they're just willing to donate one, and then you 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:28.240 can get this whole match set off and you can 0:14:28.280 --> 0:14:31.000 start doing a bunch of kidney transfers between people. So 0:14:31.040 --> 0:14:33.320 anyway there is a bunch of people who are alive 0:14:33.440 --> 0:14:36.000 and donate their kidneys, and because we only need one, 0:14:36.120 --> 0:14:39.080 you can do this. It happens less often with livers, 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:41.800 so you can live with just part of a liver, 0:14:41.960 --> 0:14:44.880 so you could donate part of it. But this surgery 0:14:44.960 --> 0:14:47.200 is a little bit more high risk, and so it's 0:14:47.400 --> 0:14:49.600 asking a lot more than just asking someone to give 0:14:49.600 --> 0:14:50.560 you one of their kidneys. 0:14:50.760 --> 0:14:53.400 And what are the ethics around this because people have 0:14:53.480 --> 0:14:56.600 these very valuable resources which can save somebody else's life. 0:14:56.680 --> 0:14:59.520 But obviously you need their consent, but it feels like 0:14:59.520 --> 0:15:02.400 they could all be pressured into it. It reminds me 0:15:02.440 --> 0:15:04.760 of the questions people raise around end of life stuff. 0:15:04.880 --> 0:15:06.880 Or it's like, yeah, it's great if people get to 0:15:06.920 --> 0:15:09.920 decide when they exit, but do you want grandma to 0:15:09.920 --> 0:15:12.920 be pressured into the grave by her nephew who needs 0:15:12.920 --> 0:15:16.480 the inheritance? Right? Right? And so there's tricky issues. 0:15:16.160 --> 0:15:19.080 There, aren't there, Yeah, really tricky issues. And there was 0:15:19.160 --> 0:15:22.560 for a while, all right. So I'm pulling way back 0:15:22.560 --> 0:15:24.880 in my memory from when I was writing soonish, I 0:15:24.880 --> 0:15:26.320 think I'm going to get all of this right. But 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:31.520 I ran used to allow legal selling of organs, and 0:15:31.600 --> 0:15:33.800 it did seem to be the case that the poor 0:15:33.840 --> 0:15:36.520 were getting exploited, and they were often not getting paid 0:15:36.600 --> 0:15:38.800 very much for their organs, and then when they had 0:15:39.200 --> 0:15:41.680 trouble of their own, for example, maybe they had a 0:15:41.760 --> 0:15:45.400 problem with their remaining kidney, they couldn't afford the care 0:15:45.480 --> 0:15:48.640 that they needed, oh gosh, And so that system was 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:52.200 not working very well. There are folks who recommend, you know, 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:54.720 in the US, for example, you had a system where 0:15:54.760 --> 0:15:57.800 if somebody is willing to donate their kidney, it doesn't 0:15:57.840 --> 0:16:01.400 go to a person in particular, Like some super rich 0:16:01.440 --> 0:16:05.720 person couldn't say I want Daniel's kidney in particular, but 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:09.360 Daniel could say, you know, for a million dollars, which 0:16:09.520 --> 0:16:13.240 is about the cost of dialysis for a year. So 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:16.920 like you can imagine a insurance company maybe saying, all right, 0:16:16.960 --> 0:16:20.600 we'll give Daniel a million dollars so that this other 0:16:20.840 --> 0:16:22.880 patient of ours doesn't have to be on dialysis for 0:16:22.920 --> 0:16:26.680 three years, and we promise that if Daniel ever has 0:16:26.680 --> 0:16:28.800 a problem with his remaining kidney, he goes to the 0:16:28.800 --> 0:16:32.360 top of the list and he always gets free medical 0:16:32.360 --> 0:16:35.920 care for anything related to kidney problems. But there's this 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:39.320 concept of repugnance in economics, and there's some trades that 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:41.880 people feel comfortable with and some trades that people don't 0:16:41.880 --> 0:16:45.360 feel comfortable with, and trading organs sort of falls into 0:16:45.360 --> 0:16:49.320 the category of repugnant. People just kind of feel uncomfortable 0:16:49.320 --> 0:16:51.120 about it. For the reason that you identified. There's so 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.760 many ways to do it that feel ethically complicated, and 0:16:54.800 --> 0:16:57.000 you can absolutely imagine that people who are the most 0:16:57.040 --> 0:16:59.520 likely to donate their organs, or people who are in 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:03.560 financial straits and wouldn't be doing it otherwise, but absolutely 0:17:03.760 --> 0:17:05.560 feel like they need to do it to like, you know, 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:08.520 pay their bills or something. So it gets complicated. But 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:11.080 in the US you are not allowed to pay for organs. 0:17:11.200 --> 0:17:12.479 And do you think it happens anyway? 0:17:13.880 --> 0:17:14.400 Probably? 0:17:14.520 --> 0:17:17.080 I mean, it definitely happens in the dystopian science fiction 0:17:17.160 --> 0:17:18.960 that I read. I don't know if that means it 0:17:19.000 --> 0:17:19.920 happens in reality. 0:17:20.000 --> 0:17:21.440 Yeah. Well, you know, when I was reading the Space 0:17:21.480 --> 0:17:23.840 Settlement literature, they cited the expanse a lot as though 0:17:23.840 --> 0:17:26.439 that was actually happening. So if it's happening in dystopian 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:29.280 science fiction, it's probably happening in real life. 0:17:29.480 --> 0:17:32.159 Well, since we're talking about science fiction, why can't we 0:17:32.200 --> 0:17:35.560 avoid this problem by figuring out how to grow organs ourselves? 0:17:35.560 --> 0:17:37.600 Like why do you need a whole human being just 0:17:37.640 --> 0:17:40.000 to create a human kidney. Why can't you just grow 0:17:40.040 --> 0:17:42.399 a kidney in a vat somewhere or like three D 0:17:42.520 --> 0:17:44.600 print a kidney or something like that. 0:17:44.720 --> 0:17:46.560 Yeah, so people are working on that. So the idea 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:49.320 here is that you extract some cells from a person, 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:52.480 you grow up their own cells, and then you like 0:17:52.560 --> 0:17:54.520 extrude them through a three D printer or do some 0:17:54.560 --> 0:17:57.560 other sort of complicated technique to create an organ out 0:17:57.600 --> 0:17:59.959 of their own cells. If this worked, you wouldn't need 0:18:00.080 --> 0:18:03.000 to be on immunosuppressive drugs. It would be amazing. But 0:18:03.080 --> 0:18:08.359 the problem is that our organs are exquisitely complicated, and 0:18:08.680 --> 0:18:12.720 even just things like delivering nutrients and removing waste, which 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:16.240 you know we usually do with our vasculature our blood vessels, 0:18:16.720 --> 0:18:19.600 is really hard to recreate with a three D printer, 0:18:19.720 --> 0:18:22.360 like on the microscale, And so right now we're good 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:25.399 at printing what are called organoids. They're like slabs of 0:18:25.520 --> 0:18:28.080 organ and so that's good for like testing out drugs 0:18:28.080 --> 0:18:30.879 and stuff. So you know, if your liver drug kills 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:33.760 your little liver slab, you probably don't move on to 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:36.320 the stage where you're trying it out on humans. But 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:39.320 at the moment, it's not good enough to replace any organs. 0:18:39.320 --> 0:18:42.800 People are working on that. There's some really amazing work 0:18:43.000 --> 0:18:47.199 to create like vasculature out of like sinered sugar, So 0:18:47.280 --> 0:18:50.679 you fuse the sugar so it looks like vasculature, and 0:18:50.680 --> 0:18:53.720 then you seed it with blood vessel cells and those 0:18:53.720 --> 0:18:56.800 blood vessel cells grow around the sugar and then you 0:18:56.880 --> 0:18:59.520 put hot water through there and you dissolve the sugar away, 0:18:59.520 --> 0:19:02.120 and your left with vasculature whoa, and then you can 0:19:02.440 --> 0:19:04.040 put like liver cells around that. 0:19:04.200 --> 0:19:06.280 But all this talk of sugar, I'm just imagining like 0:19:06.280 --> 0:19:08.200 a cotton candy kidney or something. 0:19:09.359 --> 0:19:12.040 Yum. Oh, we got to we kind of got to cannibalism. 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:13.080 I think you know. 0:19:15.040 --> 0:19:15.960 I tricked you into it. 0:19:16.160 --> 0:19:18.960 That's all right, that's right, Okay, So let's take a break, 0:19:19.000 --> 0:19:20.680 and then when we come back from the break, we'll 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:25.240 talk about xeno transplantation, where you're forgetting about human organs 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:27.920 altogether and instead we're just seeing if we can use 0:19:28.000 --> 0:19:52.840 organs from other animals. Okay, So, xeno transplantation, which is 0:19:52.880 --> 0:19:56.200 when you use organs from other animals in human bodies, 0:19:56.680 --> 0:19:59.480 has a pretty long history. We're going to stick with 0:19:59.520 --> 0:20:02.080 the history in the twentieth century. And you know, I 0:20:02.080 --> 0:20:05.399 should say that the history of this field is august 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:08.719 and amazing, and the scientific work that's been done is fantastic. 0:20:08.920 --> 0:20:11.720 But I am going to start with the guy who 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:16.800 was implanting testicles for anti aging, because I'm me and 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:18.399 that's obviously where I had to start. 0:20:18.520 --> 0:20:21.800 But you're saying these experiments are maybe not representative of 0:20:21.840 --> 0:20:23.760 the scientific calimber of the whole field. 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:26.080 I mean, it was pretty representative of science in the 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:28.159 nineteen twenties. But you know, I don't want you to 0:20:28.240 --> 0:20:30.359 judge the whole field based on this story I'm about 0:20:30.359 --> 0:20:32.160 to tell, all right, tell us the story, all right. 0:20:32.160 --> 0:20:35.800 So Sergey Varnoff in the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:38.680 he was doing these experiments. He was a Russian emigray 0:20:38.800 --> 0:20:42.960 living in Paris, and he was implanting slices of chimp 0:20:43.040 --> 0:20:48.880 and baboon testicles into human males as an anti aging thing. 0:20:49.240 --> 0:20:51.280 Where into human males, like. 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:53.480 Near the testicles, it would be like you'd get a 0:20:53.520 --> 0:21:00.000 little slice of chimp nard behind yours and sorry everybody. 0:21:00.440 --> 0:21:02.919 And there were some people who reported afterwards that they 0:21:03.080 --> 0:21:07.159 felt more virile and alive, and I suspect that that 0:21:07.359 --> 0:21:11.920 was entirely placebo effect. And they're lucky they didn't get 0:21:12.000 --> 0:21:15.520 massive infections in their testicles from these foreign cells being 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:19.159 placed in that so delicate of an area. 0:21:19.200 --> 0:21:21.199 But were they like wired up with blood vessels and 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:23.040 stuff so they could live or it was just like 0:21:23.080 --> 0:21:24.160 a chunk of dead. 0:21:24.000 --> 0:21:26.080 Flesh yeah, it was a chunk of dead flesh that 0:21:26.160 --> 0:21:29.320 was definitely going to die, super gross. It was not 0:21:29.359 --> 0:21:31.879 going to be like producing more testosterone or anything like 0:21:31.920 --> 0:21:33.720 that the way they had done it. And if you 0:21:33.760 --> 0:21:36.159 went to the US, there was like a charlatan who 0:21:36.200 --> 0:21:38.240 I believe he was pretending to be a medical doctor, 0:21:38.280 --> 0:21:42.520 and he was giving folks testicles from like super viral goats. 0:21:42.880 --> 0:21:45.000 This is like zombie goat testicles. This is not good. 0:21:45.040 --> 0:21:47.720 I don't understand why anybody would say yes to this. 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:49.920 So, I mean, I don't feel like this is a 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:53.080 metaphor we need to double down on. But I would say, 0:21:53.080 --> 0:21:56.720 these goat testicles aren't like coming back to life inside 0:21:56.800 --> 0:21:59.320 of this human, you know. I think they're just like 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:03.000 they're they're in there and they decay away and if 0:22:03.000 --> 0:22:05.760 you're lucky, it won't cause a massive infection, right, and 0:22:05.800 --> 0:22:08.439 that's the best case scenario. All right. So then this 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:10.600 got dropped for a while because this wasn't really working out. 0:22:11.119 --> 0:22:15.200 In the nineteen sixties, we try transplanting chimpanzees and bonobo 0:22:15.680 --> 0:22:19.560 kidneys into humans directly. One woman lived with the chimpanzee 0:22:19.600 --> 0:22:21.960 kidney for about nine months wow, which was a pretty 0:22:22.000 --> 0:22:24.639 long time to have your life extended. But in general 0:22:24.720 --> 0:22:28.960 these surgeries don't work because human immune systems reject these 0:22:29.040 --> 0:22:31.879 foreign organs, and so some people the rejection takes a 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:35.440 little longer, others it happens more quickly. But it becomes 0:22:35.440 --> 0:22:40.120 clear that just straight up implantation of kidney and banobo 0:22:40.280 --> 0:22:43.080 organs into a human is not going to solve our problems. 0:22:43.200 --> 0:22:46.240 Well, we heard earlier that not even all human kidneys work. Right, 0:22:46.280 --> 0:22:47.879 if I need a transplant, I can't just get a 0:22:47.960 --> 0:22:50.919 random human. I need a specific human that's probably not 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:54.080 going to trigger my immune system. So that makes it 0:22:54.160 --> 0:22:56.840 sound very unlikely that any chimp would work. But when 0:22:56.840 --> 0:22:59.160 they do this, do they like choose a chimp that's 0:22:59.280 --> 0:23:01.199 less likely to trigger an immune system, and do you 0:23:01.200 --> 0:23:04.000 have like a chimp match. You know, some chimps were 0:23:04.000 --> 0:23:05.400 better for donating kidneys. 0:23:05.520 --> 0:23:08.359 So at this point we didn't really understand blood types, 0:23:08.520 --> 0:23:11.040 and so we were just kind of hoping that chimpanzees 0:23:11.080 --> 0:23:13.600 were closely related enough to humans that this would work. 0:23:13.880 --> 0:23:16.199 It was a little bit after this where we started 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:19.479 to figure out that oh, hey, even within species, like 0:23:19.480 --> 0:23:22.439 with dogs, if you transfer organs from one dog to another, 0:23:22.760 --> 0:23:25.720 sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't, and it took a 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:28.360 while for us to figure out that that all depended 0:23:28.400 --> 0:23:31.280 on blood types. And so once we figured that out, 0:23:31.320 --> 0:23:33.360 I think it was in dogs. I read this great 0:23:33.359 --> 0:23:36.720 book called Spare about the history of organ transplantation. They 0:23:36.720 --> 0:23:39.280 talk about blood type and how we figured that stuff 0:23:39.280 --> 0:23:42.159 out in more detail if anybody's interested. But once we 0:23:42.240 --> 0:23:44.439 figured it out in humans, we realized, Okay, so this 0:23:44.480 --> 0:23:47.440 isn't going to work with chimpanzees. They're two distantly related, 0:23:47.440 --> 0:23:50.080 same with bonobos. Even with humans, you need to figure 0:23:50.080 --> 0:23:52.640 out blood types. But I told you at the start 0:23:52.640 --> 0:23:55.920 of the episode that we've made some progress in zeno transplantation, 0:23:56.560 --> 0:23:59.040 and the way that we've done that is by genetically 0:23:59.080 --> 0:24:02.639 engineering pigs so that they look more human. 0:24:03.080 --> 0:24:06.439 That's really interesting, Kelly. I wouldn't choose pigs necessarily. Tell me, 0:24:06.520 --> 0:24:09.520 why would we choose pigs to be our organ farmers. 0:24:09.640 --> 0:24:15.040 That's such a great question, Daniel. So chimpanzees and bonobos 0:24:15.040 --> 0:24:17.240 are more closely related to us, so they seem like 0:24:17.240 --> 0:24:20.160 a more obvious choice. But they've got a couple problems. 0:24:20.200 --> 0:24:22.280 So first of all, they're smaller than us, so their 0:24:22.400 --> 0:24:25.479 organs are smaller. And that was a problem in some 0:24:25.560 --> 0:24:28.360 of the surgeries that were tried earlier. The chimp kidneys 0:24:28.400 --> 0:24:32.679 were too small, chimp hearts too small. But additionally, people 0:24:33.119 --> 0:24:38.480 feel much more uncomfortable about euthanizing chimpanzees and bonobos because 0:24:38.480 --> 0:24:40.720 they're more closely related to us, So there was this 0:24:40.800 --> 0:24:43.640 idea that they would be more of an ethical backlash. 0:24:43.760 --> 0:24:46.640 But perhaps even more than that, chimpanzees and bonobos take 0:24:46.680 --> 0:24:49.440 a long time to reach sexual maturity, and then they 0:24:49.440 --> 0:24:52.360 only have a few babies at a time, so you'd 0:24:52.400 --> 0:24:54.720 have to scale up in a way that would be 0:24:54.800 --> 0:24:57.000 very difficult, and we've never really done before to have 0:24:57.160 --> 0:25:00.240 enough chimpanzees and bonobos to meet the knee. 0:25:00.440 --> 0:25:03.000 You're talking about chimped farming, right. You're saying that it's 0:25:03.040 --> 0:25:05.760 hard to get a big population. Yeah, wow, So you 0:25:05.800 --> 0:25:08.679 want something that grows quickly and has babies young so 0:25:08.720 --> 0:25:12.280 that you can get that exponential factor go it early. 0:25:12.520 --> 0:25:15.080 Yikes, right, and your face is telling me that you 0:25:15.160 --> 0:25:18.520 feel uncomfortable about this suggestion, which almost everybody else did. 0:25:19.160 --> 0:25:21.480 The final nail in the coffin is that those more 0:25:21.480 --> 0:25:24.879 closely related organisms are more likely to have diseases that 0:25:24.920 --> 0:25:27.120 could jump from them to us, making this a little 0:25:27.119 --> 0:25:31.160 bit scarier. So pigs are an organism that we already 0:25:31.200 --> 0:25:35.720 know how to grow in like sort of production level. Yeah, 0:25:36.200 --> 0:25:39.920 so they reach sexual maturity when they're young, they have 0:25:40.400 --> 0:25:43.520 lots of babies. We know how to keep them alive. 0:25:43.680 --> 0:25:46.960 We understand these organisms fairly well. We've got like their 0:25:47.000 --> 0:25:51.720 genome and their organs are like fairly similar in size 0:25:51.760 --> 0:25:54.160 to humans in a lot of ways, and so we've 0:25:54.200 --> 0:25:57.200 sort of settled on pigs as our best bet as 0:25:57.280 --> 0:26:00.680 starting material to tinker with to make organs to keep 0:26:00.720 --> 0:26:01.160 us alive. 0:26:01.440 --> 0:26:03.760 I don't know if that logic really holds. It's like, 0:26:04.359 --> 0:26:07.080 this is ethically dubious, so let's do it on a 0:26:07.119 --> 0:26:11.240 creature we're already mistreating ethically, right, Like we already treat 0:26:11.240 --> 0:26:14.320 pigs as if they're objects, and so therefore it's okay 0:26:14.359 --> 0:26:16.679 to treat them as objects, where it's not okay to 0:26:16.680 --> 0:26:20.680 treat chimps as objects because we don't do that already, yes, 0:26:20.800 --> 0:26:22.600 Or is it just about being closer to us? Is 0:26:22.600 --> 0:26:25.920 this another like speciesism thing? Like how much of humanity's 0:26:25.960 --> 0:26:27.760 rights do you get? Chimps get a little bit and 0:26:27.800 --> 0:26:28.920 pigs get almost none? 0:26:29.119 --> 0:26:31.120 Yes, I mean I think everything that you just said 0:26:31.280 --> 0:26:34.240 is uncomfortable but true. But you've told me in a 0:26:34.240 --> 0:26:37.600 previous episode that you have accepted that humans are just 0:26:37.640 --> 0:26:39.920 sort of like a level above the other animals and 0:26:39.960 --> 0:26:43.040 you are okay with eating them. And I feel like 0:26:43.080 --> 0:26:46.640 you're not consistently applying that philosophy right now. 0:26:46.960 --> 0:26:51.480 No, you're right, because consistently applying that philosophy means arbitrarily 0:26:51.560 --> 0:26:55.240 labeling humans as better. And the point you just made 0:26:55.240 --> 0:26:58.399 with chimps and bonobos is that there's a spectrum, right 0:26:58.520 --> 0:27:00.680 and like where do you draw the line? And now 0:27:00.720 --> 0:27:03.280 you have to have a fuzzy delineation of how much 0:27:03.280 --> 0:27:05.959 of this like special glowy rights that you put on 0:27:05.960 --> 0:27:08.320 people and how much do you not? And what if 0:27:08.320 --> 0:27:10.840 somebody had a half pig half human hybrid, what would 0:27:10.880 --> 0:27:12.960 they get? You know? And so yes, I am not 0:27:13.000 --> 0:27:16.240 prepared to answer these questions. My philosophical framework here is 0:27:16.320 --> 0:27:17.120 quite naive. 0:27:18.680 --> 0:27:21.360 Yeah, I do think a lot of this stuff is complicated. 0:27:21.400 --> 0:27:24.280 Like you know, if you go to some countries they 0:27:24.320 --> 0:27:26.920 eat guinea pigs and it's like nothing. But if you 0:27:27.400 --> 0:27:29.760 told a child in the US that you were gonna 0:27:29.800 --> 0:27:31.960 have guinea pig for dinner, they'd probably be very upset 0:27:32.000 --> 0:27:35.439 because we think of those animals as pets and not food. 0:27:35.880 --> 0:27:37.320 And so I think a lot of it depends on 0:27:37.400 --> 0:27:39.960 what you grew up feeling comfortable with. Like I know 0:27:40.040 --> 0:27:43.040 some people who won't eat bunnies because they're too cute, 0:27:43.160 --> 0:27:46.439 but they will eat pigs because they think they're not cute. 0:27:46.440 --> 0:27:48.479 But I think pigs are cute, and I think anyway, 0:27:48.560 --> 0:27:51.400 humans have very complicated feelings. But pigs are an organism 0:27:51.400 --> 0:27:53.960 that I think a lot of people have decided is 0:27:54.000 --> 0:27:57.000 okay to eat, although I know that there are you know, 0:27:57.080 --> 0:27:59.280 cultures and religions for which that's not the case. 0:27:59.359 --> 0:28:01.280 And at least we're not committing any more crimes. We're 0:28:01.280 --> 0:28:04.720 committing more crimes on each individual, but we're not committing 0:28:04.720 --> 0:28:07.720 crimes on more individuals. We're already raising these folks for meat, 0:28:08.119 --> 0:28:10.120 and so might as well harvest their organs. 0:28:10.359 --> 0:28:15.040 Yeah, it's not that easy actually, So in the US 0:28:15.080 --> 0:28:18.840 we're very uncomfortable with eating genetically modified foods, and in 0:28:18.880 --> 0:28:22.600 the European Union, I think it may even be completely prohibited. 0:28:23.119 --> 0:28:26.080 And so I don't actually know if these pigs, after 0:28:26.119 --> 0:28:30.760 having their organs harvested, would be sent out to become bacon. 0:28:30.880 --> 0:28:34.639 For example, I will say that if the companies that 0:28:34.720 --> 0:28:37.160 made these pigs said, you know, we're going to sell 0:28:37.200 --> 0:28:41.040 pork from these animals that we used their organs for transplants, 0:28:41.440 --> 0:28:44.960 and it's safe we eat it ourselves, then that would 0:28:44.960 --> 0:28:46.840 be the pork that I would buy. But I don't 0:28:46.880 --> 0:28:49.000 actually know that that's how it would play out, all right, So. 0:28:48.960 --> 0:28:51.520 Then the key concept is that these aren't just normal 0:28:51.560 --> 0:28:54.280 farm pigs. These are pigs have been genetically engineered to 0:28:54.360 --> 0:28:57.920 make fair organs better for transplanting into humans. How do 0:28:58.000 --> 0:29:00.480 you do that? Do you just like randomly breed pigs 0:29:00.680 --> 0:29:02.719 or can we actually go in and tinker with the DNA? 0:29:03.000 --> 0:29:05.160 Yeah, so you're gonna have to tinker with the DNA 0:29:05.200 --> 0:29:07.200 because if you don't tinker with the DNA, you're always 0:29:07.240 --> 0:29:09.960 going to have this immune system problem. And so recently 0:29:10.160 --> 0:29:13.120 we got this major advance in tinkering with DNA. I'm 0:29:13.120 --> 0:29:15.000 sure just about everybody has heard of this. This is 0:29:15.120 --> 0:29:19.320 the CRISPER CAST nine system. So CRISPER stands for clustered 0:29:19.400 --> 0:29:23.680 regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats. I'm sure everybody's going to 0:29:23.760 --> 0:29:27.920 remember that the women who found this Jennifer Dudna and 0:29:27.960 --> 0:29:32.240 Emmanuel Chapatier. What you do French stuff? Right? How do 0:29:32.280 --> 0:29:32.960 you say that name? 0:29:33.120 --> 0:29:34.040 That sounded pretty good. 0:29:34.120 --> 0:29:36.480 Yeah, okay, fantastic. You know I've I've been working on 0:29:36.520 --> 0:29:38.040 French and du a lingo. 0:29:37.760 --> 0:29:38.560 To your microbiome. 0:29:38.680 --> 0:29:41.200 Okay. So they got the Noball Prize for this work. 0:29:41.280 --> 0:29:46.920 And so essentially this system is snagged from bacteria's immune system. 0:29:47.160 --> 0:29:51.360 So the way this works is that bacteria remember, not 0:29:51.480 --> 0:29:53.600 the same way that we remember things, but they remember 0:29:53.680 --> 0:29:57.280 a virus that has infected them by essentially, when they 0:29:57.520 --> 0:30:00.680 find that virus, they grab a piece of the virus's 0:30:00.720 --> 0:30:04.080 genetic material and they stick it into their own genome. 0:30:04.480 --> 0:30:07.000 And now whenever that viral sequence is found in their 0:30:07.000 --> 0:30:10.280 body again, Crisper goes and cuts it to break it up. 0:30:10.360 --> 0:30:12.480 So it's like a little bacterial immune system that like 0:30:12.520 --> 0:30:15.480 a library of viral codes that they've seen before that 0:30:15.520 --> 0:30:15.840 they're like. 0:30:15.840 --> 0:30:18.800 This is bad, kill it, right, So you essentially have 0:30:19.000 --> 0:30:23.600 a system that can recognize certain sequences of genetic code 0:30:23.920 --> 0:30:25.600 and then it goes in there and it cuts it. 0:30:25.680 --> 0:30:28.800 And so it's like targeted molecular scissors. And so we 0:30:28.920 --> 0:30:31.680 can use this. We can say Okay, here's a pig, 0:30:32.000 --> 0:30:34.080 and here is the code for a gene that we 0:30:34.120 --> 0:30:36.840 want to tinker with. And so you can tell Crisper like, 0:30:37.040 --> 0:30:39.240 go in there and cut it at the spots where 0:30:39.280 --> 0:30:40.680 we want you to cut it, and now you can 0:30:40.760 --> 0:30:44.880 deactivate a gene or when it cuts a gene. The 0:30:44.920 --> 0:30:47.960 way the DNA responds is it repairs itself by sort 0:30:48.000 --> 0:30:50.240 of joining the two ends back together after you've made 0:30:50.240 --> 0:30:53.320 the cut. But you can before it joins itself back 0:30:53.320 --> 0:30:55.640 together sort of slip in a new gene or some 0:30:55.720 --> 0:30:58.080 new genetic code. And so in that way you can 0:30:58.480 --> 0:31:02.239 both remove things or add things in specific locations that 0:31:02.280 --> 0:31:02.680 you want. 0:31:03.000 --> 0:31:06.360 Man, biological engineering is incredible. I can't believe this ever 0:31:06.440 --> 0:31:09.280 works because it's not like I imagine you'd need like 0:31:09.440 --> 0:31:12.200 tiny little tweezers and you're like moving it into place 0:31:12.320 --> 0:31:14.000 just right. But you can't do that right. You just 0:31:14.040 --> 0:31:16.680 have like a test tube with solution and you jiggle 0:31:16.720 --> 0:31:18.960 it and you hope everything lines up. It's crazy. 0:31:19.200 --> 0:31:21.760 It's so crazy. I cannot believe that it works, but 0:31:21.920 --> 0:31:25.440 it does. It's absolutely amazing. But so the next step 0:31:25.720 --> 0:31:28.560 from there I found sort of confusing, and I was 0:31:28.640 --> 0:31:31.560 reading the scientific papers I wasn't following, So I wrote 0:31:31.720 --> 0:31:36.160 e Genesis, which is a company that makes genetically modified 0:31:36.200 --> 0:31:38.440 pig organs in addition to making a bunch of other stuff. 0:31:38.640 --> 0:31:40.840 This is non science fiction. They exist in our world. 0:31:40.960 --> 0:31:42.840 E Genesis exists in our world. That's right. 0:31:42.960 --> 0:31:43.160 Wow. 0:31:43.360 --> 0:31:45.720 And I wrote them. I wrote for you know, their 0:31:45.760 --> 0:31:48.320 media contacts or whatever. And I was like, I don't 0:31:48.320 --> 0:31:51.120 speak molecular biology. I can't figure out exactly what was 0:31:51.120 --> 0:31:53.600 done here. Can you connect me with someone who can 0:31:53.720 --> 0:31:56.840 explain it? And so they connected me to Wenning Chin, 0:31:57.240 --> 0:31:59.959 who was the senior author on the Nature paper described 0:32:00.120 --> 0:32:03.719 how they made these genetically modified pigs amazing. She was 0:32:03.800 --> 0:32:06.880 so fantastic to talk to and so excited about this research. 0:32:07.240 --> 0:32:10.880 So she told me that there's three different classes of 0:32:11.400 --> 0:32:12.760 genetic changes that they made. 0:32:13.480 --> 0:32:15.680 So first, wait, hold on, did you talk to her 0:32:15.840 --> 0:32:18.400 and see a video or just over the phone over zoom? 0:32:18.480 --> 0:32:21.160 And did you see her only like you know, chest 0:32:21.280 --> 0:32:24.560 up or full body chest up? Okay, So she could 0:32:24.560 --> 0:32:26.560 have had like you know, pig legs under the table 0:32:26.600 --> 0:32:27.400 and you wouldn't even know. 0:32:27.640 --> 0:32:29.640 I had no idea where you were going with this. 0:32:31.520 --> 0:32:33.440 I mean, you're talking to somebody at a company who's 0:32:33.480 --> 0:32:37.760 like doing cutting edge like human animal weirdness. So like, 0:32:37.800 --> 0:32:39.080 I mean, you're not curious. 0:32:39.400 --> 0:32:42.080 I had no reason to believe that she was anything 0:32:42.160 --> 0:32:46.479 other than a you know, woman with no animal parts, 0:32:48.080 --> 0:32:52.200 and she was wonderful. So all right, okay, they had 0:32:52.240 --> 0:32:54.880 made three different classes of edits. The first thing they 0:32:54.880 --> 0:32:56.800 did was they removed all the pervs. 0:32:56.640 --> 0:32:57.880 The what's pervs. 0:32:58.160 --> 0:33:04.479 The pervs. Pervs are poor sign anddogenous retroviruses. So the 0:33:04.920 --> 0:33:08.280 pig genome has some viruses in it, and most of 0:33:08.320 --> 0:33:11.600 the time those viruses are either helpful. For example, they 0:33:11.640 --> 0:33:14.080 help with things like placenta formation, and we're going to 0:33:14.120 --> 0:33:16.520 have cap Ohannan on the show in the future to 0:33:16.560 --> 0:33:19.760 talk about how that works. But they also have some 0:33:19.840 --> 0:33:23.960 other viruses that are able to start replicating themselves at 0:33:24.040 --> 0:33:26.160 like sort of random times that we don't really understand 0:33:26.200 --> 0:33:28.680 how they choose when they want to start replicating themselves. 0:33:28.880 --> 0:33:33.240 And we've put these viral particles in plates with human 0:33:33.280 --> 0:33:35.840 cells and it looks like they can infect those human cells. 0:33:36.160 --> 0:33:37.760 Yeah, so you. 0:33:37.800 --> 0:33:40.239 Really don't want to get a pig organ and then 0:33:40.320 --> 0:33:43.120 discover that you are filled with pervs and that you 0:33:43.200 --> 0:33:44.680 are going to die from those viruses. 0:33:44.840 --> 0:33:46.720 Nobody wants a purview organ for sure. 0:33:46.840 --> 0:33:50.600 No, no, absolutely not. No. There's so much material we 0:33:50.640 --> 0:33:53.440 could work with here, but anyway, we won't get to 0:33:53.440 --> 0:33:57.000 too gross. And so they cut out the poor sign 0:33:57.080 --> 0:34:01.120 anddogenous retroviruses to make it so that wouldn't be a problem. 0:34:01.200 --> 0:34:03.440 They had to be pretty clever about how they did 0:34:03.440 --> 0:34:05.680 the cutting, but they made it so that they feel 0:34:05.720 --> 0:34:07.960 like this is no longer a risk to people who 0:34:07.960 --> 0:34:11.160 get these organs. Then the next thing they had to 0:34:11.200 --> 0:34:16.080 do was remove stuff on the pig cells that our 0:34:16.120 --> 0:34:19.160 immune system could use to say, hey, that doesn't belong 0:34:19.200 --> 0:34:22.239 to me. So pig cells have some sugars on them, 0:34:22.719 --> 0:34:26.080 and that's because pigs and humans, you know, diverge something 0:34:26.120 --> 0:34:28.880 like eighty million years ago. We've gone on very separate paths, 0:34:28.920 --> 0:34:31.680 and so our cells look different. And so what they 0:34:31.680 --> 0:34:34.440 did was they went in and they removed these sugars 0:34:34.480 --> 0:34:38.440 from the cells. They essentially depigged these cells so that 0:34:38.520 --> 0:34:40.480 our immune system would be less likely to see it 0:34:40.520 --> 0:34:43.200 and be like, you don't belong here. And then the 0:34:43.239 --> 0:34:46.759 next set of changes that they made were essentially humanizing 0:34:46.800 --> 0:34:50.080 the pig cells. So now on the cells they added 0:34:50.160 --> 0:34:53.000 stuff to make them look more human again so that 0:34:53.040 --> 0:34:55.600 the immune system wouldn't respond. And so my question when 0:34:55.640 --> 0:34:58.600 she told me about that was, well, if we have 0:34:58.640 --> 0:35:02.040 to worry about our immune s system attacking cells with 0:35:02.200 --> 0:35:05.640 pig sugars, why don't you have to worry about the 0:35:05.680 --> 0:35:08.359 pig bodies attacking the human sugars when the pigs are 0:35:08.360 --> 0:35:09.280 growing these organs. 0:35:09.360 --> 0:35:11.839 That was my question too. Yeah, well, but it's such a. 0:35:11.800 --> 0:35:15.000 Cool answer, and I should have known the answer as 0:35:15.000 --> 0:35:18.120 someone who works sort of adjacent to immunology. But anyway, 0:35:18.160 --> 0:35:21.839 the answer is that if you are a fetus, the 0:35:21.880 --> 0:35:24.960 things that you're exposed to when you're a fetus are 0:35:25.080 --> 0:35:28.960 what your body expects. And so if you grow a 0:35:29.080 --> 0:35:32.680 pig from the starting point, like as an embryo, with 0:35:32.920 --> 0:35:36.400 these human sugars, it's immune system is like, oh sweet, 0:35:36.400 --> 0:35:38.799 these sugars belong here, and it doesn't attack them. 0:35:38.920 --> 0:35:42.120 There's no ingrained knowledge in the immune system is just 0:35:42.239 --> 0:35:44.360 trained on examples from when your fetus. It's like a 0:35:44.400 --> 0:35:45.320 blank neural network. 0:35:45.360 --> 0:35:49.640 That's right, that's amazing. Yeah, And so like if fraternal twins, 0:35:49.640 --> 0:35:52.160 so twins that aren't exactly identical, like if they share 0:35:52.200 --> 0:35:55.239 a blood supply, you're more likely to be able to 0:35:55.280 --> 0:35:59.719 do transplants between them because they had that stuff in 0:35:59.760 --> 0:36:03.400 the vironments, so their immune systems less likely to attack it. Incredible. Okay, 0:36:03.480 --> 0:36:06.439 so those are the three changes that were made. Let's 0:36:06.440 --> 0:36:08.279 take a break, and when we come back, I'll tell 0:36:08.320 --> 0:36:11.080 you about what they did once they had crispired all 0:36:11.120 --> 0:36:34.399 of that stuff into existence. All right. So what Egenesis 0:36:34.400 --> 0:36:37.160 did is they collected cells from the ears of one 0:36:37.239 --> 0:36:41.200 hundred different pigs. They ran their crisper magic to make 0:36:41.320 --> 0:36:43.919 all of those three different classes of changes we talked about. 0:36:43.920 --> 0:36:47.080 They ended up making sixty nine changes total. They took 0:36:47.080 --> 0:36:52.000 an egg from pigs, they pulled out the nucleus in 0:36:52.080 --> 0:36:55.880 the egg, and they put in the genetic material that 0:36:55.920 --> 0:36:58.880 they had just created so with all of the changes, 0:36:59.440 --> 0:37:02.040 and then they grew that up into a pig. 0:37:02.080 --> 0:37:05.080 All right. So because before we're talking about genetic information 0:37:05.160 --> 0:37:07.200 sort of in the abstract. It's just like you have 0:37:07.400 --> 0:37:09.440 DNA in a vial, but it's not part of a cell. 0:37:09.800 --> 0:37:11.840 You're just like writing the code. Now you got to 0:37:11.880 --> 0:37:14.640 load that code into the hardware, so like the whole 0:37:14.640 --> 0:37:15.600 pig cell runs it. 0:37:15.800 --> 0:37:18.759 Yes, cool, And so they did that, and so now 0:37:18.800 --> 0:37:23.720 they have pigs that are adults and are growing these organs, 0:37:24.400 --> 0:37:26.960 and they have all the genetic changes that they put 0:37:27.000 --> 0:37:29.520 in there. And now when these pigs have babies, they 0:37:29.560 --> 0:37:32.560 will also have these genetic changes. So now you have 0:37:32.800 --> 0:37:36.719 lines of pigs that are making organs that should be 0:37:36.760 --> 0:37:38.000 able to go into humans. 0:37:38.040 --> 0:37:40.640 All right, So the first pig is an adult as 0:37:40.680 --> 0:37:44.920 the normal like piggy pervy organs, but you've put cells 0:37:44.920 --> 0:37:48.680 into it that have the edited DNA, and its children 0:37:49.160 --> 0:37:51.480 will have that edited DNA and they will grow up 0:37:51.600 --> 0:37:54.319 and generate the organs without the pervy bits. Is that right? 0:37:54.440 --> 0:37:54.640 Yeah? 0:37:54.680 --> 0:37:57.359 Yeah, So you could take a cell from that pig's ear, 0:37:57.960 --> 0:37:59.960 use Crisper cast nine to make a bunch of edit 0:38:00.040 --> 0:38:03.080 it's inside of that cell. Then take the nucleus out 0:38:03.120 --> 0:38:05.439 of that cell and put it in an egg from 0:38:05.520 --> 0:38:07.880 any pig really could be the same one that you 0:38:07.920 --> 0:38:10.480 took the ear stuff from. Oh, and then you use 0:38:10.560 --> 0:38:12.080 that egg to grow up new pigs. 0:38:12.239 --> 0:38:15.360 All right, wow, and so does it work? Do we 0:38:15.440 --> 0:38:19.200 have baby pigs growing human kidneys or or human is kidneys. 0:38:19.520 --> 0:38:22.040 Well, so the way that you test this stuff, so 0:38:22.200 --> 0:38:24.960 first you tend to try these organs out in like 0:38:25.120 --> 0:38:28.920 macaques or baboons, so you try them out in closely 0:38:29.000 --> 0:38:32.920 related primates and if it works okay in them, then 0:38:32.920 --> 0:38:34.720 you can say, all right, maybe we're ready to jump 0:38:34.840 --> 0:38:37.800 to humans. Sometimes you have an additional step in between, 0:38:38.280 --> 0:38:41.280 where you have a human who has had an accident 0:38:41.520 --> 0:38:45.080 and they've experienced brain death, but their organs are still working, 0:38:45.120 --> 0:38:46.759 and so then you put them on life support and 0:38:46.800 --> 0:38:49.719 you can put a genetically modified organ in them and 0:38:49.760 --> 0:38:52.160 see how their body responds. And so that's a way 0:38:52.239 --> 0:38:52.920 to see. 0:38:52.800 --> 0:38:55.000 You treat them as like a science experiment. Wow. 0:38:55.239 --> 0:38:57.640 Yeah, that's a not so nice way of putting it. 0:38:57.680 --> 0:38:59.759 I would say, you know, if I were in that 0:38:59.800 --> 0:39:03.760 sea situation and someone has to decide, does Kelly's body 0:39:04.480 --> 0:39:07.000 get used to try to like figure out this life 0:39:07.080 --> 0:39:10.319 saving technique and that's her last contribution to the world, Like, 0:39:10.400 --> 0:39:12.279 I would hope that somebody would say yes, because that 0:39:12.400 --> 0:39:15.120 I mean, that feels like it sucks that I died, 0:39:15.560 --> 0:39:18.200 but it would be amazing if I could help build 0:39:18.640 --> 0:39:21.359 the argument that was needed so that we could start 0:39:21.440 --> 0:39:24.640 using this amazing life saving technique in other people. 0:39:24.719 --> 0:39:26.600 And so so yes basically. 0:39:26.480 --> 0:39:29.160 So yes, yes, but you know, families get asked ahead 0:39:29.160 --> 0:39:31.759 of time. You know, it's all of this stuff fascinating. 0:39:31.920 --> 0:39:34.759 It has complicated ethical approvals that are needed ahead of time. 0:39:34.800 --> 0:39:38.399 But so E Genesis did get permission from the Food 0:39:38.400 --> 0:39:41.680 and Drug Administration to try these organs out. I believe 0:39:41.680 --> 0:39:44.520 that they're still getting tried out under what's called compassionate use. 0:39:44.880 --> 0:39:47.880 So it's getting tried out on patients who I believe 0:39:47.920 --> 0:39:49.600 are not able to get on the wait list for 0:39:49.640 --> 0:39:51.480 one reason or another. Like you know, for example, to 0:39:51.560 --> 0:39:54.560 have a blood type that is pretty rare, it's hard 0:39:54.560 --> 0:39:57.719 to find someone who's compatible. The probability that they will 0:39:57.760 --> 0:40:00.319 be on the wait list for longer than and they're 0:40:00.360 --> 0:40:04.320 likely to survive is high. And so we're trying it 0:40:04.360 --> 0:40:06.880 out on these folks, yeah, because it's a good option 0:40:06.960 --> 0:40:09.680 for them given the options they have. And so these 0:40:09.719 --> 0:40:12.120 folks tend to be fifty five to seventy years old 0:40:12.719 --> 0:40:14.960 and they're unlikely to get an organ in the next 0:40:15.000 --> 0:40:17.319 five years. So two of these surgeries have been done, 0:40:17.680 --> 0:40:21.080 and so far both of the people have survived. I 0:40:21.080 --> 0:40:24.680 think these surgeries were done in like February or March, 0:40:24.719 --> 0:40:27.839 and it's June now, and as far as I could 0:40:27.880 --> 0:40:31.480 tell searching through Google, the folks who received these organs 0:40:31.520 --> 0:40:35.480 are still alive and still doing well, which is so amazing. 0:40:35.560 --> 0:40:39.160 And then there's another company called United Therapeutics, and they 0:40:39.239 --> 0:40:42.719 also have used Crisper to modify pig organs. They only 0:40:42.760 --> 0:40:45.440 did ten edits. It sounds like maybe they're keeping their 0:40:45.440 --> 0:40:48.799 fingers crossed that those retroviruses aren't a problem. I don't 0:40:48.800 --> 0:40:51.120 think they did as many edits to those, but this 0:40:51.200 --> 0:40:54.360 is all sort of information that isn't made public. Exactly 0:40:54.400 --> 0:40:57.439 what edits you make probably, so anyway, they've also done 0:40:57.440 --> 0:41:01.800 some transplant experiments using their organs. One of the patients 0:41:01.800 --> 0:41:05.080 who had one of these genetically modified organs had it 0:41:05.160 --> 0:41:07.520 for four months and then her body started to reject 0:41:07.520 --> 0:41:09.680 it for unknown reasons and it had to be removed. 0:41:10.120 --> 0:41:12.880 So it's possible some more tinkering is going to need 0:41:12.920 --> 0:41:15.160 to get done with the pig organs, or we need 0:41:15.200 --> 0:41:16.960 to do a little bit more work figuring out the 0:41:17.040 --> 0:41:20.840 right amount of suppressive drugs. But you know, these organs 0:41:20.840 --> 0:41:23.680 are being trialed out, and if these initial trials go well, 0:41:23.960 --> 0:41:26.960 then the pool of people who could join trials to 0:41:27.040 --> 0:41:31.359 test these organs out will expand. And so that's where 0:41:31.360 --> 0:41:33.200 we are right now. We're kind of trying it out 0:41:33.200 --> 0:41:34.880 to see if we figured out all the changes we 0:41:34.920 --> 0:41:35.359 need to make. 0:41:35.480 --> 0:41:37.640 This feels like we're on the cusp of something really big. 0:41:37.719 --> 0:41:40.480 I mean, if this works, it could really change what 0:41:40.560 --> 0:41:43.440 it means to wait for an organ. How many people 0:41:43.520 --> 0:41:46.719 die waiting for organs. Yeah, it could really change the 0:41:46.760 --> 0:41:49.680 experience of being human and the experience of being pig unfortunately. 0:41:49.920 --> 0:41:52.240 Yeah, yeah, yeah, So these pigs need to be grown 0:41:52.280 --> 0:41:57.080 in facilities where they are absolutely not going to encounter 0:41:57.120 --> 0:42:01.200 additional viruses. So, for example, sometimes the flu can jump 0:42:01.280 --> 0:42:03.560 from birds to people. Sometimes it can jump from pigs 0:42:03.560 --> 0:42:05.000 to people. So you want to make sure that your 0:42:05.000 --> 0:42:07.839 pigs are not encountering any new flu strains. So they 0:42:07.880 --> 0:42:12.040 need to be in these like incredibly biosecure facilities. But yes, 0:42:12.160 --> 0:42:14.640 once you grow up enough of them and you expand 0:42:14.680 --> 0:42:19.319 the facilities, hopefully, you know, with a lot of procedures 0:42:19.360 --> 0:42:22.480 that are ethically you know, compassionate for the lives of 0:42:22.480 --> 0:42:25.879 the pigs, you could have organs that are ready at 0:42:25.960 --> 0:42:28.279 just about any time. So you know, somebody who has 0:42:28.360 --> 0:42:31.440 kidney issues wouldn't have to face down a few years 0:42:31.440 --> 0:42:33.920 of dialysis with the quality of their life is much lower. 0:42:34.360 --> 0:42:36.600 You know, they could discover they need a new kidney 0:42:36.640 --> 0:42:38.560 and they could, you know, have it a month later 0:42:38.680 --> 0:42:39.399 or something like that. 0:42:39.640 --> 0:42:42.719 Yeah, these kidneys are not tailored to an individual human, right, 0:42:42.760 --> 0:42:47.160 they're generically modified so that they're more acceptable to humans broadly. 0:42:47.200 --> 0:42:49.400 But we know the humans are different, right, and some 0:42:49.480 --> 0:42:52.920 humans reject or accept different kidneys. Is it possible that 0:42:53.000 --> 0:42:55.200 some kinds of people will be able to accept pigkinnys 0:42:55.239 --> 0:42:55.960 and others won't. 0:42:56.400 --> 0:42:59.440 I think yes. I think that is a live option. 0:42:59.600 --> 0:43:02.520 So the the woman who had the United Therapeutics kidney 0:43:03.080 --> 0:43:05.879 who eventually rejected it, I think we don't understand why 0:43:05.920 --> 0:43:09.280 she rejected it. It could be that there's some incompatibility 0:43:09.320 --> 0:43:12.520 issue that you know, might be specific to her. Maybe 0:43:12.520 --> 0:43:14.799 we will need to personalize these organs a bit more. 0:43:14.880 --> 0:43:17.360 And I'm sure the three D printing people are saying, 0:43:17.680 --> 0:43:19.640 if you print with your own cells, this will never 0:43:19.680 --> 0:43:22.279 be a problem, when you know that technology isn't here 0:43:22.360 --> 0:43:24.400 yet either. So yes, it could be that more tinkering 0:43:24.440 --> 0:43:27.359 needs to get done. It would have been beautiful if 0:43:27.480 --> 0:43:31.839 everyone who got these genetically modified pig organs accepted them 0:43:31.840 --> 0:43:35.040 with no problems right from the start, But that's that's 0:43:35.040 --> 0:43:36.239 not where we are right now, and. 0:43:36.200 --> 0:43:38.719 Our pig's the only place this is happening. Is there 0:43:38.760 --> 0:43:40.800 any other species that's in contention? 0:43:41.120 --> 0:43:43.719 Nope, just pigs. Wow, as far as I can tell. 0:43:43.880 --> 0:43:46.440 Yeah, So maybe society will get divided in the future 0:43:46.440 --> 0:43:49.000 into people who can accept pig organs and people who can't, 0:43:49.000 --> 0:43:50.680 the piggy people and the non piggy people. 0:43:50.719 --> 0:43:52.880 That's right, that's right, a little bit of levity and 0:43:52.920 --> 0:43:55.560 our otherwise sort of bummer of an episode. But so 0:43:55.800 --> 0:43:58.080 I've got a question you might not know the answer to. 0:43:58.239 --> 0:44:01.680 So there are some cultures that can't eat pork. So 0:44:01.760 --> 0:44:04.360 my husband is Jewish and he's a vegetarian too, so 0:44:04.360 --> 0:44:06.200 it's sort of a non starter. But do you think 0:44:06.239 --> 0:44:09.560 there'd be any rules about accepting organs? 0:44:09.920 --> 0:44:12.239 That is a great question and what I don't know 0:44:12.280 --> 0:44:14.160 the answer to. And one reason that it's a great 0:44:14.239 --> 0:44:16.880 question is that I'm sure the Rabbis will have a 0:44:16.920 --> 0:44:20.160 lot of fun arguing about it, because Rabbis have a 0:44:20.200 --> 0:44:22.279 lot of fun arguing about stuff like this, you know, like, 0:44:22.520 --> 0:44:24.840 can you turn on the light switch on Saturday? No? 0:44:25.239 --> 0:44:27.320 Can you hire someone to turn on the light switch? 0:44:27.880 --> 0:44:28.040 No? 0:44:28.320 --> 0:44:30.480 But can you pay them to do something else and 0:44:30.520 --> 0:44:32.600 then they turn on the light switch. Yes, so there's 0:44:32.600 --> 0:44:35.480 all these like creative ways to like find loopholes to 0:44:35.719 --> 0:44:38.440 satisfy all the requirements, and I think they get a 0:44:38.440 --> 0:44:41.280 lot of joy in arguing about it. So this seems 0:44:41.320 --> 0:44:43.239 like a really juicy question for them. 0:44:45.000 --> 0:44:47.520 That's right, that's right, And I have to admit, like 0:44:47.600 --> 0:44:50.919 I feel a bit uncomfortable. Okay, So since I moved 0:44:50.920 --> 0:44:52.960 on a farm, I have had a much harder time 0:44:53.040 --> 0:44:57.000 eating meat because I encounter the animals that I'm eating 0:44:57.040 --> 0:45:00.239 a lot more, and I have been very surprised by 0:45:00.320 --> 0:45:05.120 how dynamic their personalities are, and how good they are 0:45:05.120 --> 0:45:07.320 with their babies, and how. 0:45:07.320 --> 0:45:09.040 They obviously feel joy and pain. 0:45:09.280 --> 0:45:12.799 That's right, Yes, yes, Seeing like goats get zoomies and 0:45:12.960 --> 0:45:16.440 frolic around a field, You're like, ah, I really enjoy 0:45:16.640 --> 0:45:21.160 you in my euro And now I feel complicated about that. 0:45:21.440 --> 0:45:24.560 But you know, if my daughter needed an organ and 0:45:24.640 --> 0:45:28.000 it was between a pig and my daughter, I wouldn't 0:45:28.000 --> 0:45:30.319 have a hard time with that choice. And I guess 0:45:30.360 --> 0:45:33.120 same with me. So Jane at the start of this 0:45:33.200 --> 0:45:36.520 episode asked if we were to start treating pigs with 0:45:36.560 --> 0:45:42.360 more respect if they became a major source for our organs. Don't. Actually, 0:45:42.360 --> 0:45:44.440 I don't see that happening, to be honest, I think the. 0:45:44.360 --> 0:45:47.439 Opposite is true. No, I think the more useful they are, 0:45:47.520 --> 0:45:50.319 the more we convince ourselves that they're just things and 0:45:50.360 --> 0:45:51.120 not like people. 0:45:51.360 --> 0:45:55.440 Yeah. So for me, the more I encounter farm animals, 0:45:55.600 --> 0:45:58.360 the more I want to either not eat them or 0:45:58.440 --> 0:46:01.279 only eat animals that had really good lives, Like I 0:46:01.320 --> 0:46:04.759 feel more and more uncomfortable about factory farms. But I 0:46:04.760 --> 0:46:08.320 think that most of us are not seeing or engaging 0:46:08.360 --> 0:46:11.520 with these animals that we end up eating or you know, 0:46:11.600 --> 0:46:14.920 that are part of the various processes for products that 0:46:14.960 --> 0:46:17.400 we use in our lives, like leather or whatever. And 0:46:17.440 --> 0:46:21.719 so I don't see us treating animals nicer as long 0:46:21.719 --> 0:46:24.960 as we are not encountering them more and like needing 0:46:25.000 --> 0:46:26.920 to see what it looks like to get this done. 0:46:27.520 --> 0:46:29.680 I hope that we'll treat them ethically. It does seem 0:46:29.760 --> 0:46:31.840 like over time there have been more rules for treating 0:46:31.880 --> 0:46:35.040 animals ethically and trying to give them a nice life 0:46:35.280 --> 0:46:37.880 for as long as they've got it. But I, yeah, 0:46:38.480 --> 0:46:40.080 I don't think this is going to change things. 0:46:40.480 --> 0:46:43.640 Well, let's take a positive view if we have pigs 0:46:43.680 --> 0:46:46.560 that can grow organs for humans. It means more humans survive, 0:46:46.760 --> 0:46:50.000 and it means more jobs for philosophers to figure out 0:46:50.080 --> 0:46:52.719 whether or not we are bad people, and jobs for 0:46:52.840 --> 0:46:56.880 rabbis to answer these questions. So everybody wins except the pigs. 0:46:56.880 --> 0:46:57.240 I guess. 0:46:57.320 --> 0:46:59.880 Yeah. Okay, Well, so I'd like to end on a 0:46:59.880 --> 0:47:04.239 slightly high notes. So first of all, I don't know 0:47:04.280 --> 0:47:05.759 if this is a high note, but we already eat 0:47:05.760 --> 0:47:07.799 a lot of pigs, so this is apparently something where 0:47:08.080 --> 0:47:11.560 for the most part, already comfortable with. But let's focus 0:47:11.600 --> 0:47:14.680 for a second on how much amazing stuff we had 0:47:14.680 --> 0:47:16.640 to learn to get where we are today. You know, 0:47:16.719 --> 0:47:22.600 like we are harnessing bacteria's immune response to create organs 0:47:22.600 --> 0:47:25.680 that could save the lives of like over one hundred 0:47:25.800 --> 0:47:27.919 thousand people who are on the wait list right now. 0:47:28.360 --> 0:47:30.759 It is amazing to me that we have figured out 0:47:30.800 --> 0:47:33.680 how to get this far, like just the many giants 0:47:33.680 --> 0:47:35.799 whose shoulders we had to stand on to get to 0:47:35.800 --> 0:47:38.880 where we are today. And if this works, the suffering 0:47:38.960 --> 0:47:42.200 of many, many, many people could be alleviated, a lot 0:47:42.239 --> 0:47:44.960 more people could survive, and the people who are waiting 0:47:44.960 --> 0:47:47.600 for organs would have a much higher quality of life. 0:47:48.120 --> 0:47:50.799 I can't help but be inspired. Even though you know 0:47:50.880 --> 0:47:53.399 everything that has to do with humans seems like it's 0:47:53.400 --> 0:47:54.360 ethically complicated. 0:47:54.680 --> 0:47:57.000 It does. Yeah. On the other hand, I want to 0:47:57.040 --> 0:47:58.799 live and I want my kids to live. 0:48:00.120 --> 0:48:02.520 Yes, amen, And this might be a path towards making 0:48:02.560 --> 0:48:05.280 that happen for a lot of people. So I'm wishing 0:48:05.320 --> 0:48:08.200 them luck. And thank you to Wenningchin for chatting with 0:48:08.320 --> 0:48:11.200 me and for making me even more excited about this. 0:48:11.320 --> 0:48:13.360 Your enthusiasm was contagious. 0:48:13.520 --> 0:48:15.480 And thank you very much to Jane for sending us 0:48:15.520 --> 0:48:18.080 your question. And if you have a question about any 0:48:18.200 --> 0:48:20.520 kind of science you'd like to hear us breakdown, please 0:48:20.560 --> 0:48:23.319 write to us questions at Daniel and Kelly dot org. 0:48:23.480 --> 0:48:26.319 And let's close out by seeing what Jane thought about 0:48:26.360 --> 0:48:27.279 our episode. 0:48:28.320 --> 0:48:31.320 Hi, Daniel and Kelly, I'm so glad that my question 0:48:31.400 --> 0:48:35.239 spot such a super interesting discussion. Did you answer my 0:48:35.360 --> 0:48:40.040 question well, yes, but by giving me even more ethical 0:48:40.080 --> 0:48:44.160 and philosophical conundrums to worry about. I can't comment on 0:48:44.200 --> 0:48:48.120 the rabbi's response, but as a Christian pastor, I hold 0:48:48.160 --> 0:48:51.560 a high view of humanity. I've been on the ukogn 0:48:51.640 --> 0:48:55.560 done a register for decades, and it really suddens me 0:48:55.800 --> 0:48:59.520 that there are not enough people willing to donate organs 0:48:59.560 --> 0:49:02.799 that they've finished with. I just worry that this will 0:49:02.840 --> 0:49:07.680 be one more exciting scientific breakthrough which is pushed through 0:49:07.760 --> 0:49:12.960 without serious ethical consideration. Thank you so much, Kelly for 0:49:13.040 --> 0:49:17.400 looking into this and sharing your wonder and enthusiasm with us. 0:49:17.400 --> 0:49:28.360 All Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe is produced by iHeartRadio. 0:49:28.560 --> 0:49:30.080 We would love to hear from you. 0:49:30.200 --> 0:49:33.120 We really would. 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