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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stop

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Speaker 1: works dot com. Hey, you're welcome to Stuff with all

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Speaker 1: your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and i'm Christian Seger. Today,

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Speaker 1: as you could probably tell from the title of this episode,

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Speaker 1: we have, well, what is an unusual topic. We're gonna

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Speaker 1: be talking about penile transplants, And we just wanted to

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Speaker 1: say up front before we you know, dive into this

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Speaker 1: episode that every time we've posted something about this subject,

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Speaker 1: because there's been a lot of news about it lately,

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Speaker 1: whether it's been to social media or we talked about

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Speaker 1: it on like our live streams or something like that,

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Speaker 1: it often kind of descends into these sort of like

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Speaker 1: adolescent jokes, uh, And you know, we want to have

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Speaker 1: a sense of humor about this, but at the same time,

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Speaker 1: like doing this research, it really became apparent to us

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Speaker 1: like how traumatizing this is for a lot of people,

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Speaker 1: and how important this proced JR. Is. There's some weird

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Speaker 1: science to it, certainly, but there's a lot of people's

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Speaker 1: lives that are affected by this. Yeah, I mean we're

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Speaker 1: talking about the loss of genitalia, the loss of a

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Speaker 1: sex organ here, and that's that's a serious matter, and

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Speaker 1: I think are our sort of conditioning is certainly in

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Speaker 1: an American culture, in Western culture in general, Uh, are

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Speaker 1: are conditioning to want to laugh, to want to make

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Speaker 1: a joke about it? I mean, I guess a lot

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Speaker 1: of that is coming from an area of just you know,

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Speaker 1: you're uncomfortable. What can you do? What kind of what's

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Speaker 1: my response? I can make a joke and then I

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Speaker 1: can fill that space bred of your anxiety or something. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: And that's and that's understandable. You know, for the most part,

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Speaker 1: I feel like everything is on the table when it

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Speaker 1: comes to humor. But in in in researching this, in

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Speaker 1: talking with our special guests today, it really became apparent

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Speaker 1: that this unwillingness to seriously engage with with this issue

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Speaker 1: has actually held back some of the advances that can

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Speaker 1: that that could help people who need it. Yeah. Absolutely,

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Speaker 1: So that's a perfect segue into that. We were very

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Speaker 1: lucky to be able to talk with Mary Roach for

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Speaker 1: about half an hour about her upcoming book, Grunt. In particular,

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Speaker 1: there are two chapters in that book that are about

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Speaker 1: penile transplant surgery for soldiers. Uh. This is a very

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Speaker 1: real issue for American soldiers coming back from overseas in

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Speaker 1: particular who have been damaged by i e. D. Explosions UH,

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Speaker 1: and the military's UH wing of doctors are trying to

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Speaker 1: figure out what to do with that, and Mary consulted

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Speaker 1: with a lot of those. But then there's also like

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Speaker 1: a good like ten year history now of the science

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Speaker 1: of penile transplants for everything from these wounded soldiers to

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Speaker 1: cancer victims. And then also, as we'll talk about in

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Speaker 1: South Africa, there is ritualistic circumcision that leads to penis

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Speaker 1: is essentially falling off right and and and it's the

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Speaker 1: situations where it's not full on penal transplant. I mean,

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Speaker 1: we're still still dealing with with euro trauma. You're dealing

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Speaker 1: with plastic surgery to correct injuries to the genitals. UH.

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Speaker 1: And that is and and some of that science actually

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Speaker 1: is what was we end up discussing ends up stemming

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Speaker 1: from gender reassignment surgeries and advancements that have been made

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Speaker 1: in that area. Yeah, And so a little bit of

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Speaker 1: clarification to about like the conversation and then the like

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Speaker 1: sort of turn of events since we recorded the conversation. UH,

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Speaker 1: Mary's book was coming out soon. It should be out

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Speaker 1: this week grant the Curious Science of Humans at War,

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Speaker 1: and we actually interviewed Mary a couple of weeks ago

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Speaker 1: in preparation for this, and since then, on May sixteenth,

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Speaker 1: the first US UH penile transplant was achieved UH, and

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Speaker 1: it was announced in the New York Times, I believe,

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Speaker 1: UH and actually here at how stuff works. Our colleague

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Speaker 1: Lauren Vogelbaum wrote an article and recorded a video about that.

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Speaker 1: By the time you're hearing this episode, that maybe like

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Speaker 1: two or three week old news. But when we recorded

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Speaker 1: the interview with Mary, it actually hadn't been announced here.

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Speaker 1: So we were focusing primarily on the research and transplants

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Speaker 1: that have been done in China and South Africa, as

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Speaker 1: well as what Mary had experienced in her research with

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Speaker 1: military medicine right, and some of the depending um advancements there,

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Speaker 1: like some of the procedures they're working up too. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: just keep that timeline in mind as you listen to

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Speaker 1: the interview, and you know, nothing's actually broken in the interview,

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Speaker 1: just keep in mind when it was recorded. So we're

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Speaker 1: gonna play the interview now, UH and let you hear

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Speaker 1: our conversation with Mary about this fascinating topic. And then

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Speaker 1: when we come back after that, Robert and I are

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Speaker 1: going to go over the brief history and the science

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Speaker 1: of what's going on here with penile transplants. Well, first

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Speaker 1: of all, thanks for taking the time out of your

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Speaker 1: day to chat with us here. UM. We've we've really

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Speaker 1: been in going uh reading Grunt and UH and in

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Speaker 1: the past I've been a big fan of I think

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Speaker 1: I've I've read all of your previous books, Stiff, Spook, Gulp,

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Speaker 1: Packing for Mars. Uh. So anytime I'm Mary Roach book

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Speaker 1: comes out, we get excited. There should be some kind

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Speaker 1: of special I don't know, bracelet or metal or something

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Speaker 1: that you get if you've read all of them. Very

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Speaker 1: few people have read all of them. Thank you, Thank you.

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Speaker 1: With this particular book, I guess the place I want

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Speaker 1: to start is UM. I was particularly interested in the

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Speaker 1: two chapters concerning euro trauma, genital reconstruction, surgery, and genital transplants,

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Speaker 1: because I mean, there's the I mean, there's the morbidity

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Speaker 1: and the squint, the squeamishness of the topic, but it

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Speaker 1: ultimately provides some some you provide some powerful insights into

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Speaker 1: the place where science and and to a certain extent,

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Speaker 1: the war machine itself has to try and stitch everything

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Speaker 1: back together again, both physically and psychologically. Was this a

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Speaker 1: challenging subject matter to undertake? It was, Yeah, for just

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Speaker 1: the reasons that you've just mentioned. It's it's it's a

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Speaker 1: sensitive topic. And I'm not known as a sensitive writer.

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Speaker 1: Uh if you're familiar with my book, but it's, um, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think that because it is sensitive, people shy away

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Speaker 1: from it. And I feel like it's important to talk

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Speaker 1: about it, and so does the people who do the work.

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Speaker 1: Because somebody's sexual health and sex life and relationships are

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Speaker 1: in the balance, and that's you know, that's important stuff.

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Speaker 1: It's you know, I mean, it's important to get veterans,

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Speaker 1: wounded warriors whatever you want to call them, you know,

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Speaker 1: mobile and walking and able to take care of data

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Speaker 1: day activities and be back on their feet. But sex

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Speaker 1: is important too. And um, a substantial number of these

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Speaker 1: men say injuries that do that do go up that high.

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Speaker 1: I mean it's a it's a it's a fraction of them,

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Speaker 1: but still enough that it's it's important to talk about it. Hey, Mary,

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Speaker 1: this is Christian Sega, the COEs to the show to

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Speaker 1: piggyback off of what Robert was just saying, I'm particularly

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Speaker 1: interested here in the cultural and identity connections that you

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Speaker 1: remarked on regarding penis reconstruction. And i'd like to know,

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Speaker 1: you know, from the research and from the people you

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Speaker 1: talked to, how much of the repair part is actually psychological.

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Speaker 1: In particular, I'm thinking of the example you gave of

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Speaker 1: men who are worried about having to sit down to urinate. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's there is a cultural um. You know that what

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Speaker 1: you're talking about is a euri thrust. To me, I

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Speaker 1: believe I'm saying it right. Um, wherein if it's it's

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Speaker 1: one option, if rebuilding the euretra isn't possible or doesn't work,

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Speaker 1: you can take what remains of urethra and make an

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Speaker 1: opening in the Paraneum. Okay, however you pronounce it. Uh?

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Speaker 1: And then um, the the person would sit down to urinate,

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Speaker 1: you know, as a as a woman does. And um,

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Speaker 1: I asked. When I was in the operating room, I

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Speaker 1: asked both the surgeons. They're like, how but how much

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Speaker 1: of a big deal is this? And one of them said, well,

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Speaker 1: you know, when you're talking about you've lost one part

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Speaker 1: of one leg, and you know part of one hand,

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Speaker 1: and you know, this is not a big deal. The

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Speaker 1: other surgeon looked at me and said it's huge. So

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Speaker 1: there's a difference of opinion there. But um, yeah, obviously

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Speaker 1: it's I think it's And then she went on to

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Speaker 1: say that she'd been at a neurological conference in Europe.

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Speaker 1: It was a World urology conference, and it was very cultural.

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Speaker 1: They were, she said, the Italian surgeons are like, are

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Speaker 1: you kidding me? No, you know that that seemed to be,

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Speaker 1: you know, an affront to masculinity. Other cultures were, you know,

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Speaker 1: it was less. It seemed like less of a big deal. So, um,

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Speaker 1: you know, as a woman, it's hard for me. That's

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Speaker 1: an interesting thing. You know. There's sometimes, you know, every

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Speaker 1: now and then that men who are like, yeah, I

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Speaker 1: sit down the toilet because you know it keeps the

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Speaker 1: carpet cleaner, where my wife likes me too, And and

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Speaker 1: then there's other men are like, you sit down on

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Speaker 1: the toilet to peace. So I think it's both cultural

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Speaker 1: and personal. It's an interesting topic. So they're incorporating therapy

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Speaker 1: into this then as well, I would assume, um, therapy

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Speaker 1: is this is an area of sex, sexual health and

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Speaker 1: intimacy counseling is is an area that I think the

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Speaker 1: government would do well to dedicate more funding too. At

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Speaker 1: the time I was at Walter Ree, there was not

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Speaker 1: a full time staff person doing just that. You know,

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Speaker 1: there's a sense that, um that that you know, we

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Speaker 1: only have so much money to go around and this,

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Speaker 1: you know, sex is it's LIFETI this is this lifestyle.

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Speaker 1: You know that this is not going to be a

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Speaker 1: priority for our taxpayer of dollars. And there are people

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Speaker 1: at Walter Root who work with these patients who feel

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Speaker 1: like this is really important, Like, yeah, it's important that

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Speaker 1: they walk, but it's also important that they be able

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Speaker 1: to have a sexual relationship that isn't fraught and that

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Speaker 1: you know, and that and that once you know, once

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Speaker 1: you come out of these operations and you know, there's

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Speaker 1: just a lot of things to adjust to and and

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Speaker 1: you know, how do you use this thing now that

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Speaker 1: it's been reconstructed or you know, whatever has been done.

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Speaker 1: I mean, and it's not just with reconstruction and transplants.

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Speaker 1: It's also, um there's a lot of heavy medication that

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Speaker 1: goes on, especially in the early months after an injury.

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Speaker 1: There's nerves stabilizers and antidepressants and pain meds, all of

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Speaker 1: which can affect um a man's ability to get an

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Speaker 1: erection or to keep an erection. And that's you know,

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Speaker 1: that's that's also should be part of the council. And

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Speaker 1: there are people there who do it, but there there

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Speaker 1: need to be more of them. Yeah. So I'm going

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Speaker 1: to jump ahead a little bit here because that you

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Speaker 1: connected right to another thing I wanted to ask about,

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Speaker 1: which is this idea that that sex isn't as valued

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Speaker 1: financially as walking, for instance. And so I'm curious from

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Speaker 1: your experience researching this book, do you think the fear

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Speaker 1: of just sex talk in general is preventing us from

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Speaker 1: making strides in health sciences. Yes, I think the part

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Speaker 1: of part of it. I mean the woman that I

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Speaker 1: um that I spoke to, Christine Delorier, who runs the

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Speaker 1: Wall to Read. It's a sexual health and Intimacy working

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Speaker 1: group and it's something she does on her own time.

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Speaker 1: There's about fifty people who get together and share resources

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Speaker 1: and who've been working in this area. And that was

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Speaker 1: what she said to me. She said, this isn't just

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Speaker 1: a budget issue. This is the government not wanting to

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Speaker 1: embrace sex, and and not just out of prudishness. I

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Speaker 1: think just as it's out of a sense of you know,

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Speaker 1: we we spend taxpair dollars and you know the way

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Speaker 1: that taxpayers want us to and and that sex is perceived.

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Speaker 1: It's certainly, certainly certain segments of the population. You know,

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Speaker 1: that's that's not perceived as a worthy expense. You know

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Speaker 1: that that is uh um, yeah, it's it's it's considered

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Speaker 1: lower priority. And yeah, I think it is. It is

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Speaker 1: in some way tied in with kind of a not

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Speaker 1: a prudishness, but you know it to be spending taxpayer

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Speaker 1: dollars promoting sexual pleasure, you know, it's it's it's treacherous

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Speaker 1: grounds in terms of getting negative media attention or what

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Speaker 1: have you. But it's also you know, I should also

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Speaker 1: say the number of I mean, if you look at

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Speaker 1: the number of veterans whose injuries have left them in

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Speaker 1: need of surgery or infertile or what have you, it's

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Speaker 1: a small percentage because most I mean most of the

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Speaker 1: injuries in the lower part of the body. It's the

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Speaker 1: foot and the calf and below the need higher up

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Speaker 1: you go to the less frequent. These injuries are so

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Speaker 1: something like three genital ural euro genital. However you want

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Speaker 1: to um term it injuries for something like a hundred

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Speaker 1: and fifty thousand amputations or sorry, sorry, so I know

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Speaker 1: I think it was it's three D genital eurological patients

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Speaker 1: very eighteen thousand limb amputees. So it's it's a it's

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Speaker 1: a lower priority in that sense, and you know that's

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Speaker 1: when you're looking at a budget and where to spend

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Speaker 1: the money. That's also part of it. So it's not

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Speaker 1: just squeamishness regarding sex. But I do I do think

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Speaker 1: that probably places a factor. Yes, But as you you

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Speaker 1: point the point out in the book, and this I

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Speaker 1: thought was the really important factors. Just we are our

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Speaker 1: medical technology has has reached the point where more soldiers

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Speaker 1: are surviving the sort of injuries that would in previous

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Speaker 1: uh decades would have just killed them out right, but

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Speaker 1: now just surviving with more grievous grievous injuries. Correct, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's right, Yeah, exactly. The I E. D s have

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Speaker 1: gotten larger, so the injuries are going higher up the

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Speaker 1: limb and to the extent where they're affecting the genitals,

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Speaker 1: and that used to be a fatal and you know

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Speaker 1: that size of an explosion you used to be a

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Speaker 1: fatal injury for the most part. That if you if

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Speaker 1: you're hitting the level of someone's hips, you're also going

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Speaker 1: to be damaging organs and so so that's a a

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Speaker 1: very serious injury. And yes, these patients are now surviving

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Speaker 1: more than they used to. But not only are the injuries,

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Speaker 1: the explosions are getting bigger, but also the ability to

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Speaker 1: keep these folks alive has it ANSWD a lot. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: there's there's there are more people surviving to need this

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Speaker 1: kind of surgery and counseling. So, Mary, I'm curious in

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Speaker 1: the conversations you had with medical professionals about this, how

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Speaker 1: much did they acknowledge the contributions of fallow plastic from

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Speaker 1: the transgender community as contributing to their work. UM that

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Speaker 1: one the very first conversation I had was someone at UM.

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Speaker 1: It was a meeting I had It uses the Uniform

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Speaker 1: Uniform Services, University of Health Sciences, and that first person

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Speaker 1: that I spoke to, UH, that's what he said, some

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Speaker 1: of the you know that these are techniques that are

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Speaker 1: stemming from work from transgender work. I mean that it

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Speaker 1: makes perfect sense. I mean that is what has pushed

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Speaker 1: the advances in rebuilding building a penis from various other

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Speaker 1: pieces of anatomy. That's where the demand has been, you know,

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Speaker 1: I mean it started out with war injuries way way back,

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Speaker 1: but the very early on one of the first you know,

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Speaker 1: I think one of the first cosmetic surgeons who started.

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Speaker 1: I think you're doing rebuilding noses, etcetera. I think one

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Speaker 1: of those, um was a was the very first transgender surgery.

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Speaker 1: You spent a lot of time with Dr Richard J.

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Speaker 1: Read It at John Hopkins discussing the continued efforts to

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Speaker 1: conduct the first successful penis transplant in the United States. Um,

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Speaker 1: you know, where are we currently in that process? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: right now as of a lot of last week. I

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Speaker 1: checked in with him, and there's a recipient that's been

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Speaker 1: identified who uh And they're trying to find a suitable

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Speaker 1: match because it's a it's a you know, in addition

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Speaker 1: to all the other things that you look for with

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Speaker 1: an organ with organ transplant, in this case, there's skin color.

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Speaker 1: And I mean that's the case is similar to it,

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Speaker 1: you know, like a hand transplant or a face transplant.

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Speaker 1: But anyway, they're they're they're trying to identify a donor.

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Speaker 1: And I'm not sure how much of it is. Much

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Speaker 1: of it is is also the discomfort that the family

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Speaker 1: might have that I don't know. I don't know why

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Speaker 1: things are white, why it's been slow to happen, because

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Speaker 1: as you, as you point out in the book, the

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Speaker 1: first procedure of this sort took place in Guangzho, China,

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Speaker 1: back in two thousand six. H Yes, And of course that,

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Speaker 1: as you point out, that did not exactly that was

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Speaker 1: not a successful surgery in the in the long run,

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Speaker 1: the this this early attempt at it, though, does that

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Speaker 1: do you think that speaks to anything culturally about a

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Speaker 1: more you know, a more openness to engage with the

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Speaker 1: sexual questions involved here, or is it just uh, you know,

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Speaker 1: more eagerness to h to carry out the endeavor. I mean,

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Speaker 1: probably more the latter. I think probably um more eagerness

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Speaker 1: to plunge ahead and be the first. And you know,

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Speaker 1: in this case, it was they claimed it was a

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Speaker 1: psychological issue, but two weeks later that removed it, after

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Speaker 1: having transplanted it there, they removed it, and they cited

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Speaker 1: a severe psychological problem, but they didn't elaborate at all.

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Speaker 1: And I wasn't able to get in touch with They

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Speaker 1: didn't respond to emails, so I don't know. I don't

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Speaker 1: know exactly there was some necrosis, there was some and

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Speaker 1: the and they didn't attach all of the same. And

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Speaker 1: I believe that the cavernosal artery, there's a there's an

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Speaker 1: artery that the U S. Surgeons are planning to hook

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Speaker 1: up that. I believe that they didn't, so that what

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Speaker 1: there was in the China operation, But a lot of

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Speaker 1: it is speculation because there hasn't been a lot of

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Speaker 1: open communication between the Chinese surgeons in the in the

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Speaker 1: U S. I mean, I wasn't able to get a

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Speaker 1: lot of details about that procedure, only what is in

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Speaker 1: the paper, which is that the there was some psychological

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Speaker 1: distress and it was removed and it looked like the U. S.

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Speaker 1: Surgeons told me that from looking at the photographs, that

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Speaker 1: looked like there was some necrosis, some tissue that was

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Speaker 1: not being receiving blood and getting oxygenated, and that that

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Speaker 1: um may have contributed as well. But you're asking why

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Speaker 1: did they go ahead so quickly? And I think that

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Speaker 1: just maybe a yeah, I desire to go ahead and

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Speaker 1: give it a whirl and be a little less perhaps

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Speaker 1: a little less cautious, and a little less inclined to

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Speaker 1: work out all the details. I don't know, I'm not sure. Well,

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Speaker 1: I hesitate to call this a lighter note, but Robert

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Speaker 1: and I were both very interested in how a rectile

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Speaker 1: tissue can be constructed from the sinuses and also from

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Speaker 1: mouth tissue. Can you speak to that a little bit more? Like?

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Speaker 1: Why is it so good for reconstructive penile surgery? Uh, cheek, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: but for rebuilding a euresra or part of a urethra.

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Speaker 1: And this is, of course a tube that is transporting

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Speaker 1: liquid um. The the inside of the cheek is good

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Speaker 1: because it's it's used to moisture. It doesn't doesn't steriorate

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Speaker 1: in moisture, it doesn't break down, it's it's it's evolved

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Speaker 1: to be wet all the time. And if you just

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Speaker 1: use skin, uh, you can end up with um infection

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Speaker 1: and fistulas, which is when infection kind of eats through,

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Speaker 1: uh to the outside, and you have sort of a

341
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Speaker 1: tube going off where you don't want it to the

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Speaker 1: other thing. Uh. You want you want a patch of

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Speaker 1: tissue that for the penis or the eis. You don't

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Speaker 1: want hair growing on it. For there three, you don't

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Speaker 1: want hair because there's minerals and urine which can collect

346
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Speaker 1: and build up on the strands of hair, and that

347
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Speaker 1: can cause problems. You get little calcls, little stones basically.

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Speaker 1: Uh So, the cheek is advantageous in two ways. It's

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Speaker 1: it's used to moisture and it's hairless. You know, the

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Speaker 1: um for rebuilding a penis they tend to use. You know,

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Speaker 1: the underside of the arm doesn't have hair. Also, that

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Speaker 1: behind the ear is another little strip there that is

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Speaker 1: a little careless stretch. Um. And in that case, just

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Speaker 1: you don't want a penis probably right. I mean can't

355
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Speaker 1: I can't speak. Yeah, So anyway, that's that's why those

356
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Speaker 1: particular um patches of tissue are selected. Yet in reading

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Speaker 1: you some of your past books, I've often found this

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Speaker 1: pattern where they'll be like a section of one book

359
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Speaker 1: and then uh in retrospect, you can I sort of

360
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Speaker 1: look back and see like, oh, that's maybe where she

361
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Speaker 1: got the idea for the following book. Um So, so

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Speaker 1: I had to ask, when did you decide that Grunt

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Speaker 1: was your next book? And if we look back into

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Speaker 1: previous books, is there a particular chapter in a previous

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Speaker 1: book that that basically gave birth to this volume. No,

366
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Speaker 1: you have to look into the pages of Smithsonian magazine

367
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Speaker 1: and you even then would never be because it was

368
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Speaker 1: a story I had to do with the world. But

369
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Speaker 1: as chili peppers which are grown in Naga land in India. UH.

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Speaker 1: And while I was reporting that Piezz, somebody told me

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Speaker 1: that the Indian Defense Ministry had basically weaponized this chili

372
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Speaker 1: pepper and made a kind of tear gas or mace

373
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Speaker 1: with this uh, with a nature's own tear gas. So

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Speaker 1: I felt like I needed to report on that. I

375
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Speaker 1: went over to the neighboring state of Asam, India, and

376
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Speaker 1: they went to this lab and while I was there,

377
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Speaker 1: I just there were a number of projects going on

378
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Speaker 1: that struck me as kind of fascinating and esoteric. There

379
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Speaker 1: was a leach repellent project going on, and I remember

380
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Speaker 1: that was the moment where I thought, oh, military science,

381
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Speaker 1: there's this whole world out there of things that uh,

382
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Speaker 1: I have nothing to do with building better weapons. There's

383
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Speaker 1: there's just there's it's a whole world of the kind

384
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Speaker 1: of stuff I like to report on. There's a lot

385
00:22:56,400 --> 00:23:02,000
Speaker 1: of biology and um human related science that goes on

386
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Speaker 1: in the name of keeping people alive, which is I

387
00:23:06,320 --> 00:23:08,760
Speaker 1: also liked that it was as kind of counterintuitive for

388
00:23:08,800 --> 00:23:12,600
Speaker 1: a military book. It's not really about so much of

389
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Speaker 1: what you see is about the technology of weaponry and

390
00:23:15,160 --> 00:23:20,080
Speaker 1: bombs and high tech lasers and drones, et cetera, so

391
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Speaker 1: that the human side of it seemed just it seemed

392
00:23:23,520 --> 00:23:26,400
Speaker 1: to fit in it. But anyway, it didn't grow out

393
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Speaker 1: of anything in any of the earlier books. It was

394
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Speaker 1: from a story I was doing in between books. Yeah,

395
00:23:33,920 --> 00:23:36,640
Speaker 1: that's interesting for us because we just maybe a month

396
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Speaker 1: or two ago, did an episode on the history of

397
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Speaker 1: the weaponization of animals for military purposes. So it was

398
00:23:42,920 --> 00:23:45,679
Speaker 1: really nice to see in your book, like the flip

399
00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:48,440
Speaker 1: side to it where it was more of the like

400
00:23:48,600 --> 00:23:52,800
Speaker 1: healing function that all this you know, d G research

401
00:23:52,880 --> 00:23:56,440
Speaker 1: goes towards. Did you cover the I saw something about

402
00:23:56,480 --> 00:23:58,720
Speaker 1: about owls. Did you cover that one where the coast

403
00:23:58,720 --> 00:24:01,879
Speaker 1: Guard wanted to use an owl? No? No, look for

404
00:24:02,359 --> 00:24:05,879
Speaker 1: uh yeah, that was anyway, but that's not weaponization. That

405
00:24:06,000 --> 00:24:09,440
Speaker 1: was more like almost more like a cadaver rescue dog.

406
00:24:09,480 --> 00:24:13,200
Speaker 1: It was. We've talked about going back anyway doing a

407
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Speaker 1: second episode where we talked about the use of animals

408
00:24:15,720 --> 00:24:20,200
Speaker 1: and more like spying, surveillance, you know, other other uses

409
00:24:20,240 --> 00:24:23,360
Speaker 1: aside from just killing people. I think the craziest one

410
00:24:23,640 --> 00:24:25,959
Speaker 1: we got into was the bat bomb. Did you ever

411
00:24:26,040 --> 00:24:29,639
Speaker 1: hear about that during World War Two? Yeah? I did. Yeah,

412
00:24:29,880 --> 00:24:31,400
Speaker 1: I almost put it in the book, but I thought

413
00:24:31,440 --> 00:24:34,760
Speaker 1: I had to remind myself that a little off topics. Yeah,

414
00:24:35,760 --> 00:24:40,800
Speaker 1: were amazing, It's totally insane. So how does science and

415
00:24:41,040 --> 00:24:43,320
Speaker 1: sort of generally speaking, and you know, I know your experience,

416
00:24:43,680 --> 00:24:48,159
Speaker 1: how does science that orbits military endeavors, you know, not

417
00:24:48,160 --> 00:24:50,080
Speaker 1: necessarily the weaponized stuff, but the stuff you've covered in

418
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Speaker 1: this book, How does that How does it differ from

419
00:24:51,840 --> 00:24:56,720
Speaker 1: other areas of science and scientific research and inquiry. Um,

420
00:24:56,760 --> 00:25:00,680
Speaker 1: It's well, it's an interesting mix because they're there. There's

421
00:25:00,760 --> 00:25:05,560
Speaker 1: a whole world of kind of science that gets funded

422
00:25:05,560 --> 00:25:09,520
Speaker 1: through DARPA, which is very um it's with an eye

423
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Speaker 1: to the future. And then like, for example, there'd be

424
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Speaker 1: UM and I didn't. I didn't do cover a lot

425
00:25:16,080 --> 00:25:19,440
Speaker 1: of darper stuff, but I was fascinated by it because

426
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:22,200
Speaker 1: it was it would be so idea of like, you know, well,

427
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:25,040
Speaker 1: how can we with a what's a way to make

428
00:25:25,720 --> 00:25:28,359
Speaker 1: you know soldiers, you know, more effective and better at

429
00:25:28,400 --> 00:25:30,199
Speaker 1: what they do. Wouldn't it be great if they were

430
00:25:30,240 --> 00:25:33,840
Speaker 1: away where they could not be sleep to provide so

431
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:38,320
Speaker 1: they could be they could sleep but have what kind

432
00:25:38,320 --> 00:25:41,080
Speaker 1: of one eye open, like be partially looking out for

433
00:25:41,200 --> 00:25:44,520
Speaker 1: things um and but still sleep and not get sleep deprived.

434
00:25:44,560 --> 00:25:48,920
Speaker 1: And and so they were looking at animals, marine mammals

435
00:25:48,920 --> 00:25:52,520
Speaker 1: and also some birds that have UM one that are

436
00:25:52,600 --> 00:25:55,680
Speaker 1: awakened with and in one hemisphere and a sleep in

437
00:25:55,720 --> 00:25:57,760
Speaker 1: the other. Like there are there are geese and ducks

438
00:25:57,800 --> 00:25:59,680
Speaker 1: that can you know, they have sleep in a group

439
00:25:59,680 --> 00:26:02,119
Speaker 1: in the one on the perimeter, will sleep but also

440
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:05,600
Speaker 1: be watching out for predators. And so there's there's some

441
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:10,600
Speaker 1: um biologists or zoologists who have gotten funded by DARPA

442
00:26:10,720 --> 00:26:14,159
Speaker 1: to just to study unique hemispheric sleep. So that and

443
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:16,520
Speaker 1: you'll you'll look at this paper and they'll think why

444
00:26:16,600 --> 00:26:20,040
Speaker 1: is DARPA funding Like oh okay, they're looking forward to

445
00:26:20,119 --> 00:26:23,240
Speaker 1: the future, like how can we make this kind of

446
00:26:24,240 --> 00:26:29,359
Speaker 1: invincible modulated soldier, Like what what could we do to

447
00:26:29,440 --> 00:26:32,800
Speaker 1: the sight soldier to make him or her more efficient,

448
00:26:33,200 --> 00:26:36,920
Speaker 1: more awake, uh, just less of a human and more

449
00:26:36,960 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 1: of a fighting machine. So there's that very strange world

450
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:42,240
Speaker 1: which I didn't spend much time and I just sort

451
00:26:42,240 --> 00:26:44,800
Speaker 1: of would come across the papers and go, WHOA really

452
00:26:45,240 --> 00:26:51,879
Speaker 1: surgically installed gils? Really? So that's that's sort of futuristic

453
00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:57,320
Speaker 1: surreal stuff. And then there's, um, there's just a tremendous

454
00:26:57,320 --> 00:26:59,840
Speaker 1: amount of work that kind of goes on under the

455
00:27:00,040 --> 00:27:02,640
Speaker 1: a R. That's just you know, like the Naval Submarine

456
00:27:02,680 --> 00:27:05,200
Speaker 1: Medical Research Lab, which is just you know, looking at

457
00:27:06,880 --> 00:27:12,480
Speaker 1: sleep deprivation and you know, air levels and and and

458
00:27:12,720 --> 00:27:15,880
Speaker 1: the you know, the various things that people deal with

459
00:27:15,920 --> 00:27:21,760
Speaker 1: when they're out on a submarine, and um, how to

460
00:27:21,800 --> 00:27:25,280
Speaker 1: sort of make that existence better, more efficient, healthier, etcetera.

461
00:27:25,320 --> 00:27:28,640
Speaker 1: So but there's like that work goes on and has

462
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:32,560
Speaker 1: gone on and just is not it's kind of um invisible.

463
00:27:32,600 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 1: I mean it's not that it just doesn't get a

464
00:27:34,080 --> 00:27:37,240
Speaker 1: lot of attention, and it's you know, it's it's heartening

465
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:39,560
Speaker 1: to me to see that that's there and that the

466
00:27:39,640 --> 00:27:43,440
Speaker 1: people that are doing it are very committed and dedicated

467
00:27:43,560 --> 00:27:46,879
Speaker 1: and caring. You know, the reasons ultimate reasons some of

468
00:27:46,920 --> 00:27:49,080
Speaker 1: this work is being done. You know, when you get

469
00:27:49,160 --> 00:27:51,800
Speaker 1: right down to it's like how to make soldiers better

470
00:27:51,840 --> 00:27:53,919
Speaker 1: at what they do and keep them alive so they

471
00:27:53,960 --> 00:27:57,560
Speaker 1: can keep being soldiers, which is less sort of heartwarming,

472
00:27:57,960 --> 00:28:00,760
Speaker 1: but take it down to the level of the actual scientists,

473
00:28:00,800 --> 00:28:05,119
Speaker 1: and they're really caring people who are very dedicated to

474
00:28:05,160 --> 00:28:09,160
Speaker 1: the lives of men and women who are serving the military.

475
00:28:09,240 --> 00:28:13,119
Speaker 1: And that's so so it was anyway, I don't know

476
00:28:13,160 --> 00:28:15,720
Speaker 1: if I answered your question. No, No, that's that's exactly

477
00:28:16,160 --> 00:28:19,040
Speaker 1: what I was wondering, just sort of the the difference,

478
00:28:19,080 --> 00:28:21,520
Speaker 1: you know, what what the energy of the research is

479
00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:26,400
Speaker 1: like as opposed to like non military research. Uh so, yes,

480
00:28:26,440 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: I think that's that That answers the question perfectly. I

481
00:28:29,760 --> 00:28:32,280
Speaker 1: can only imagine you're getting a lot of interview questions

482
00:28:32,400 --> 00:28:35,600
Speaker 1: about the euro trauma and the pianot transplant sections of

483
00:28:35,600 --> 00:28:38,440
Speaker 1: the books as we ask you and I and again

484
00:28:38,480 --> 00:28:39,880
Speaker 1: I want to stress that I thought you handled it

485
00:28:39,960 --> 00:28:44,200
Speaker 1: just perfectly with you know, utilizing the the expected Mary

486
00:28:44,200 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 1: wrote voice, but also you know, handling some potentially delicate

487
00:28:48,920 --> 00:28:52,480
Speaker 1: subject matter. But can you tell our our listeners and

488
00:28:52,760 --> 00:28:55,240
Speaker 1: readers about something that you explored in the book that's

489
00:28:55,240 --> 00:28:59,000
Speaker 1: getting less coverage that maybe you wish more interviewers we're

490
00:28:59,040 --> 00:29:01,520
Speaker 1: asking you about. Well, I'm actually you know the book.

491
00:29:01,640 --> 00:29:03,720
Speaker 1: Since I'm talking, I'm talking to you a month before

492
00:29:03,720 --> 00:29:06,960
Speaker 1: the book is out, so you are really among the

493
00:29:07,000 --> 00:29:12,240
Speaker 1: first folks that I've spoken to. I've done um, I've

494
00:29:12,280 --> 00:29:14,480
Speaker 1: done some q and as, and to be honest, this

495
00:29:14,560 --> 00:29:17,520
Speaker 1: is the first time where I've talked in much detail

496
00:29:17,520 --> 00:29:21,080
Speaker 1: about it, probably because there just haven't been many interviews yet. UM.

497
00:29:21,160 --> 00:29:26,760
Speaker 1: But UM. And it'll be interesting to see whether this

498
00:29:27,000 --> 00:29:29,040
Speaker 1: is something that people focus on or whether they'd rather

499
00:29:29,120 --> 00:29:31,480
Speaker 1: leave it alone because it is you know, it is

500
00:29:32,200 --> 00:29:36,520
Speaker 1: sensitive and it's UM there's a level of discomfort with

501
00:29:36,640 --> 00:29:41,880
Speaker 1: the conversation and with I guess how listeners, readers, whatever,

502
00:29:41,920 --> 00:29:46,960
Speaker 1: will react to it. And so I think I don't

503
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:51,200
Speaker 1: know whether that will be discussed. I would think it

504
00:29:51,200 --> 00:29:53,960
Speaker 1: would be discussed a lot, but we'll see. Um, it's

505
00:29:54,000 --> 00:29:57,800
Speaker 1: hard to imagine it coming up like the late night

506
00:29:57,800 --> 00:30:04,840
Speaker 1: talk shows. Yeah, depending on who's um, yeah, well or

507
00:30:05,120 --> 00:30:07,560
Speaker 1: or I was thinking more like you know CBS Sunday

508
00:30:07,600 --> 00:30:12,840
Speaker 1: morning or the morning mainstream TV, you know, while people

509
00:30:12,840 --> 00:30:16,840
Speaker 1: are having their breakfast. Yeah, we really gravitated for that section.

510
00:30:17,040 --> 00:30:20,200
Speaker 1: It just I think it felt like it fit the

511
00:30:20,280 --> 00:30:22,800
Speaker 1: voice of the show. The whole book did. But this

512
00:30:22,880 --> 00:30:24,800
Speaker 1: in particular. We were like, that is something we can

513
00:30:24,800 --> 00:30:27,320
Speaker 1: make a whole episode around. Oh yeah, I agree, I

514
00:30:27,360 --> 00:30:29,800
Speaker 1: mean I think. I mean, there's two chapters in the book,

515
00:30:29,840 --> 00:30:34,560
Speaker 1: and I had originally planned one, and um, then I

516
00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:40,040
Speaker 1: heard about the transplant that the the folks at Johns

517
00:30:40,080 --> 00:30:44,520
Speaker 1: Hopkins working towards, and then I obviously wanted to cover that.

518
00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:47,320
Speaker 1: I mean partly because I'm Mary Roach and that's the

519
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:49,360
Speaker 1: kind of thing I covered, but also just how could

520
00:30:49,400 --> 00:30:50,840
Speaker 1: it how could I not want to cover that. It's

521
00:30:51,080 --> 00:30:55,440
Speaker 1: it's just really interesting because it's it's it's it's Tara

522
00:30:55,520 --> 00:30:59,240
Speaker 1: incognito for for the transplant. You know, the face face

523
00:30:59,360 --> 00:31:03,640
Speaker 1: first face transplantment tremendously compelling to people because it's, you know,

524
00:31:04,200 --> 00:31:08,200
Speaker 1: we've we've left behind the world of organs are they're hidden.

525
00:31:08,960 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 1: You don't really look at somebody and you think, okay,

526
00:31:11,040 --> 00:31:13,440
Speaker 1: they've got a new liver. That's great, But that doesn't

527
00:31:13,440 --> 00:31:17,800
Speaker 1: have to say there's not a psychological component that's as

528
00:31:18,720 --> 00:31:23,120
Speaker 1: kind of immediately fascinating. Yeah, I feel like a lot

529
00:31:23,120 --> 00:31:27,440
Speaker 1: of this research to just like strays right alongside like

530
00:31:27,880 --> 00:31:31,400
Speaker 1: some borderline science fiction pop culture stuff too. You know,

531
00:31:31,480 --> 00:31:34,640
Speaker 1: like when we're talking about these sleep experiments. Thinking about

532
00:31:35,480 --> 00:31:37,680
Speaker 1: Robert and I have done episodes in the past about

533
00:31:38,360 --> 00:31:42,640
Speaker 1: like people speculating about all these myths about theoretical Russian

534
00:31:42,680 --> 00:31:46,560
Speaker 1: military sleep experiments, you know, and then like, of course,

535
00:31:46,880 --> 00:31:49,520
Speaker 1: you know, you just mentioned the face transplant thing, and

536
00:31:49,560 --> 00:31:51,640
Speaker 1: it brings to mind that with that nineties movie Face

537
00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:55,480
Speaker 1: Off where they swap face. Yeah, you know, and it's

538
00:31:55,600 --> 00:32:00,000
Speaker 1: it's this is exac Yeah, and people have been thinking

539
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:02,080
Speaker 1: thing about it in sort of silly terms for a while,

540
00:32:02,120 --> 00:32:08,000
Speaker 1: but this has some very serious real world applications. Yeah,

541
00:32:08,080 --> 00:32:13,600
Speaker 1: and the fact that the immuno suppressive regiments have have

542
00:32:14,160 --> 00:32:19,960
Speaker 1: made tremendous strides, And so now you can do something

543
00:32:20,000 --> 00:32:22,360
Speaker 1: like faith transplant, which because it wasn't because it wasn't

544
00:32:22,360 --> 00:32:24,400
Speaker 1: matter life and death, people sort of shied away from

545
00:32:24,400 --> 00:32:26,880
Speaker 1: it because the burden of the drugs that you take

546
00:32:26,920 --> 00:32:29,200
Speaker 1: to suppress the immune system so it doesn't reject the

547
00:32:29,800 --> 00:32:35,160
Speaker 1: tissue um that that seemed, you know, it was questionably ethical.

548
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:37,680
Speaker 1: Do you put somebody you should you put someone through

549
00:32:38,320 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: the risks and inconveniences and problems of this very heavy

550
00:32:42,640 --> 00:32:46,360
Speaker 1: immuno suppressive regiment just for a faith was not a

551
00:32:46,360 --> 00:32:48,959
Speaker 1: matter of life and death. And now that they know

552
00:32:49,000 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 1: with marrow infusion and other advances and immun suppression. Now

553
00:32:54,320 --> 00:32:58,200
Speaker 1: it's it's that's kind of falling away, and it's, um,

554
00:32:58,280 --> 00:33:02,440
Speaker 1: they're they're transplanting whole arms, They're transplanting faces and you know,

555
00:33:02,480 --> 00:33:08,640
Speaker 1: now penises and probably at some point legs, although legs

556
00:33:08,640 --> 00:33:13,240
Speaker 1: are problematic for various reasons. Uh, and and because um

557
00:33:13,280 --> 00:33:15,640
Speaker 1: there's they're also at the same time making great strives

558
00:33:15,680 --> 00:33:21,960
Speaker 1: with prosthetics. With prosthetic Yeah, so, um, you definitely want

559
00:33:21,960 --> 00:33:25,560
Speaker 1: to You're a leg transplant is not going to be

560
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:28,080
Speaker 1: the best option for a very long time, I think so.

561
00:33:28,440 --> 00:33:29,920
Speaker 1: But then yeah, this is the guy and Eleeve is

562
00:33:29,960 --> 00:33:32,600
Speaker 1: talking about a whole body transplant or what is sort

563
00:33:32,600 --> 00:33:35,120
Speaker 1: of commonly talked about in the press as a head transplant,

564
00:33:35,120 --> 00:33:38,280
Speaker 1: but really the head is the person. The transplantation is

565
00:33:38,320 --> 00:33:41,400
Speaker 1: the whole body of the brain dead person. So and

566
00:33:41,480 --> 00:33:43,640
Speaker 1: there's some guy in Italy. I don't know how much

567
00:33:43,680 --> 00:33:46,400
Speaker 1: of that is bluster and how much of that is real,

568
00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:48,760
Speaker 1: but he's talking about, oh, yeah, I've got a patient

569
00:33:48,800 --> 00:33:52,720
Speaker 1: and I'm ready to go, which I can't even imagine

570
00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:56,000
Speaker 1: because that, um, there's so many unknowns with that and

571
00:33:56,200 --> 00:33:58,720
Speaker 1: so many potential problems. I don't know, and I haven't

572
00:33:58,760 --> 00:34:03,080
Speaker 1: spoken to him, But anyway, this whole Frankenstein science fiction

573
00:34:03,160 --> 00:34:07,680
Speaker 1: realm is rapidly coming to be not science fiction, and

574
00:34:07,720 --> 00:34:13,680
Speaker 1: it's it's fascinating now. In all of your books, I've

575
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:16,440
Speaker 1: I always enjoyed the footnotes so much because there's always

576
00:34:16,480 --> 00:34:19,960
Speaker 1: they're always these little little nuggets of a fascination that

577
00:34:20,080 --> 00:34:23,120
Speaker 1: kind of spring off from the main material. And and

578
00:34:23,120 --> 00:34:26,160
Speaker 1: in this one there were several great ones, but that

579
00:34:26,320 --> 00:34:31,680
Speaker 1: the rabbit eye transplant by one Dr H. Bradford, that

580
00:34:31,719 --> 00:34:34,480
Speaker 1: one really floored me. Were you able to learn much

581
00:34:34,520 --> 00:34:38,840
Speaker 1: about this? Just it was in the paper? You know,

582
00:34:38,960 --> 00:34:42,640
Speaker 1: I couldn't interview him, he's long gone, But that was

583
00:34:42,719 --> 00:34:45,040
Speaker 1: so like there were so many things that fascinating me

584
00:34:45,080 --> 00:34:47,399
Speaker 1: about that. First of all the fact that rabbit eyes

585
00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:50,880
Speaker 1: are very similar to human eyes. If you go on

586
00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:53,840
Speaker 1: the internet, you can sort of verify this, and I

587
00:34:53,840 --> 00:34:55,760
Speaker 1: don't really recommend that because when you do the search,

588
00:34:55,880 --> 00:34:58,080
Speaker 1: this weird thing comes up about a guy who was

589
00:34:58,120 --> 00:35:03,319
Speaker 1: selling a box of rabbit heads um anyway purposes. I

590
00:35:03,360 --> 00:35:06,319
Speaker 1: don't know why. They seemed like he was offering a

591
00:35:06,320 --> 00:35:13,920
Speaker 1: pretty good deal on those, right, But no, and I

592
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:16,560
Speaker 1: was like, well, somebody transplanting eyeballs, why would you want

593
00:35:16,560 --> 00:35:18,600
Speaker 1: these rabbit heads? What are you doing with them? But

594
00:35:18,840 --> 00:35:21,120
Speaker 1: and he was like, make me an offer that. But anyway,

595
00:35:21,200 --> 00:35:23,520
Speaker 1: see this is what happens when I got on these tangents.

596
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:27,279
Speaker 1: But the UM, Yeah, but there was some It was

597
00:35:27,400 --> 00:35:30,880
Speaker 1: some guy who he was. He was a sailor I

598
00:35:30,880 --> 00:35:33,160
Speaker 1: think where he was anyway, he worked on ships and

599
00:35:33,280 --> 00:35:37,000
Speaker 1: he um for some reason that was there saying well, Lett,

600
00:35:37,080 --> 00:35:40,360
Speaker 1: for that reason, we you know, a glass eye won't work.

601
00:35:40,520 --> 00:35:43,080
Speaker 1: I guess it was an occupational issue. So they wanted

602
00:35:43,080 --> 00:35:45,319
Speaker 1: to do something that wouldn't break when you were hitting

603
00:35:45,320 --> 00:35:48,160
Speaker 1: your in the face or something. And then I thought, well,

604
00:35:48,200 --> 00:35:50,759
Speaker 1: you have pirates have eye patches, so maybe there's a

605
00:35:51,200 --> 00:35:53,520
Speaker 1: there is a high level of ocular injury on ships.

606
00:35:53,560 --> 00:35:56,240
Speaker 1: I don't know why. Anyway, that was what the reason

607
00:35:56,320 --> 00:35:59,120
Speaker 1: they gave for why they were going to do this. UM.

608
00:36:00,080 --> 00:36:01,960
Speaker 1: And of course I should point out to listeners, Um,

609
00:36:01,960 --> 00:36:05,239
Speaker 1: the eye this is just it was cosmetic. It wasn't

610
00:36:05,239 --> 00:36:06,640
Speaker 1: gonna be hooked up and you would be able to

611
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:09,920
Speaker 1: the person couldn't see because there's never been a successful

612
00:36:09,920 --> 00:36:12,239
Speaker 1: eye transplant because hooking up the eye it's a much

613
00:36:12,280 --> 00:36:16,759
Speaker 1: more complicated. It's insteadily hooking up a telephone cable. You know,

614
00:36:16,800 --> 00:36:18,680
Speaker 1: I'm talking about the nerves here. You're hooking up, you know,

615
00:36:18,719 --> 00:36:21,480
Speaker 1: a complicated computer system, and the body doesn't know how

616
00:36:21,520 --> 00:36:24,600
Speaker 1: to regrow and reattach and make it all work again.

617
00:36:24,640 --> 00:36:27,960
Speaker 1: So the there hasn't been an eye transplant other than

618
00:36:28,280 --> 00:36:33,640
Speaker 1: this cosmetic eighteen what was it ninete early nineteen hundreds.

619
00:36:33,640 --> 00:36:41,120
Speaker 1: I don't have the date handed yeah, yeah, yeah, So

620
00:36:41,280 --> 00:36:43,560
Speaker 1: other than the guy who tried to do it for

621
00:36:43,600 --> 00:36:47,320
Speaker 1: transparent reasons, yeah, there hasn't. There's there's not any but

622
00:36:47,719 --> 00:36:55,080
Speaker 1: nobody else's transplanting eyes rabbit or pop or otherwise or otherwise.

623
00:36:57,000 --> 00:36:59,640
Speaker 1: All right, well, you know those were our main questions

624
00:36:59,640 --> 00:37:02,919
Speaker 1: for you here today. Uh again, thank you for taking

625
00:37:02,920 --> 00:37:04,839
Speaker 1: time out of your day to chat with us. UH

626
00:37:05,280 --> 00:37:08,120
Speaker 1: greatly enjoyed the book, and we certainly encourage all of

627
00:37:08,120 --> 00:37:10,719
Speaker 1: our listeners to go and pick it up. Um when

628
00:37:10,719 --> 00:37:13,560
Speaker 1: this episode comes out, it should be available and all

629
00:37:13,640 --> 00:37:17,600
Speaker 1: the physical and digital um ways that one normally acquires

630
00:37:18,040 --> 00:37:21,360
Speaker 1: a a good book. Well, thanks thanks so much for

631
00:37:21,400 --> 00:37:29,719
Speaker 1: having me on this program. Thanks once again to Mary Roach. Again.

632
00:37:29,760 --> 00:37:32,680
Speaker 1: The book is Grunt the Curious science of Humans at War.

633
00:37:32,880 --> 00:37:35,000
Speaker 1: Thanks to Mary for coming on the show and chatting

634
00:37:35,000 --> 00:37:36,640
Speaker 1: with us. We're gonna take a quick break and when

635
00:37:36,640 --> 00:37:39,040
Speaker 1: we come back, Christian and I are going to discuss

636
00:37:39,080 --> 00:37:48,200
Speaker 1: the topic further. So, well, let's back up a little bit.

637
00:37:49,080 --> 00:37:53,320
Speaker 1: We've had myths and legends of penis loss and probably

638
00:37:53,320 --> 00:37:55,600
Speaker 1: replacement as well, to go back pretty far. It's the

639
00:37:55,640 --> 00:37:58,120
Speaker 1: sort of thing that's likely lost in the midst of history.

640
00:37:58,440 --> 00:38:02,799
Speaker 1: I mean, the myths of are full of castration and

641
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:07,360
Speaker 1: um penectomy accounts with a with a primordial castration of

642
00:38:07,360 --> 00:38:09,640
Speaker 1: the god urine Us being one of the big ones.

643
00:38:10,480 --> 00:38:14,880
Speaker 1: And I've I've read various the European tales that have

644
00:38:15,080 --> 00:38:19,600
Speaker 1: involved which is, stealing men's penises, sometimes hiding them away

645
00:38:19,600 --> 00:38:23,400
Speaker 1: in trees, and then uh, sometimes the men are able

646
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:26,160
Speaker 1: to steal the penises back and they are somehow magically

647
00:38:26,160 --> 00:38:29,680
Speaker 1: reattached the body. So and this is probably like a

648
00:38:29,800 --> 00:38:34,680
Speaker 1: legend that is deeply seated in psychological fear of you know,

649
00:38:36,200 --> 00:38:38,359
Speaker 1: as we're gonna talk about that, there's like a real

650
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:44,320
Speaker 1: deep psychological cultural connection to your genitals, of course, but um, yeah,

651
00:38:44,360 --> 00:38:46,920
Speaker 1: something like that seems like, you know, it's sort of

652
00:38:47,040 --> 00:38:50,920
Speaker 1: pre lorraina Bobbitt style, like fear of the woman's stealing

653
00:38:51,320 --> 00:38:54,800
Speaker 1: uh manliness. Yeah, and even then there has there's like

654
00:38:54,840 --> 00:38:59,000
Speaker 1: a sense of humor and uneasiness, unwillingness to like confront

655
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:02,520
Speaker 1: the horror or in terror of it and therefore wrapping

656
00:39:02,560 --> 00:39:05,440
Speaker 1: it then in the in something a little more whimsical.

657
00:39:06,719 --> 00:39:08,520
Speaker 1: And then as far as just simply as far as

658
00:39:08,520 --> 00:39:12,640
Speaker 1: just simply reattaching a penis that has been uh cut

659
00:39:12,680 --> 00:39:15,800
Speaker 1: from the body. UH penis reattachment surgery has been around

660
00:39:15,840 --> 00:39:19,520
Speaker 1: for a little while. Um. In fact, Dr Surasak Moon

661
00:39:19,640 --> 00:39:22,799
Speaker 1: Sumbat of Thailand actually became something of an expert in

662
00:39:22,880 --> 00:39:26,520
Speaker 1: it uh during the nineties due to an upswing in

663
00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:32,000
Speaker 1: such attacks on philandering men um by their wives um

664
00:39:32,040 --> 00:39:35,560
Speaker 1: and transplanting you know, one's own member back is challenging enough,

665
00:39:35,680 --> 00:39:37,880
Speaker 1: especially if said member has been fed to a duck,

666
00:39:38,360 --> 00:39:41,960
Speaker 1: which was apparently the practice at the time. I wonder why,

667
00:39:42,040 --> 00:39:45,960
Speaker 1: in particular a duck as rather than any other animal.

668
00:39:46,080 --> 00:39:47,719
Speaker 1: That's something we should look into, that would I would

669
00:39:47,719 --> 00:39:50,440
Speaker 1: be curious to see what the sort of cultural implications

670
00:39:50,440 --> 00:39:52,879
Speaker 1: of that or just the ducks are around. Maybe they're

671
00:39:52,880 --> 00:39:55,480
Speaker 1: just plentiful. Yeah, Well, if you out there. No, let

672
00:39:55,719 --> 00:39:57,719
Speaker 1: let us know about that. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's

673
00:39:57,719 --> 00:40:00,520
Speaker 1: a worse fate than a fish. I'm not sure, but

674
00:40:00,680 --> 00:40:04,880
Speaker 1: certainly it's one thing too. It's complicated enough involving microsurgery

675
00:40:05,120 --> 00:40:09,200
Speaker 1: to to to put one penis back onto an individual,

676
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:13,520
Speaker 1: but then to transplant another's member, that's a more complicated scenario.

677
00:40:14,239 --> 00:40:16,480
Speaker 1: So before we get into the like real nitty gritty

678
00:40:16,520 --> 00:40:19,759
Speaker 1: specifics about how these penile transplants work, I think it's

679
00:40:19,800 --> 00:40:24,560
Speaker 1: worth doing just like a brief overview of organ transplantation

680
00:40:24,600 --> 00:40:27,760
Speaker 1: in general, because a lot of the same stuff applies here.

681
00:40:28,239 --> 00:40:33,200
Speaker 1: So uh. To start with, researchers originally had success in

682
00:40:33,320 --> 00:40:37,520
Speaker 1: early twenty century with transplanting organs in animals but not

683
00:40:37,600 --> 00:40:40,440
Speaker 1: in humans, and that they were basically they had a

684
00:40:40,440 --> 00:40:43,520
Speaker 1: lot of failures. They could not make it work until

685
00:40:43,600 --> 00:40:46,960
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties when the first kidney transplants started to

686
00:40:47,000 --> 00:40:49,600
Speaker 1: work out. And this is important because it was saving

687
00:40:49,719 --> 00:40:52,959
Speaker 1: lives in these instances. These are organs that people need

688
00:40:53,040 --> 00:40:57,319
Speaker 1: to live, right, kidneys, hearts, uh, And so they need

689
00:40:57,400 --> 00:41:02,080
Speaker 1: these transplants and oftentimes even today still don't get them

690
00:41:02,120 --> 00:41:04,960
Speaker 1: because of the availability. And that's something that we're going

691
00:41:05,000 --> 00:41:08,160
Speaker 1: to talk about as well, but um genitals were kind

692
00:41:08,200 --> 00:41:10,239
Speaker 1: of off the table. Nobody had been able to pull

693
00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:13,279
Speaker 1: that one off. Uh. And the problem here is that

694
00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:17,200
Speaker 1: the demand for organs, with all of the diseases that

695
00:41:17,239 --> 00:41:22,000
Speaker 1: are affecting us as human beings, way outweighs the supply

696
00:41:22,440 --> 00:41:26,520
Speaker 1: of the actual organs. There's just not enough. UM donors

697
00:41:26,560 --> 00:41:30,399
Speaker 1: can wait for years. Sometimes they die while they're waiting. Uh.

698
00:41:30,440 --> 00:41:33,719
Speaker 1: And we're talking about thousands of people here. This isn't

699
00:41:33,880 --> 00:41:37,400
Speaker 1: pano transfers, which just organ transplants in general. Uh. And

700
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:40,880
Speaker 1: even though here in the US, people in general favor

701
00:41:41,080 --> 00:41:43,040
Speaker 1: organ donation, right, Like if you walk up to most

702
00:41:43,040 --> 00:41:44,799
Speaker 1: people in the street and ask them, I'm sure they

703
00:41:44,840 --> 00:41:46,759
Speaker 1: would say, yeah, sure, I would you know, after I

704
00:41:46,800 --> 00:41:49,520
Speaker 1: pass away, get my organs a science or something like that, right,

705
00:41:50,440 --> 00:41:53,879
Speaker 1: or or to somebody who needs them. But actually only

706
00:41:53,920 --> 00:41:56,799
Speaker 1: a small percentage of people do this. They actually go

707
00:41:56,880 --> 00:42:00,239
Speaker 1: through the procedure of filling out the paperwork for it. Uh. Uh.

708
00:42:00,480 --> 00:42:04,879
Speaker 1: This is how serious it is. Sixteen potential recipients die

709
00:42:05,000 --> 00:42:08,960
Speaker 1: every single day from something that's totally curable if they

710
00:42:09,000 --> 00:42:13,160
Speaker 1: had transplants. Uh. And then we're also obviously looking into

711
00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:16,040
Speaker 1: artificial organs. You're hearing a lot about this lately, not

712
00:42:16,120 --> 00:42:18,760
Speaker 1: just in bioengineering, but then also with like the advent

713
00:42:18,800 --> 00:42:22,279
Speaker 1: of three D printing, what people can do with that, right,

714
00:42:22,320 --> 00:42:24,680
Speaker 1: the creation of the necessary scaffold thing and then the

715
00:42:24,719 --> 00:42:29,280
Speaker 1: growing of tissue over that to create a suitable replacement organ. Yeah.

716
00:42:29,440 --> 00:42:33,120
Speaker 1: So Uh. In the cases of organs that are super sensitive,

717
00:42:33,200 --> 00:42:37,800
Speaker 1: like your heart, your lungs, and other sensitive organs, transplantation

718
00:42:37,880 --> 00:42:40,359
Speaker 1: is actually like the last resort, Like that's the last

719
00:42:40,400 --> 00:42:42,680
Speaker 1: thing that they wanted to But here's the process of

720
00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:47,400
Speaker 1: how this works. And it's essentially the same for penile transplants. Uh.

721
00:42:47,480 --> 00:42:51,080
Speaker 1: A patient finds a willing donor. Uh. Usually it's a

722
00:42:51,080 --> 00:42:54,080
Speaker 1: friend or a family member, but what they're looking for

723
00:42:54,440 --> 00:42:58,719
Speaker 1: is a match, somebody that can go directly into surgery. Uh.

724
00:42:58,760 --> 00:43:02,720
Speaker 1: And a small number of the transplants come from general donors,

725
00:43:02,760 --> 00:43:04,799
Speaker 1: of course, people who who you know, have filled out

726
00:43:04,840 --> 00:43:08,520
Speaker 1: their organ donor cards or whatnot. But many of these

727
00:43:08,880 --> 00:43:13,080
Speaker 1: have to come from dead donors, and oftentimes we're actually

728
00:43:13,120 --> 00:43:17,319
Speaker 1: talking about brain dead donors, not physically dead donors. That's

729
00:43:17,360 --> 00:43:19,600
Speaker 1: kind of the I guess, the ideal if you want

730
00:43:19,640 --> 00:43:23,400
Speaker 1: to say, a situation, because the body is preserved with life,

731
00:43:23,440 --> 00:43:27,640
Speaker 1: but there is no more mental capacity in the creature exactly.

732
00:43:27,680 --> 00:43:31,880
Speaker 1: And it's incredibly complex going through the process of getting

733
00:43:31,920 --> 00:43:35,600
Speaker 1: permission to get an organ from somebody who's technically still

734
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:42,960
Speaker 1: alive but who's brain dead legally. So it's so complex

735
00:43:43,000 --> 00:43:45,319
Speaker 1: in fact, like we don't have time to go into

736
00:43:45,360 --> 00:43:47,960
Speaker 1: it on this episode. And also, uh, you know, give

737
00:43:48,000 --> 00:43:50,560
Speaker 1: you the interview that we did with Mary, but if

738
00:43:50,600 --> 00:43:52,360
Speaker 1: you really want to know more about it, I recommend

739
00:43:52,360 --> 00:43:54,240
Speaker 1: going and checking out the article that's at how stuff

740
00:43:54,239 --> 00:43:58,480
Speaker 1: works dot com about organ transplants in general. There's some

741
00:43:58,520 --> 00:44:02,720
Speaker 1: good information there. The actual transplantation itself involves a huge

742
00:44:02,800 --> 00:44:07,200
Speaker 1: team of surgeons. Obviously there's a hospital involved, and they

743
00:44:07,239 --> 00:44:11,520
Speaker 1: all have to assess the patient's attitude, their psychological condition,

744
00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:15,160
Speaker 1: and especially their history with drugs, cigarette and alcohol use

745
00:44:16,080 --> 00:44:20,319
Speaker 1: because that can complicate things as well. Compatibility in particular

746
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:25,680
Speaker 1: requires everything from your physical tissues and blood samples being

747
00:44:25,719 --> 00:44:29,000
Speaker 1: able to match to how long the recipient has actually

748
00:44:29,000 --> 00:44:33,320
Speaker 1: been waiting for this, right, So when it's a go,

749
00:44:34,080 --> 00:44:38,640
Speaker 1: you move quickly. Uh, you really hurry the patient into surgery,

750
00:44:38,880 --> 00:44:41,080
Speaker 1: and then a whole another team goes and gets the

751
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:45,960
Speaker 1: organ from the donor. Now here's a disturbing little tidbit.

752
00:44:46,280 --> 00:44:50,439
Speaker 1: Note that you can stash away overseas. Organs often come

753
00:44:50,520 --> 00:44:55,279
Speaker 1: from executed prisoners, most notably in China, and there's an

754
00:44:55,280 --> 00:44:59,879
Speaker 1: indication that because there are people paying for these organs,

755
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:04,799
Speaker 1: actually accelerated the execution schedules in these countries in order

756
00:45:04,840 --> 00:45:11,440
Speaker 1: to meet demand. So that's pretty disturbing. Post operation recovery

757
00:45:11,600 --> 00:45:14,360
Speaker 1: usually involves a lot of medication and a lot of

758
00:45:14,360 --> 00:45:16,880
Speaker 1: follow up hospital visits to make sure that everything is

759
00:45:16,920 --> 00:45:20,279
Speaker 1: healed correctly. This is gonna pretty much last for the

760
00:45:20,280 --> 00:45:22,520
Speaker 1: rest of your life. Um, and the reason why is

761
00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:25,120
Speaker 1: because your immune system is going to see this new

762
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:28,960
Speaker 1: organ as foreign cells and it's going to try to

763
00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:32,400
Speaker 1: attack it. So to minimize this, like I said before,

764
00:45:32,520 --> 00:45:34,200
Speaker 1: you try to match the blood and tissue types. But

765
00:45:34,320 --> 00:45:36,840
Speaker 1: also the body is just naturally going to reject it

766
00:45:36,960 --> 00:45:39,480
Speaker 1: unless you have like an identical twin hanging around and

767
00:45:39,520 --> 00:45:42,919
Speaker 1: they're willing to give up their organs to you. So

768
00:45:43,040 --> 00:45:47,839
Speaker 1: there's three kinds of rejection. Uh, there's hyperacute rejection and

769
00:45:47,840 --> 00:45:50,080
Speaker 1: this is when like the blood type just doesn't match

770
00:45:50,120 --> 00:45:53,600
Speaker 1: up at all, the antibodies react and really like this

771
00:45:53,640 --> 00:45:55,920
Speaker 1: is the worst case scenario, because the recipient is going

772
00:45:55,960 --> 00:46:00,239
Speaker 1: to die on the operating table. Acute reaction uh A

773
00:46:00,360 --> 00:46:03,960
Speaker 1: rejection rather is what we see most often, and this

774
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:06,840
Speaker 1: is when you have a normal immune response. It starts

775
00:46:06,840 --> 00:46:10,839
Speaker 1: a few days after the transplant UH and basically our

776
00:46:10,880 --> 00:46:14,640
Speaker 1: immune system UH it needs to be suppressed by medications

777
00:46:14,680 --> 00:46:17,400
Speaker 1: so that we can go ahead with the transplant. The

778
00:46:17,560 --> 00:46:20,720
Speaker 1: unfortunate side effect is it makes us susceptible to infection

779
00:46:20,800 --> 00:46:25,080
Speaker 1: and disease. Right, So sometimes they're they're trying at this

780
00:46:25,200 --> 00:46:29,920
Speaker 1: new thing where they sometimes also take bone marrow transplants

781
00:46:30,160 --> 00:46:35,880
Speaker 1: to produce white blood cells inside the recipient's body, hoping

782
00:46:35,920 --> 00:46:38,680
Speaker 1: that their immune system will sort of be tricked into

783
00:46:38,760 --> 00:46:43,080
Speaker 1: recognizing the new organ. The last kind of of rejection

784
00:46:43,200 --> 00:46:45,879
Speaker 1: is a chronic rejection, and this is a gradual thing

785
00:46:45,920 --> 00:46:48,400
Speaker 1: that that lasts over the course of months or years.

786
00:46:49,080 --> 00:46:51,000
Speaker 1: You may not find out until many years after the

787
00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:54,520
Speaker 1: transplant that the you know, that didn't actually hold in.

788
00:46:54,520 --> 00:46:56,080
Speaker 1: One note that I'd like to point out here too,

789
00:46:56,080 --> 00:46:59,239
Speaker 1: is that these immunosuppressive drugs that we give the patients,

790
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:03,680
Speaker 1: they also have adverse effects over a long term, including

791
00:47:03,760 --> 00:47:08,080
Speaker 1: cancer and kidney damage. So in some situations, the benefits

792
00:47:08,120 --> 00:47:13,279
Speaker 1: may not outweigh the risks involved here. So let's get

793
00:47:13,320 --> 00:47:16,880
Speaker 1: to penises, shall we. Until recently, and like I'm talking

794
00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:20,879
Speaker 1: like ten years recently, Uh, the only treatment for men

795
00:47:21,880 --> 00:47:25,480
Speaker 1: was to construct a penis from the flesh of their

796
00:47:25,560 --> 00:47:30,480
Speaker 1: thigh or forearm skin and basically plastic surgery reconstruction. Yeah.

797
00:47:30,680 --> 00:47:33,800
Speaker 1: And so you take that skin, you add a penile

798
00:47:33,960 --> 00:47:38,279
Speaker 1: prosthetic and it's got malleable or inflatable rods in it

799
00:47:38,360 --> 00:47:41,480
Speaker 1: that make it semi rigid. Then you add a saline

800
00:47:41,560 --> 00:47:44,160
Speaker 1: pump to this that fills it up, right, like acting

801
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:48,040
Speaker 1: like the um the blood filling up the tissue of penis.

802
00:47:48,560 --> 00:47:52,160
Speaker 1: And this has been around since the seventies is practice. Uh.

803
00:47:52,200 --> 00:47:54,320
Speaker 1: This is a direct quote from one of the articles

804
00:47:54,320 --> 00:47:57,560
Speaker 1: that we researched for this about this procedure. It said

805
00:47:57,840 --> 00:48:02,279
Speaker 1: the aesthetics were crude and the penetration is awkward. Now,

806
00:48:02,520 --> 00:48:05,280
Speaker 1: that can be said about most people's first that first

807
00:48:05,320 --> 00:48:09,640
Speaker 1: experience is sexually true too. Yeah, so we do have

808
00:48:09,680 --> 00:48:11,880
Speaker 1: a sense of human yeah. Yeah, And you know, and

809
00:48:11,920 --> 00:48:15,239
Speaker 1: I think it's also worth noting that it's it's look

810
00:48:15,239 --> 00:48:17,879
Speaker 1: at imagining this scenario here, and certainly you can look

811
00:48:17,960 --> 00:48:21,759
Speaker 1: up images and more, you know, technical documents on all this.

812
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:24,280
Speaker 1: It's easy to say, well, that sounds crude, and certainly

813
00:48:24,280 --> 00:48:27,839
Speaker 1: that's no that that's no replacement for the tissue situation,

814
00:48:28,680 --> 00:48:32,040
Speaker 1: but that is still pretty remarkable that that we were

815
00:48:32,080 --> 00:48:36,239
Speaker 1: able to accomplish this. This is a still surgical feat. Yeah,

816
00:48:36,480 --> 00:48:39,239
Speaker 1: it gets back to what we were talking about in

817
00:48:39,239 --> 00:48:42,360
Speaker 1: our Cyborgs episode, like the things that we're able to accomplish,

818
00:48:42,480 --> 00:48:45,320
Speaker 1: like what makes us human, what makes us the machine,

819
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:48,080
Speaker 1: the cyborg nature of humanity. So I don't want to

820
00:48:48,120 --> 00:48:53,120
Speaker 1: slite procedure at all, because that is an amazing feat. Uh.

821
00:48:53,200 --> 00:48:56,279
Speaker 1: And then here's the other thing that made uh any

822
00:48:56,320 --> 00:48:59,759
Speaker 1: kind of penile transplants really difficult and still does uh.

823
00:48:59,800 --> 00:49:02,279
Speaker 1: So I talked earlier about how just getting organs in

824
00:49:02,360 --> 00:49:05,680
Speaker 1: general is difficult, right, getting a penis downer is even

825
00:49:05,719 --> 00:49:09,600
Speaker 1: more difficult. The organ banks that accept other internal organs

826
00:49:09,719 --> 00:49:12,840
Speaker 1: they don't even have like a field on their form

827
00:49:12,960 --> 00:49:16,800
Speaker 1: for penises, right uh, And so they don't usually request these.

828
00:49:16,880 --> 00:49:20,280
Speaker 1: It has to be done separately. In fact, in South Africa,

829
00:49:20,680 --> 00:49:23,239
Speaker 1: families often flat out refuse. And this is going to

830
00:49:23,320 --> 00:49:27,000
Speaker 1: be important because the first penile transplant was in South Africa.

831
00:49:27,719 --> 00:49:31,760
Speaker 1: But there's such an emotional cultural gravity to a request

832
00:49:31,840 --> 00:49:34,640
Speaker 1: like that that most people just say no, I will

833
00:49:34,680 --> 00:49:37,440
Speaker 1: not give you, you you know, my my dead family members

834
00:49:37,560 --> 00:49:41,800
Speaker 1: penis uh. And in in the case of the people

835
00:49:42,160 --> 00:49:46,000
Speaker 1: who did the first penile transplant in South Africa, they

836
00:49:46,000 --> 00:49:47,680
Speaker 1: actually had to come up with a way to work

837
00:49:47,719 --> 00:49:51,399
Speaker 1: around it, where they started constructing faux penises for the

838
00:49:51,600 --> 00:49:56,640
Speaker 1: dead uh from the donor's skin to preserve their dignity

839
00:49:57,560 --> 00:50:01,160
Speaker 1: in their graves and subsequently still be able to use

840
00:50:01,200 --> 00:50:04,600
Speaker 1: the penis and give it to a living recipient. Huh. Wow,

841
00:50:04,600 --> 00:50:06,480
Speaker 1: that is that is that is crazy, you know. In

842
00:50:06,680 --> 00:50:09,239
Speaker 1: um In Grunt Mary wrote his book, she points out

843
00:50:09,280 --> 00:50:11,759
Speaker 1: that the cadavers that were being used in some of

844
00:50:11,800 --> 00:50:15,920
Speaker 1: the not even actual transfort procedures, but essentially rehearsals for

845
00:50:16,040 --> 00:50:20,400
Speaker 1: an upcoming transplant procedure. Like those are situations where somebody's

846
00:50:20,440 --> 00:50:23,040
Speaker 1: body was donated to science and they're you know, they're

847
00:50:23,040 --> 00:50:26,920
Speaker 1: not about to you know, necessarily share the exact details

848
00:50:26,920 --> 00:50:29,360
Speaker 1: of how that body was used totally, you know, in

849
00:50:29,440 --> 00:50:34,000
Speaker 1: part because of the complexities of our our psychological um

850
00:50:34,040 --> 00:50:37,480
Speaker 1: attachments to these various parts. Yeah, who wants to know

851
00:50:37,520 --> 00:50:39,560
Speaker 1: about like how their loved one was carved up and

852
00:50:39,600 --> 00:50:42,799
Speaker 1: maybe mistakes were made on them or whatever, but the

853
00:50:42,840 --> 00:50:46,120
Speaker 1: benefit is that it led to the successes that we're

854
00:50:46,160 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 1: going to talk about next and some of the failures.

855
00:50:49,360 --> 00:50:52,919
Speaker 1: So let's go back to a case that Mary Roach

856
00:50:52,960 --> 00:50:55,480
Speaker 1: discussed in the interview. This was a two thousand six

857
00:50:55,760 --> 00:50:58,880
Speaker 1: guang Show General Hospital in Guango, China. You had a

858
00:50:58,920 --> 00:51:00,920
Speaker 1: forty four year old man and who had lost his

859
00:51:01,040 --> 00:51:04,879
Speaker 1: penis and they quote an unfortunate traumatic accident. That's about

860
00:51:04,880 --> 00:51:07,280
Speaker 1: all we know. One of the is is we've already

861
00:51:07,280 --> 00:51:12,319
Speaker 1: touched on in the interview this case, there's there's some

862
00:51:12,440 --> 00:51:14,960
Speaker 1: material that is that is not as directly related to

863
00:51:14,960 --> 00:51:17,640
Speaker 1: the reader. There's maybe some of that might be lost

864
00:51:17,640 --> 00:51:21,239
Speaker 1: in translation, some of it's just maybe not provided. Um. Yeah,

865
00:51:21,239 --> 00:51:23,399
Speaker 1: there are a lot of things about this particular case,

866
00:51:23,400 --> 00:51:26,080
Speaker 1: and it's been ten years that are still vague to

867
00:51:26,120 --> 00:51:28,080
Speaker 1: this day. And when we talked to Mary, we sort

868
00:51:28,080 --> 00:51:30,160
Speaker 1: of mentioned that, right Like I remember saying to her,

869
00:51:30,840 --> 00:51:32,880
Speaker 1: you know what, what was actually up with that? And

870
00:51:32,920 --> 00:51:36,000
Speaker 1: she said, as far as she could tell, it was necrosis.

871
00:51:36,000 --> 00:51:37,960
Speaker 1: But we'll get there. So the lead surgeon on this

872
00:51:37,960 --> 00:51:40,920
Speaker 1: one was one doctor who Wai Lee and so from

873
00:51:40,960 --> 00:51:43,719
Speaker 1: what we know, the parents of a brain dead man

874
00:51:43,920 --> 00:51:47,600
Speaker 1: in his twenties agreed to donate their son's penis to

875
00:51:47,640 --> 00:51:52,000
Speaker 1: this man who was damaged in this unfortunate traumatic accident. Now,

876
00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:54,560
Speaker 1: the way that they did it in this Chinese procedure

877
00:51:55,000 --> 00:51:57,920
Speaker 1: was they warmed up the donor's penis with an infrared

878
00:51:58,120 --> 00:52:02,440
Speaker 1: lamp post operation, and this was supposed to increase the

879
00:52:02,480 --> 00:52:08,640
Speaker 1: metabolic requirements of the organ instead of increasing the blood supply. Now,

880
00:52:08,760 --> 00:52:12,680
Speaker 1: other doctors that have been interviewed about this particular procedure,

881
00:52:13,080 --> 00:52:15,520
Speaker 1: they have said things along the lines of they think

882
00:52:15,600 --> 00:52:17,799
Speaker 1: that what happened here and why it didn't work out

883
00:52:17,960 --> 00:52:21,960
Speaker 1: was there was inadequate psychological workup. So like with a

884
00:52:21,960 --> 00:52:23,960
Speaker 1: lot of the procedures that we talked about on this

885
00:52:24,000 --> 00:52:28,680
Speaker 1: show that are semi experimental, like say, uh, using m

886
00:52:28,760 --> 00:52:32,400
Speaker 1: D M A to help with PTSD, right, it requires

887
00:52:32,440 --> 00:52:36,520
Speaker 1: therapy as well. It's psychological and physical and not like

888
00:52:36,560 --> 00:52:41,640
Speaker 1: just you're doing not doing body work in a car here, Yeah, exactly. Um. Now,

889
00:52:41,880 --> 00:52:47,520
Speaker 1: in the particular case for the biological surgery here with

890
00:52:47,600 --> 00:52:51,399
Speaker 1: this Chinese case, they could only use the local nerve

891
00:52:51,480 --> 00:52:56,560
Speaker 1: structures because the donor's blood vessels had actually been obliterated. Uh.

892
00:52:56,600 --> 00:53:00,280
Speaker 1: And they re routed a blood vessel from his lower

893
00:53:00,360 --> 00:53:04,960
Speaker 1: abdomen to his paraneum to connect it to this new penis.

894
00:53:05,440 --> 00:53:09,040
Speaker 1: Then they connected the blood vessels and dorsal nerves, and

895
00:53:09,080 --> 00:53:16,960
Speaker 1: then the urethra for urination and the corpus cavernossum for erections. Now,

896
00:53:17,000 --> 00:53:22,040
Speaker 1: according to the Guardian, they thought okay, everything was a success.

897
00:53:22,040 --> 00:53:24,800
Speaker 1: After about ten days he had a rich blood supply

898
00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:28,480
Speaker 1: and could urinate normally. But then the recipient and his

899
00:53:28,560 --> 00:53:31,640
Speaker 1: wife came back in two weeks after the surgery and

900
00:53:31,680 --> 00:53:34,799
Speaker 1: requested that it be removed. And as we talked about

901
00:53:34,840 --> 00:53:36,799
Speaker 1: with Mary, nobody really knows the answer here, but we

902
00:53:36,840 --> 00:53:40,080
Speaker 1: think that it's likely due to psychological issues surrounding the

903
00:53:40,160 --> 00:53:43,960
Speaker 1: necrotian necrosis of the tissue involved. Yeah, I mean, of

904
00:53:43,960 --> 00:53:45,920
Speaker 1: course you can't help, but wonder, like to what extent

905
00:53:46,080 --> 00:53:52,040
Speaker 1: was this, how much of this was a failed reattachment surgery? Uh?

906
00:53:52,120 --> 00:53:53,560
Speaker 1: And then to what to what extent is it more

907
00:53:53,560 --> 00:53:56,760
Speaker 1: silent psychological? Like is it is the is the version

908
00:53:56,840 --> 00:53:58,960
Speaker 1: that everyone gets is it leaning one way or another

909
00:53:59,120 --> 00:54:02,000
Speaker 1: that they decided to lean away from from blaming the science?

910
00:54:02,080 --> 00:54:03,960
Speaker 1: And you know what kind of how was it portrayed

911
00:54:04,000 --> 00:54:06,040
Speaker 1: in the media, and like you said earlier, how much

912
00:54:06,120 --> 00:54:08,120
Speaker 1: is lost in translation when we bring it over to

913
00:54:08,560 --> 00:54:11,520
Speaker 1: English speaking media. So there's a lot of confusion around

914
00:54:11,560 --> 00:54:14,680
Speaker 1: this case. But from what we know, uh, it was

915
00:54:14,800 --> 00:54:17,640
Speaker 1: considered a quote failure because the man asked it to

916
00:54:17,680 --> 00:54:20,600
Speaker 1: be removed, right, And we shouldn't discount that the psychological

917
00:54:20,920 --> 00:54:24,279
Speaker 1: issues at all, because psychological issues involving transplants are not

918
00:54:24,360 --> 00:54:28,560
Speaker 1: unheard of. The world's first hand transplant recipient a New

919
00:54:28,600 --> 00:54:32,320
Speaker 1: Zealander by the name of Clint Hallam. He stopped taking

920
00:54:32,360 --> 00:54:36,440
Speaker 1: his immune suppression drugs, uh, you know, by choice, and

921
00:54:36,480 --> 00:54:39,640
Speaker 1: then later requested that the hand be amputated. So and

922
00:54:39,640 --> 00:54:41,560
Speaker 1: and this is often brought up as an example of well,

923
00:54:41,960 --> 00:54:46,600
Speaker 1: they essentially they essentially tackled the problem like like like

924
00:54:46,680 --> 00:54:49,719
Speaker 1: auto work, and they didn't they didn't take into account that, uys,

925
00:54:49,840 --> 00:54:52,080
Speaker 1: you have to have all of this additional psychological support

926
00:54:52,120 --> 00:54:55,520
Speaker 1: as well. Yeah, this is incredibly gruesome stuff when you

927
00:54:55,560 --> 00:54:57,319
Speaker 1: get down to the nitty gritty of it too, Like

928
00:54:57,360 --> 00:54:59,000
Speaker 1: this is the kind of stuff that would make up

929
00:54:59,040 --> 00:55:02,320
Speaker 1: like a Tales from the ript style story or something

930
00:55:02,400 --> 00:55:05,240
Speaker 1: like that, like like he has a dead man's hand

931
00:55:05,960 --> 00:55:08,799
Speaker 1: and uh, you know what I mean, Like it lends

932
00:55:08,840 --> 00:55:13,719
Speaker 1: itself very well to to paranoid thinking, to doubt, and

933
00:55:13,719 --> 00:55:15,800
Speaker 1: and I can't help but wonder two Like in the

934
00:55:15,880 --> 00:55:19,359
Speaker 1: especially these earlier cases, to what extent was the were

935
00:55:19,360 --> 00:55:24,360
Speaker 1: they straight straight with expectations for the recipient? They're like, hey,

936
00:55:24,400 --> 00:55:28,400
Speaker 1: this is this You aren't going to be this is

937
00:55:28,440 --> 00:55:30,880
Speaker 1: not going to be a you know, a one to

938
00:55:31,080 --> 00:55:33,560
Speaker 1: three fixed scenario. Right, It's not like you and as

939
00:55:33,560 --> 00:55:35,239
Speaker 1: we'll talk about, you don't just walk out of there

940
00:55:35,239 --> 00:55:38,160
Speaker 1: and you've got a fully functioning penis. It takes like weeks,

941
00:55:38,160 --> 00:55:42,120
Speaker 1: two months to years to try to get everything working properly.

942
00:55:42,280 --> 00:55:44,319
Speaker 1: And in fact, in the South African case, they were

943
00:55:44,360 --> 00:55:48,640
Speaker 1: surprised at how quickly things became functional. Well, let's look

944
00:55:48,640 --> 00:55:50,919
Speaker 1: at that. The South African case. This is a two

945
00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:54,560
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen and we're taking this is taking place at

946
00:55:54,560 --> 00:55:58,200
Speaker 1: the Tigerberg Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa. Twenty one

947
00:55:58,239 --> 00:56:00,920
Speaker 1: year old penile amputee who ust to his penis in

948
00:56:00,960 --> 00:56:05,560
Speaker 1: a botched circumcision. And this is apparently pretty common. Dozens,

949
00:56:06,239 --> 00:56:08,839
Speaker 1: some say hundreds of boys are maimed or die each

950
00:56:08,920 --> 00:56:12,719
Speaker 1: year during traditional initiation ceremony. So these are not. These

951
00:56:12,719 --> 00:56:16,680
Speaker 1: are not infant circumcisions. These are coming out of a circumcisions. Yeah,

952
00:56:16,719 --> 00:56:20,560
Speaker 1: he was eighteen when this happened. And these ritual circumcisions

953
00:56:20,600 --> 00:56:24,319
Speaker 1: are basically the way that it goes is they're so

954
00:56:24,440 --> 00:56:28,600
Speaker 1: tightly wrapped that it causes necrosis in the penis, but

955
00:56:28,719 --> 00:56:31,920
Speaker 1: you know, without it even being detached, So his penis

956
00:56:31,960 --> 00:56:35,840
Speaker 1: had to be amputated. Uh. This is particularly common in

957
00:56:35,920 --> 00:56:41,200
Speaker 1: South Africa's I believe this is Zosa speaking region. It's

958
00:56:41,480 --> 00:56:43,920
Speaker 1: x h o s a. I'm not quite sure how

959
00:56:43,920 --> 00:56:46,760
Speaker 1: to pronounce that, but let's say it's Zosa uh speaking

960
00:56:46,800 --> 00:56:49,880
Speaker 1: region of the Eastern Cape. Uh. And it's so it's

961
00:56:49,880 --> 00:56:52,360
Speaker 1: a rite of passage for young men. They actually attend

962
00:56:52,520 --> 00:56:57,120
Speaker 1: circumcisions school and they're instructed in family values and sexual

963
00:56:57,239 --> 00:57:00,800
Speaker 1: education there. Uh. There's also high prices that are charged

964
00:57:00,840 --> 00:57:03,560
Speaker 1: for this procedure. So basically they take the penis, they

965
00:57:03,560 --> 00:57:05,360
Speaker 1: wrap it at its base to stem the flow of

966
00:57:05,400 --> 00:57:08,399
Speaker 1: blood up to the foreskin. Right, some men actually die

967
00:57:08,600 --> 00:57:11,600
Speaker 1: because they won't go to a hospital because they're they're

968
00:57:11,600 --> 00:57:15,720
Speaker 1: afraid of being ostracized after revealing that their gangarinus penis

969
00:57:15,719 --> 00:57:19,400
Speaker 1: has fallen off. So there's such a strong psychological cultural

970
00:57:19,400 --> 00:57:21,720
Speaker 1: connection to this thing that it's leading to people dying.

971
00:57:22,360 --> 00:57:25,520
Speaker 1: Uh So yeah, so South Africa seems like an ideal

972
00:57:25,560 --> 00:57:29,200
Speaker 1: place to to start getting a prep team ready to

973
00:57:29,240 --> 00:57:33,320
Speaker 1: go for the first penile transplant. Uh. And the lead

974
00:57:33,360 --> 00:57:37,480
Speaker 1: surgeon here was one Professor Andre von der Murwi. So

975
00:57:37,520 --> 00:57:41,040
Speaker 1: when the recipient recovered, he actually had to come back

976
00:57:41,080 --> 00:57:45,040
Speaker 1: in UH and drain a hematoma and repair a small

977
00:57:45,240 --> 00:57:48,360
Speaker 1: fistilla in the urethra. And now here's the thing. They

978
00:57:48,400 --> 00:57:50,760
Speaker 1: expected that it was going to take two years for

979
00:57:50,880 --> 00:57:54,160
Speaker 1: him to be fully functional. It only took three and

980
00:57:54,200 --> 00:57:57,680
Speaker 1: a half months. Uh. And the surgery itself, it took

981
00:57:57,720 --> 00:58:02,280
Speaker 1: four years of clinical and ethical therapeutic preparation. They had

982
00:58:02,320 --> 00:58:05,160
Speaker 1: to work with cadavers and practice. As we talked about earlier,

983
00:58:05,440 --> 00:58:07,880
Speaker 1: it was really difficult to find penile donors. As we

984
00:58:07,880 --> 00:58:11,680
Speaker 1: talked about earlier, they were trying to overcome this by

985
00:58:11,800 --> 00:58:13,840
Speaker 1: doing the whole procedure that I talked about where they

986
00:58:13,880 --> 00:58:16,160
Speaker 1: build these fake penises. So this team is not only

987
00:58:16,200 --> 00:58:19,320
Speaker 1: trying to come up with a way to help these uh,

988
00:58:19,440 --> 00:58:23,160
Speaker 1: these victims of this botched ritual circumcision, but then they

989
00:58:23,200 --> 00:58:25,240
Speaker 1: also have to come up with a way to somehow

990
00:58:25,280 --> 00:58:30,120
Speaker 1: please the families of the donors. Uh. And as of

991
00:58:30,720 --> 00:58:33,439
Speaker 1: the last time this was reported, the hospital had nine

992
00:58:33,480 --> 00:58:37,240
Speaker 1: more candidates in weight. But the good news is the

993
00:58:37,320 --> 00:58:41,200
Speaker 1: recipient the patient. Last June it was reported that his

994
00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:46,720
Speaker 1: girlfriend was pregnant, so fully functioning penis apparently. I wonder

995
00:58:46,720 --> 00:58:48,440
Speaker 1: if this case of it also helped that the recipient

996
00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:50,720
Speaker 1: was so young, just by virtue of, you know, the

997
00:58:51,200 --> 00:58:54,480
Speaker 1: cause of the act, whereas in the recent case, the

998
00:58:54,480 --> 00:58:57,439
Speaker 1: American case, he was he was far not not he's

999
00:58:57,480 --> 00:58:59,880
Speaker 1: not old, but he was older than this guy's sixty

1000
00:59:00,000 --> 00:59:02,000
Speaker 1: were years old, right, all right, So let's get to

1001
00:59:02,040 --> 00:59:05,640
Speaker 1: this most recent case when we're looking at May eighth

1002
00:59:05,960 --> 00:59:09,640
Speaker 1: through eighth and the ninth, two thousand, sixteen weeks, just

1003
00:59:09,720 --> 00:59:12,960
Speaker 1: weeks ago at took place at Massachuset's Massachusetts General Hospital

1004
00:59:12,960 --> 00:59:15,720
Speaker 1: in Boston. Thomas Manning, a sixty four year old bank

1005
00:59:15,760 --> 00:59:19,640
Speaker 1: carrier from Halifax, Massachusetts. Penis was removed because of cancer.

1006
00:59:20,560 --> 00:59:24,080
Speaker 1: Now this is you know, most recent, and the New

1007
00:59:24,160 --> 00:59:26,800
Speaker 1: York Times and then also The Atlantic did really great

1008
00:59:27,160 --> 00:59:29,200
Speaker 1: write ups on this. So a lot of our information

1009
00:59:29,520 --> 00:59:31,479
Speaker 1: is from here. Man. I wish we could get married

1010
00:59:31,480 --> 00:59:33,000
Speaker 1: on the phone again and talk about this. I'm sure

1011
00:59:33,040 --> 00:59:35,760
Speaker 1: she was pretty interested in it as well. Uh. It

1012
00:59:35,880 --> 00:59:40,040
Speaker 1: took thirty healthcare workers in total to perform this operation.

1013
00:59:40,440 --> 00:59:43,400
Speaker 1: There were three years of preparation again, all the practicing

1014
00:59:43,440 --> 00:59:46,840
Speaker 1: on cadavers. Now, Manning only found out about the fact

1015
00:59:46,920 --> 00:59:49,040
Speaker 1: that he had this rare cancer after he had an

1016
00:59:49,040 --> 00:59:52,439
Speaker 1: accident at work. When he went into the doctor, they said, WHOA,

1017
00:59:52,480 --> 00:59:56,360
Speaker 1: there's this this, you know, abnormal growth on your penis,

1018
00:59:56,440 --> 00:59:59,560
Speaker 1: and they realized that it was. It was so cancerous

1019
00:59:59,600 --> 01:00:03,280
Speaker 1: that it had to be amputated. Now. It only took

1020
01:00:03,360 --> 01:00:06,760
Speaker 1: him two weeks though, to find a donor who matched

1021
01:00:06,760 --> 01:00:10,160
Speaker 1: his blood and tissue type, so that works out pretty well. Now.

1022
01:00:10,160 --> 01:00:13,160
Speaker 1: The surgery here in the US is estimated costs somewhere

1023
01:00:13,160 --> 01:00:17,320
Speaker 1: between fifty thousand and seventy five thousand dollars, but the

1024
01:00:17,360 --> 01:00:20,840
Speaker 1: hospitals involved are paying for the procedures while the doctors

1025
01:00:20,840 --> 01:00:24,360
Speaker 1: are donating their time. So everything, as far as we

1026
01:00:24,440 --> 01:00:27,800
Speaker 1: know with this is so far, so good. Right. In

1027
01:00:27,840 --> 01:00:30,640
Speaker 1: their official statement, they said that the penis has regular

1028
01:00:30,640 --> 01:00:34,080
Speaker 1: blood flow, no signs of infection or rejection. They hope

1029
01:00:34,160 --> 01:00:37,280
Speaker 1: that in a few weeks he'll achieve normal urination, so

1030
01:00:37,360 --> 01:00:42,520
Speaker 1: probably around right now. I would imagine they say they

1031
01:00:42,560 --> 01:00:46,280
Speaker 1: already have another patient waiting. This guy his penis was

1032
01:00:46,320 --> 01:00:50,360
Speaker 1: destroyed by burns in a car accident. Ultimately, their goal

1033
01:00:50,560 --> 01:00:53,720
Speaker 1: is to help combat veterans, like we talked about with

1034
01:00:53,800 --> 01:00:59,040
Speaker 1: Mary and Uh, other cancer patients and accident victims. They're

1035
01:00:59,080 --> 01:01:02,640
Speaker 1: in fact hoping to train their techniques to military surgeons.

1036
01:01:02,720 --> 01:01:04,560
Speaker 1: Because this is, like we talked about with Mary, so

1037
01:01:04,600 --> 01:01:07,040
Speaker 1: common with i D victims. Yes, I mean all this

1038
01:01:07,080 --> 01:01:09,920
Speaker 1: is very much taking on the front lines of the

1039
01:01:10,480 --> 01:01:14,120
Speaker 1: of the surgical frontier. Um, That's why doctors are donating

1040
01:01:14,120 --> 01:01:17,200
Speaker 1: their times, That's why hospitals are are are are paying

1041
01:01:17,200 --> 01:01:20,680
Speaker 1: the bills here and then then hopefully as these techniques

1042
01:01:21,080 --> 01:01:24,959
Speaker 1: are are perfected, yeah, they will be passed down and

1043
01:01:24,960 --> 01:01:28,560
Speaker 1: and others can start utilizing that these techniques around the world. Now,

1044
01:01:28,600 --> 01:01:30,200
Speaker 1: there's one thing that I want to add to this.

1045
01:01:30,280 --> 01:01:32,600
Speaker 1: We talked a little bit about it with Mary Uh.

1046
01:01:32,680 --> 01:01:36,360
Speaker 1: In the press release about this US penile transplant, they

1047
01:01:36,400 --> 01:01:40,280
Speaker 1: specifically said this will not be offered to transgender people

1048
01:01:40,320 --> 01:01:42,280
Speaker 1: for now. Now, I want to just touch on this

1049
01:01:42,360 --> 01:01:45,760
Speaker 1: a little bit because as we were reading Mary's book,

1050
01:01:46,000 --> 01:01:50,640
Speaker 1: obviously it was apparent that um, the science behind gender

1051
01:01:50,640 --> 01:01:54,520
Speaker 1: reassignment surgery has been used as sort of like a

1052
01:01:54,600 --> 01:01:57,280
Speaker 1: building block to get to where we are with these

1053
01:01:57,320 --> 01:02:01,640
Speaker 1: penile transplants. When I was twenty one, I read Kate

1054
01:02:01,720 --> 01:02:05,200
Speaker 1: Bornstein's Gender Outlaw and it it specifically describes the female

1055
01:02:05,240 --> 01:02:10,240
Speaker 1: to male gender reassignment surgery, and I immediately thought, when

1056
01:02:10,240 --> 01:02:13,000
Speaker 1: we were doing this research, well, it's it's clear that

1057
01:02:13,120 --> 01:02:16,400
Speaker 1: you know, there's a foundation there. Uh, and it seems

1058
01:02:16,720 --> 01:02:19,880
Speaker 1: to be the secret that no one's really talking about,

1059
01:02:20,000 --> 01:02:23,080
Speaker 1: I mean clearly in China and South Africa. Uh. And

1060
01:02:23,120 --> 01:02:26,400
Speaker 1: then in this most recent US case, it's it's it's

1061
01:02:26,440 --> 01:02:31,200
Speaker 1: not in the public press releases, right. But I think

1062
01:02:31,240 --> 01:02:34,600
Speaker 1: that it's fair to say that these medical teams uh

1063
01:02:34,800 --> 01:02:38,480
Speaker 1: did get some help at least or some some foundational

1064
01:02:38,560 --> 01:02:41,439
Speaker 1: work from the efforts that were done there. Yeah. Yeah,

1065
01:02:41,440 --> 01:02:44,440
Speaker 1: because the field of gender reassignment surgery definitely had an

1066
01:02:44,440 --> 01:02:48,360
Speaker 1: impact on our ability to treat eurotrauma wounds to the

1067
01:02:48,360 --> 01:02:50,560
Speaker 1: general area, and of course all this ends up playing

1068
01:02:50,560 --> 01:02:53,120
Speaker 1: directly and our ability to to graft a donor repeat

1069
01:02:53,200 --> 01:02:55,600
Speaker 1: it's not due recipient. Yeah, but I do agree with

1070
01:02:55,600 --> 01:02:58,800
Speaker 1: you it seems weird that that these contributions have not

1071
01:02:58,840 --> 01:03:03,160
Speaker 1: been highlighted more. Um, and there's just continued unwillingness perhaps

1072
01:03:03,160 --> 01:03:07,640
Speaker 1: to discuss, um sure, who should who should who should

1073
01:03:07,640 --> 01:03:11,400
Speaker 1: be open, who should be able to receive these procedures. Yeah,

1074
01:03:11,440 --> 01:03:13,800
Speaker 1: and given the controversy right now, especially like it's a

1075
01:03:13,800 --> 01:03:18,200
Speaker 1: hot button issue with transgender rights and bathrooms in North Carolina,

1076
01:03:18,720 --> 01:03:22,160
Speaker 1: you know, they these hospitals, they want to retain their funding.

1077
01:03:22,600 --> 01:03:25,439
Speaker 1: I get it, like it's a it's a pr move,

1078
01:03:25,560 --> 01:03:28,320
Speaker 1: but I think you know, for us covering this, it's

1079
01:03:28,360 --> 01:03:30,280
Speaker 1: only fair to be honest and say, you know, it

1080
01:03:30,320 --> 01:03:34,480
Speaker 1: seems like, uh, there was some foundational work there. Now

1081
01:03:34,520 --> 01:03:37,440
Speaker 1: there's also another topic that we don't have time for today,

1082
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:39,240
Speaker 1: but maybe we'll be able to come back to in

1083
01:03:39,240 --> 01:03:41,880
Speaker 1: the future, which is the fact that there are actually

1084
01:03:42,000 --> 01:03:46,600
Speaker 1: artificially grown genitals that are being used and prepared for

1085
01:03:46,800 --> 01:03:53,680
Speaker 1: potential transplantation, both penises and vaginas. The vaginas actually successful,

1086
01:03:54,120 --> 01:03:57,880
Speaker 1: uh and have have been so for years. Um, But

1087
01:03:57,960 --> 01:03:59,880
Speaker 1: we don't really have time to dive into the science

1088
01:04:00,000 --> 01:04:02,240
Speaker 1: on that today. So if this is you know, something

1089
01:04:02,240 --> 01:04:05,480
Speaker 1: that's interesting to you listeners and you want to hear

1090
01:04:05,520 --> 01:04:08,280
Speaker 1: more about it, let us know and Robert and I

1091
01:04:08,320 --> 01:04:10,320
Speaker 1: can come back and maybe we'll do something on artificially

1092
01:04:10,360 --> 01:04:13,160
Speaker 1: grown organs and transling grown genitals. Who doesn't want to

1093
01:04:13,160 --> 01:04:15,360
Speaker 1: hear an episode on that. Yeah. Also, we're gonna be

1094
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:17,960
Speaker 1: talking futuristically, so I feel like maybe that we'll be

1095
01:04:18,000 --> 01:04:20,439
Speaker 1: able to actually work in a little more humor as

1096
01:04:20,480 --> 01:04:22,440
Speaker 1: we distance it from some of the you know, the

1097
01:04:22,800 --> 01:04:26,440
Speaker 1: real life and often grim circumstances that require these procedures

1098
01:04:26,440 --> 01:04:28,959
Speaker 1: to begin with. Yeah, especially, man, let me tell you

1099
01:04:29,000 --> 01:04:33,320
Speaker 1: what they do to rabbits for this next time, next time,

1100
01:04:33,360 --> 01:04:35,200
Speaker 1: next time on Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the things

1101
01:04:35,240 --> 01:04:38,840
Speaker 1: they do to rabbits. All right, well, hey, in the meantime,

1102
01:04:39,000 --> 01:04:41,040
Speaker 1: check out the landing page for this episode on Stuff

1103
01:04:41,040 --> 01:04:42,400
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. That's what you find,

1104
01:04:42,400 --> 01:04:44,040
Speaker 1: links out to some of the articles we mentioned here,

1105
01:04:44,080 --> 01:04:47,240
Speaker 1: links out to Mary's book, and you also find all

1106
01:04:47,240 --> 01:04:49,800
Speaker 1: the podcast episodes. You'll find blog post links to our

1107
01:04:49,840 --> 01:04:52,680
Speaker 1: social media accounts such as Facebook and Twitter. We are

1108
01:04:52,680 --> 01:04:55,120
Speaker 1: blow the Mind on both of those. We're also on Tumbler.

1109
01:04:55,240 --> 01:04:57,400
Speaker 1: We're also on Instagram. Yeah, and if you want to

1110
01:04:57,400 --> 01:05:00,520
Speaker 1: write us directly and tell us what you know about

1111
01:05:00,560 --> 01:05:05,640
Speaker 1: penile transplants or artificially grown organs or whatever, write us

1112
01:05:05,680 --> 01:05:17,440
Speaker 1: at blow the mind at how stuff works dot com.

1113
01:05:17,440 --> 01:05:19,840
Speaker 1: For more on miss in thousands of other topics is

1114
01:05:20,000 --> 01:05:28,000
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com. Love,