The Frontier

Chad, Lulu, and Latif launched "The Lab," a new Radiolab membership program offering ad-free listening, bonus content, and exclusive access, available at radialab.org/join.

Dr. Robert Montgomery, head of transplant surgery at NYU Langone Health, performed the first successful transplant of a pig kidney into a human, reported in the New York Times.

The xenotransplantation aimed to address the critical shortage of human organs, with 90,000 people currently on the kidney waiting list.

The first pig kidney transplant was performed on a brain-dead patient whose family donated their body for testing, confirming the kidney functioned by producing urine and remaining pink, rather than rejecting.

The transplanted pig kidney succeeded because the pig was genetically modified to remove the Alpha-Gal sugar gene, which typically causes human bodies to reject non-primate mammalian organs.

Amy Pearl developed an Alpha-Gal allergy after a tick bite, experiencing severe reactions including hives and anaphylactic shock hours after eating red meat, a condition her doctor initially dismissed.

Dr. Thomas Platts-Mills initially doubted claims of sudden red meat allergies but investigated why Cetuximab, a cancer drug, caused anaphylactic shock.

Platts-Mills discovered Alpha-Gal sugar in Cetuximab and recognized it was also present in non-primate mammals, leading him to connect geographically clustered Cetuximab reactions with the distribution of the Lone Star tick.

Platts-Mills self-experimented by exposing himself to 200 seed ticks in the Blue Ridge Mountains, later experiencing hives after eating lamb chops, confirming the tick bite's role in triggering the Alpha-Gal allergy.

Wildlife disease ecologist Graham Hickling explains that Lone Star tick larvae hatch in masses of 2,000 and "quest" for food, detecting CO2, heat, and movement from potential hosts.

The theory suggests Alpha-Gal allergy develops when a tick injects Alpha-Gal sugar via its saliva directly into the skin, triggering the immune system to mislabel it as harmful, causing severe reactions upon subsequent meat consumption.

Revivicor, an American offshoot of the company that cloned Dolly the sheep, developed the "GalSafe Pig" for medical use, and Amy Pearl's story inspired them to seek FDA approval for its meat as food for Alpha-Gal allergy sufferers.

Amy Pearl expressed disgust at the idea of eating genetically modified pork, finding her forced vegetarianism to offer moral superiority and environmental benefits, and posing philosophical questions about animal exploitation.

Revivicor unofficially named the first pig slaughtered for meat, intended for human consumption, "Amy" after Amy Pearl, a detail she found disturbing.