Return of Alpha Gal

It's one of my all-time favorite radio labs, and we're going to play it for you today. It is ten years old, but lucky for you.

“It has a pretty thrilling scientific update at the end. So here we go.”

Yeah, wait, wait, you're looking okay. All right. Okay. All right. You're listening to radio lab.

Radio from WNYC. Hey. Yeah. Three, two, one. Good.

Is your mic on? Yeah. I'm getting, I'm making my nervous. Maybe I should get my happy pen. Are you allergic to radio greatness?

I don't know if I've been really exposed to it, yeah. Anyway, let's go. Are we rolling? We're good. We're going. We're rolling. Okay.

“I'm Robert Crowe, which this is radio lab, and today we're going to begin with a conversation”

between Dan Pashman. Okay. Host of a podcast here at WNYC called The Sportfuls, about food and Amy Pearl. Amy? Yes.

A digital producer here at the station who likes food.

And the conversation they had was about something that happened to Amy, which he never

expected certainly didn't want, and yet it could happen to any of us at any time. So, here's a go for any that's happened to you. Just tell me what was your relationship with meat? My relationship with meat. Yeah.

Well, you know, how when you're little and your mom is like, you have any special dinner for your birthday. My dinner was meatballs. And she was like, "Except meatballs are so hard to make, so it was pot roast." And then Peter, you know, Peter Lugar.

Same as steak house in Brooklyn. Yeah.

“I used to go there quite often, and I live there, and I have a Peter Lugar credit card.”

So. Are those hard to get? You know, I don't know how they give them out, but nobody seems to have one. I don't think they give them out anymore. But I mean, I was very into Peter Lugar.

I was living in Williamsburg. And it just, it's open. I'm like one o'clock every day. And you can just walk in. I won.

They had an amazing bar. There's no tablecloths on the table. These old German waiters. They bring out your porter house for three. They put a little plate upside down and then put the big platter on top.

So it's tilted and all the juice runs to the end. And then they like have the special double spoon thing that they somehow like scoop juice onto your steak. And, oh, so good. And also like the smell of burning fat from a hamburger. What are the hot dogs?

Oh my God. I love hot dogs so much. And you bite into them and they're like collect and have like a snap. And like having a weenie roast out in the open air. It's just, it's like the, oh God, it's so good.

Anyway, I was always very intimate.

What changed? Oh my God. It was terrible. It was what happened was. I was having this beautiful, it was springtime.

I was having a beautiful leg of lamb with some neighbors. And we like put it on the grill. And it was just a delicious beautiful dinner. And I had served with it some ramps that I foraged in my mom's yard. A ramp, by the way, is just a wild onion.

And so, so we had this delicious meal. And then, you know, I went home and I was going to sleep at like midnight, like a few hours later. And I just felt weird. I was like, oh God, something's wrong. I feel like we're like anxious, like something's wrong with me.

And I went on the bathroom and I like looking the mirror. And my face was like, oh, weird looking. And I was like, I kept laying down, be like, I'll just sleep it off whatever it is. But every time I lay down, it felt like I was going to faint. So I was like, prop myself up.

And I was like, oh God, I'm so terrible. Like, stomach cramps and just like a weird feeling of impending doom. You know, but just like anybody, I'm just like, just get a good night's sleep this will pass. I like, splash a little water on my face. I don't know how many we think this, but I thought like, maybe a snail, a tiny snail,

was on one of the ramps that I ate. And it was like poisoning me somehow. You know, snails. I mean, they probably poisonous. So I called my friends in the morning.

I was like, hey, how you guys doing? How was dinner? And they were like, oh, so great. I was like, really, so great.

Like, no horrific panic attacks.

“And they were like, and they were like, oh, that's so lovely.”

Thank you so much for doing it again, Barbara. And I was like, wow, I really had a rough night. And but I didn't think anything of it. And I went on with my life, you know, just like whatever. And then about a week or two later, I made some cheeseburgers.

And I ate a cheeseburger. And I was watching, um, goodbye, Mr. Chips. Really tear jerking movie and a good book too. And um, about a couple of hours after I ate, I was like, started to feel really weird. Again, I was like feeling like I was like, I had to stand up.

I was like, I think I'm going to faint. I feel really light head. I can't catch my breath. I feel like really woozy. But if any time I lay down, I really felt like I was going to faint.

So I was like, trying to say sitting upright. And I was like, oh, my God, this is very similar. I ran into the bathroom. And I was like, looking in the mirror and low and behold, I had hives all over my stomach.

And then they started coming out of my hands. And I was like, oh, my God, something's happening. And at one point, I did get up and unlock my door because I did feel like I'm going to pass out, call an ambulance and then they're not going to be able to get in.

So I mean, I was in a little bit afraid of what was happening. And when I woke up in the morning,

the first thing I did was Google sudden meet allergy.

Because I was like, this seems like an allergy.

“And the only thing that was the same was meat.”

And I'm going through like the second thing that came up was this article that was like Florida Man has sudden meat allergy. I was like, oh my God, I think it's a possible I could have this. And so I made a poem with my doctor. I brought in the article.

I'm like, I'm going to be this person. But I can do it. I had the article, my pocket. What person? You know, the person who goes to their doctor was something I found

on the internet. So I brought the article. It was in my pocket. And like, I got through the whole like checkup. And I was too chicken.

When I was paying their receptionist, I pulled it out and gave it to their receptionist. And I was like, could you give this to the doctor? So that was like the best I could do. And then I did call my doctor and had a conversation with him on the phone,

asking him if I could get tested. And he was like, no, there's no such thing as a meat allergy, blah blah blah. So some people think allergies are just like in your head. This is science writer Peter Smith. We got in touch with him after we heard Amy story.

Because Peter is an investigative many things, including strange allergies. And people are like mushrooms hurt them or they think Wi-Fi hurts them. Yeah, Wi-Fi hurts them. And I don't know. And when I produced her a lot of Nasser and I got into the studio,

and we told him about Amy story. He said, yeah, all right. I know exactly who you need to talk to. Hello. Yeah, hi.

Thomas Platt's Mills. This is Thomas Platt's Mills. That's right. How are you? I'm very well.

Dr. Platt's Mills is down at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He's a professor and he works at an allergy clinic. And an allergy clinic, we constantly sifting through stories, which not only you don't believe, but are actually nonsense.

And he told us in the last 10 years or so, he started hearing lots of stories just like Amy. Right. Somebody shows up at the office convinced that they're allergic all of a sudden for no apparent reason to red meat.

The first time I heard it was probably as early as 2004.

And every single time he heard the story, he would tell the patient exactly what Amy's doctor told her. Now, no way. No, no, no. It's not possible.

Right. So what was wrong with these complaints in an orthodox medical way? Oh, everything. Adults don't become allergic to something they've eaten for 40 years out of the blue,

and certainly not red meat. So you're basically saying to these patients,

“I think you must be making this up because I can't explain.”

But I don't use language like that. I said, I say there. I was trying to give you your inner voice. Oh, you don't want to know what doctors are thinking in their inner voices. You know, you often think in the middle of interview,

is it possible that he's got, you know, some ghastly disease? That gap. Yeah, you know. The point is that when he'd hear a story like Amy's, he just didn't believe it.

But then everything changed. Banks are the enough to a cancer drug. This new cancer drug called cetoximab. In New York today, Martha Stewart was indicted on criminal charges relating to.

This is the very drug that got Martha Stewart and all that trouble for insider trading. Remember that? I went to jail for six months? Yeah.

Anyway, very promising exciting new drug. But then? Doctors were giving people this injection. And it was just like end up on the floor of the doctor's office. In shock.

Yeah, there would be an anaphylactic shock. Their hearts would start beating faster. They'd get short of breath against stomach cramps. Their immune system would start to overreact

Basically, a classic allergic reaction.

“So the mystery lands on Thomas Pots Mills's desk.”

Yes. So we were asked to look at cetoximab. To see if they could figure out what was causing the reaction. And he tests two groups of blood. A control sample and then people that have this allergy.

And he quickly zeroed in on a particular molecule. A sugar. It was part of the drug. This sugar. Galactos alpha-1-3 Galactos.

Or alpha-gal? Alpha-gal? Yeah. As in a particularly great lady. Yeah.

Better than the beta organic? It's like alpha male. Alpha female didn't quite have a ring to it.

That's good for the alpha again.

Anyway, it seemed like alpha gal was the culprit. Yeah. And if you'd tell me four years earlier that there's a whole lot of people out there who were allergic to this sugar. I'd have thought you were smoking, you know, vaping again. Because not only does this sugar alpha gal show up in the cancer drug.

And this is where you get back to Amy. It also shows up in the blood of mammals. All non-primate mammals. So every time you eat lamb or beef goat, camel, even try four pigs kidneys. You're also eating alpha gal.

Some reading this article and it says, like, it's the thing called alpha galactase or alpha gal or whatever. So it made no sense that someone like Amy who'd been eating meat all her life. Which suddenly somehow be allergic to alpha gal. I just was like, this was so stupid. So one day.

It's getting to be barbecue season. I usually have like a couple of barbecues where I just do a whole pork butt. And the brisket and like hang out all day doing it. And I was like, very wanted to do that. And I was like, I'm just going to not eat meat and not even know.

So I was like, forget it. My doctor will test me. I'm going to test myself. So I was like going to be very careful. I got a thing of better drill.

And I was like, I'm not going to do it alone. I'll do it with my mom, my poor mom. And so I went up to my mom's and she's like really into food too. So she was like, oh, it's so exciting. I got two porterhouse steaks and salad stews.

You explained to her what you were testing? Yeah, I did because I had talked a little bit about it with there. So like fire up the grill, do the porterhouse. I even think I like Instagram to does a joke. Like ha ha ha ha.

This might be the last time you hear from me. But so, you know, we're having a nice summer day. Just me and my mom having our steak. I only ate like a couple bites because I was slightly nervous. And I was like sitting in the grass with my dog and reading a book and trying to think,

like, do I feel normal? Which try it. Folks, it's hard to figure out.

“When you started asking yourself, do I feel normal?”

Does this? Am I breathing? Oh, it's my summer curd. Something wrong. And I was like, after a while, I was like, oh, that's, I feel pretty good.

And the neighbor came over and was like, chatting with us. And it was in the middle of that conversation where I was like, I kind of feel like I have to go the bathroom. But maybe I just have to go the bathroom.

So I went to the bathroom. I was sitting there and I was like, Oh, God, something feels bad. And then I was like, oh, God, I definitely, this is not right.

Something's wrong. And I went in to get the benedrel. And I took the benedrel and I went on my bed. And I had the guest room at my mom's house. I was like sitting on there and I was like,

oh, I just feel right. Oh, oh, maybe I just take a deep breath. I'll just stand up. Maybe I just put my hands over my head like this. Oh, that does feel slightly better.

I think.

And then I was finally like, I think we should go the hospital.

And I went outside. I was like, mom,

“I think you have to drive me to the hospital.”

She was like, talking to her neighbor. I was like, what? Oh, my God, honey, what? Oh, let me go change my clothes. Change my clothes.

Like, mom, you know, she's not wearing the hospital level clothes. So I'm like, okay, hurry up. Mom, are you ready? Mom. And then I was like, while she was changing your clothes,

I suddenly was like, oh my God, got my wallet out of my cell phone. And I was like, through it towards my mom's bedroom door. And I was like, it's my insurance card. Call an ambulance.

And I just like hit the floor. Oh. Eventually, the ambulance arrives. And I got stabilized. I was strapped to the thing.

I was in the emergency room. Like, they were shooting me full of, I don't know what, up in the front and adrenaline. And the little, like, 12-year-old, emergency room, doctor runs in.

And he was like, I looked it up on the internet. I forgot, fascinating. What? That's terrible.

Could it be true? Yes, it's true. Like, they're alive.

And it was disgusting there.

“Then when I went back to my doctor after that,”

and I was like, hey, just get out of the emergency room because they tested me for alpha gown. I'm allergic to meat. So this is an allergy. Yeah.

So all of a sudden, you're looking at the, quote, crazy. And they're not so, quote, crazy anymore. Absolutely. We suddenly had a blood test.

Of course what turned out is all these patients who've been telling us this story. We're allergic to alpha gown. But it's still like a mystery. Right.

Thomas Platt's mills couldn't figure out why people like Amy who had lived for 40 years in Porterhouse stakes at Peter Lugers with a credit card. Why would she suddenly develop an allergy now? There would gotta be some kind of trigger.

Yes.

“So we were looking for anything that could explain it.”

It could be a mold, it could be a nematode, a worm, or a fungus. But then he looked again and noticed that all the people who had had bad reactions to the cancer drug, they were in a particular area of the country.

Was Virginia, North Carolina, Southern Missouri. Arkansas. Arkansas. In Salt Lake City, no cases in Denver. Just smattering's down the west.

So he turned to his technician, Jake, and said, "You've got a Google, every map you can find, and say, what matches that area? Creatures or diseases that appear wherever the allergy appears." So Jake starts Googling, Googling, and Googling, and Googling.

And eventually he comes across a map that matches where the cases are very beautifully. The maximum area for Rocky Mountain spotted fever. So he made this little map and it's like the shaded dark areas of the country, or places with the Rocky Mountain spotted fever,

and then there's like some stars where, you know, this allergy hit appeared. Yeah. And they overlap. Ah, very interesting.

And then all of a sudden, it clicks. Rocky Mountain spotted fever is a tick-borne disease. This is the distribution of the lone stalk tick. And actually just a little before this, it turns out, an allergist down in Australia, Cheryl Van Nune.

First name, Cheryl, they say to you, I will.

Van Nune and V-A-N, and then N-U-N-U-N-N. And I'm from the ticking geist allergies research in awareness center in Sydney, Australia. She says she was now being visited by all kinds of people who claimed suddenly to be allergic to meat.

And whenever I take a history, so for example, I'd ask them, was there a family history of rhinitis,

“asthma, asthma, stinging insect allergy, and they say they've all been bitten by ticks?”

When we started asking patients, we suddenly heard the stories just out the Kazoo. But at this point, Dr. Plats Mills, all he has is a map, some stories, and a hunch. Right, so. So what does he do?

He decides, well, maybe I'll just do this to myself. He does what? He decides to test it out himself. Oh, my God. He sort of denies that he did it intentionally.

I know I had no intention. I mean, he also likes to walk in Campbell and think about things. Right, so he goes for a long walk along the Blue Ridge mountain. And I knew I wanted to be off trail, because I'm actually rather allergic to humans.

So he's walking and walking and walking along the way. He bumps into a whole bunch of ticks. And if you walk into a nest of those things, I get to see how it's like a nightmare. Yeah, absolutely.

I got 200 seed ticks. Oh, boy. And then in November that year, I was taken out to dinner. And the lamb chops were particularly delicious. And the French wine was delicious.

And six hours later, I woke up covered in hives. He's got an allergy to red meat. All just because of the tick bite. That's right. We'll bite you right back after this.

This week on the New Yorker Radio Hour will Elon Musk ever be held accountable for the destruction of USAID. Musk is screaming that those who suggest there has been public man-made death.

The anger comes from the cognitive dissonance. They can't countenance the image that they are monsters. That's Dr. Atul Guwande, a former administrator at USAID on the New Yorker Radio Hour from WNYC. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Robert Crowe, which this is Radio Lab. Now we go back to Amy just when she's discovered that the allergy to meat that she's developed comes from a tick bite. A tick bite?

Hang on a second because like a few weeks before

all this started happening.

in my mom's backyard and I had a tick on my arm.

Now it turns out that not only was that tick bite a terrible thing for Amy, it was a kind of double tragedy. Hidden from view amongst the trees and in the undergrowth

“and I think it's only right at this point to back up.”

It's a fascinating world of wonders and consider the story from a tick's point of view. Okay, so I'm Graham Hickling. I'm a wildlife diseaseologist at the University of Tennessee. So I was wondering if you could help us tell the story

of in this case the loon-start tick that bit Amy. Oh, yeah sure. So they start off in this little pile of eggs perhaps a mass of 2,000 eggs under the leaves. The proud mom would just give birth

at that point she's just a kind of a withered husk. Meaning dead. But anyway, a few weeks later those eggs will hatch and this mass of 2,000 baby ticks emerge from under the leaves.

And could I see them with my naked eye? If you ran into a mass of them all up together you would feel like you've got a little smudge of dirt and then the dirt starts walking. And so they'll just climb up

and they'll potentially all be on the same leaf for the same twig looking for something to feed on.

“And now one teeny little tiny problem for these teeny little tiny ticks”

is that they dry out. So when they come up from under the leaves they come up briefly and then they go back down. Get a little water, come back up, get thirsty, go back down and rehydrate.

So they like commute. Exactly. And we refer to the behavior as question. Less things. So if you were one of these little baby ticks

up, questing for food while you're up there, you are essentially Velcro. Because on each one of your little legs they have little kind of hot like structures. And so you're flat against the leaf

sort of sniffing in the air with your two little front legs. I can detect and see how to heat movement. So let's say one day you're sitting there on your leaf and you pick up the scent of a nearby mouse. Mycell the potato chips of the ecosystem.

Everything needs them.

You might be about to have your very first meal.

So you basically stand up, stretch out all your little legs and do a tick dance. And so it's kind of interpretive dance. Like movements. While you're waiting for that mouse

to come just close enough that you can grab on. So you're dancing and you're waiting and you're dancing and you're waiting and you're dancing and you're waiting and you're dancing and you're waiting. To be honest, you are probably going to weight your entire life

and die unfulfilled. Because there are 2,000 of you starting off and a stable tick population. There's only going to be two of you that survive. Oh my god.

So 1,999 little baby ticks are born and then that's it for them. But let's say that you're one of the lucky ones. And one sunny day there you are hanging out on your little leaf when you detect two incoming mammals.

One is a 40-year-old hominid. The other is her dog. So you perk up. Thrust your legs out, wave, do the tick dance. And say that you're waving and you're dancing and you're hoping and you're

waving and you're dancing and you're hoping and you're slowly the dog gets closer and closer and closer and you reach out with one of your tiny little whales. Grab them and eat and survive. But the reason that tick ended up on me

was I slept in bed with my dog naked.

I mean, she's always naked but I was also naked.

I mean, that's not gross. I don't, I mean, does that sound weird? No. But how do you know that's when it happened? Because I know that like I did a good tick check

on myself and I took a shower and everything. And then in the middle of the night I woke up with a itching sensation and I went to the bathroom and I couldn't really see what was on like something was on the back of my arm

and it was a tick. So as the tick is biting into Amy,

“what is it giving Amy that's going to make her allergic to meat?”

Well, I need to stop there Robert. Mmm. Difficult one Robert. I don't know the answer to that. Mmm.

That's Peter Smith. Well, we're joining us as Sheryl Vanne and the scientist. It's all up for speculation. We don't really know. But here's the theory.

So normally when you eat a piece of meat you put alpha gal in your stomach and your stomach just sit and it's in your body and it's no big deal. But the tick, cunningly, will drill into you, poke into you.

And injects. It's saliva. We'll call that tick spit. Text spit into that's victims. Straight into it's victims largest organ, the skin.

And tick spit has an anti-clotting factor.

And we think the alpha gal. Now Peter says the thing about the skin

“is the skin is like this enormous like surveillance system.”

It's always on the lookout for invaders.

So when the alpha gal comes through your skin, covered by all that bad, bad tick spit stuff. That's going to really like set off your immune system. The immune system freaks out. Like, oh, uh-uh.

And the alpha gal covered now in bad spit. Almost sort of by mistake gets labeled bad. And now it's on the bad guy. Watch list. So therefore the next time you eat meat,

the meat comes in. And then the body unleashes weight. And unleashes wave upon wave upon wave of chemical attacks. To do battle against this alpha gal. And this reaction gets way out of hand.

You got so many antibodies, multiplying, multiplying, multiplying, multiplying, multiplying, making you rather than this case, Amy, feel just. Horrible.

Right? I mean, it's very weird.

It sounds like a science fiction movie.

“It sounds like the beginning of a science fiction,”

at least kids book. Let's not go to movie. Like, it's, it's just strange. Which all goes to say that this really is the kind of double tragedy for Amy and her tech.

Yeah. Because it takes to involve to write humans. Right. We're a mistake. Like, we have a poseable thumbs.

We're either going to pull them off. I actually woke my mom up and she helped get it off. Or if they drop off, they're going to drop off in an airport terminal, or a Walmart cop-up, or something like that. Or a check-off, but indoors, and they're doomed.

And for us, well, we lose something that historically, anyway, is a big part of who we are. Yeah.

Because we have, we adapted in the grand evolutionary scheme

of things to, like, eat flesh to eat meat. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm actually sitting here picturing a steak. But actually, the thing, I mean, hot dogs, like, wrap ramps around a wini,

and roast y'all in the sound so good. My mouth's watering. [LAUGHTER] Wini, wini's and ramps. Yeah.

But I am going to my allergis tomorrow. Because I did, you know, I was reading about this allergy a lot, when I first got it. And I read that for some people, the allergy can fade away. So I'm going to get a blood test to see what my blood level of alpha galas.

So I'm a little-- So what are you hoping for tomorrow? I want to be normal again. [MUSIC PLAYING] That was the end of the Dan and Amy conversation.

She was going to go to the doctor, get herself tested, find out whatever. So we asked her back in. Okay. Does find out what happened? So I actually did get an appointment with my allergis.

Dr. Corn. [LAUGHTER] It was Dr. Corn. She's really nice. So I got the diploma.

I got the blood draw, whatever. And a few days later, my doctor called me. And she said that my numbers were still really high. And I was like, well, how high are they? And she was like three.

And I was like three. That's not high. And she was like, they're supposed to be like one or something. So they had gone down, but they were still many times more than they should be. So--

But when you left and you were waiting for the call, were you waiting with the hope that you would soon be eating a bit of hot dog? I mean, honestly, I was hoping no-- No? No.

I don't-- Wait, the great-- No, but I was afraid that she would be like, oh my god, your numbers are so low. I think you could probably eat meat. Let's do a food challenge.

I would be like, ah, because that's such a scary memory. Yeah, I don't-- You know, actually just the other night I was eating in an Indian place. And I was eating vegetarian. But I felt something and I pulled it out.

And in the dim light of an Indian restaurant, like why are they all lit like that? I was like, was this big? And I suddenly, you know, like you just get this drop in your stomach. And I'm like, what time is it? Four hours from now if I--

You know, because there's something about it being delayed. That makes it so difficult, it just is like-- I guess it's been smoothie with you. It's like it could happen in the next three hours. Or maybe not.

I don't know.

“I mean, honestly, the only thing that the real reason I want to be able to eat meat”

is so that I will be prepared to eat it, in case of emergency. I mean, I went on a canoe trip in the Adirondex and I was like, what happened if I get to try it out here? And like, what if I have to hunt? But I can't even eat meat.

I would have to hunt fish. But then when the lake freezes over, what would I eat? I can't survive. Something's wrong with me. I feel evolutionarily challenged.

What I'd be able to survive if I had just what's on me right now. A pen, underwear, my dog.

“And so, yeah, I mean, that's a real issue.”

It's like, it's not a real issue.

Obviously, it's never going to happen. I live in Brooklyn, but I do.

For some reason, I always think like, I want to be prepared in case. But, yeah, you know, I don't think I would go back to eating meat necessarily. Like, you are still more, more frightened than game. So to speak. Well, also, like, I wish I could be a vegetarian for ethical reasons

because it's not so much just the eating meat. But just like, you know, the factory farming and that kind of stuff. So I feel like morally superior now. I can be like, well, I don't eat red meat. Of course, I'm forced to not eat it, but at the same time.

I would if I had the, if I had the willpower, I'd probably go that way anyway. And then also, I think it's great. It's like we're all evolving to be on this planet, which is getting harder to be on.

“And then we know that meat takes a lot of resources.”

And like, now I'm not doing that. So like, the tick is helping me evolve until a better human being. Like, so one could, instead of thinking of the tick, as your teeny, rainy, irritating enemy, you could think of it as a guiding light,

making the world safer to share with your fellow earthlings. Yeah. So you may have lost your relationship with meat, but at least you have your moral superiority. Yeah, I mean, I am superior.

So huge thanks to Amy Perl for telling a story,

which never stopped, never stopped being scary and wonderful.

And to the fellow who brought her into the room, Dan Pashman, who's podcast The Sportful is it's all about food in every conceivable way. I keep talking about eating it, preparing it, worrying about it, as you've heard getting sick from it, getting fat from it, whatever. And you can find his show on iTunes or Stitcher or the internet at sportfull.com.

And this story was produced by Annie McKillin and Matt Kilty with reporting help from Latif Nasser. See you next time. All right, so that was the original piece. We're going to take a quick break now, but when we come back,

Sarah and Sorin are going to follow the thread from Amy's allergy to this brand new genetically modified pig that can help a human who needs a kidney and also may be solve Amy's problem.

Or maybe a million worse.

Stick with us. This episode is supported by Better Help. Hey there, Lulu here. So apparently every year, Better Help does a survey called the state of the stigma report where they surveyed over 2,000 Americans trying to figure out how people feel

about seeking mental health support. Good news first. 85% of the people surveyed said that seeking mental health support is a good thing, which is significantly up from last year's result, which, okay, small study, but still fabulous, refreshing, take that stigma boom.

The only bummer is that 74% of those same people said society discourages people from seeking the mental health support that they need. Why is that society, I say, let's all do what we can to de-stigmatize seeking professional help for mental health. I mean, I seek professional help for my teeth, for my hair, why not get professional

help for what's going on on the inside of the head. You know, I know somewhere he's got a little support, but seriously, if a friend or loved one comes to you, seeming a little more overwhelmed or blue or scared than usual, why not encourage them to seek help? Praise them for doing it, and if they don't know where to begin,

one thing you could do is suggest Better Help. A short questionnaire gets them matched with one of over 30,000 fully licensed therapists available at any time a day at the push of a button. And if they don't like the first one, they try. Remind them that they can switch therapists at any time as many times as it takes to find

“the right fit because mental health is important, and none of us can do it on our own.”

So for any of you listening to this, who are curious about therapy, but worried about judgment, I say, don't let stigma stand in the way of support. Start therapy with Better Help. Sign up and get 10% off at BetterHelp.com/radialab. That's BetterHELP.com/radialab. A new state department report claims Cuba for fomenting an anti-American left.

Meanwhile, the GOP is pushing the seward hard. The barbarians are in the gate. Look, 35 years ago. Publicants and Democrats and Congress who are fighting communism on a distant shore. Now it's here. Why communism and why now on this week's on the media from WNYC?

Thank you. I'm doing well.

I don't know. Do we shake hands?

I don't know. I haven't done this for a long time. You ready for that on radio lab? Yep. Everybody come one day. Awesome. So our update today comes to us from producer Sarah Curry, who you just heard

wondering the halls of NYU's Lingo and Health Hospital back in 2021. That is when we made this update. Hi, guys. Hello. This is really exciting.

As well as our executive editor, Thorin Willy Wheeler. I can give us a start if you want me to.

“You should tell us how you even had the idea.”

I mean, I had the idea by someone else having had an idea that I saw their idea in a newspaper. It's called reading. No, but like, a month ago maybe. I was reading the news. The news I was reading was the New York Times.

It was like a science section news thing and the article is basically announcing this big breakthrough.

News this evening about a major medical breakthrough.

It's been called an astonishing step in medicine. Basically a group of surgeons had managed to put a pig kidney into a human being. And it worked successfully transferring a pig kidney to a human patient. For the first time ever, the person's body didn't reject the kidney. Which when you think about all the people waiting on kidneys, you know, the danger.

Yeah, totally. So I'm reading through this article. But then in the middle of it, there's just a couple lines about a particular pig that they used for this kidney that drew this very weird line back to a story we had told here on radio lab. That's when I brought in Sarah to like report this whole thing out.

So I actually went to talk to the doctor who did this transplant. Hi. How's it going? It's me too. How do you do?

Good. How are you? His name is Robert Montgomery. He's at NYU Lingo and Health. And he's the head of transplant surgery there.

So when did it first occur to you that transplanting a pig kidney into a human would even? I just started with like the most basic question, which is like, why would you do this? Because we don't have an adequate supply of organs for the people who need them when they need them. And so a lot of people die waiting. And so the idea of a casino transplant.

“And he just made the argument that using animal kidneys was the best way that he could think of too.”

Make a dent into that waiting list 90,000 people. And do you know is this person still walking around and is the pig still walking around? So no. We did this transplant. And someone who had been declared brain dead, who had wanted to donate their organs, but were unable to donate their organs.

And so their family essentially donated their whole body so that we could test a Xenotransplant. Like we're going to try this crazy thing.

That's never been done and see how it goes.

And determine whether this was going to be safe to move into living humans. You guess a proof of concept type thing? Yeah, so the family agreed and the doctors did the transplant. And they could see like that it worked and the body wasn't rejecting the kidney. The kidney was doing.

It's kidney stuff. But the sort of amazing thing is. Actually as we sit here today, the same thing happened yesterday. While we were sitting there talking, he told me, you know, we had two in the morning. We did our second Xenotransplant.

We actually just did the second one. You want to see what? Like happening right now.

“That's happening right now and if you want to, you know, come down with me.”

I'll show you what we're doing so. And I was like, oh yes. And he took me downstairs to this big room. It's like a conference room. It was totally silent.

There was like a window looking into this operating room. Can we walk up to the glass? And you could see just like the the jumble of machines and like medical equipment. Better be looking at. All right. So there's a ventilator over here.

And in the middle of the room, you could see this person. That's the the recipient. Lying there on the table covered by this blue surgical shroud. You can see the patient's body kind of like rising and falling. Yeah, that's the ventilator, you know.

And they actually attached the kidney at the person's thigh. Because they sort of want to be able to watch it. And they're not worried about the person getting up and walking around. So there's this incision at the thigh. And in that oval incision, you could see the pig kid me kind of like poking out.

And Dr. Montgomery told me that, you know, when a body rejects a kidney.

“The kidney will literally turn black moments after the blood goes into it.”

But you could see like with this one, it was bright pink.

And kind of amazingly, just like the first one.

Within moments, it started to make urine. Believe it or not. And so we knew right away that I was working. See right where it's dripping and see how fast it's dripping. All that urine is coming out from that kidney.

So, you know, this is just the second one that worked. But eventually, Dr. Montgomery and his team want to get to the point where they can do clinical trials on people who are walking around and doing things and living their lives. And who would hold on to this kidney. Wow. Allow me to presume that you have two questions.

Which I think you do, even if you haven't said them yet.

Which is like, one, why did this never work before?

And then two, why are we even telling you this? It's not our usual stick. You just pick up a New York Times science news article and relay that to you. There. Which brings me back to that little part of the article that peaked my interest in the beginning because the pig that they got the kidney from to do this was a very special pig.

Normally pigs and other mammals that aren't primates have a sugar in their body that our bodies don't have. And so we don't like it or see it as foreign.

“And that's why usually an organ from another animal would get rejected.”

But this pig had been genetically modified. It had had the gene that makes that sugar removed. So it didn't have that sugar, which is part of the reason this worked. And that sugar just so happens to be called alpha gal. Alpha gal.

Alpha gal. Yeah. There's the radio lab connection. So it's really only the food that was kind of alluding us because we've known and have been also pursuing various medical device applications of the gal safe pig. You know, we've had conversations with.

So I actually called up the company that makes this pig. They call it the gal safe pig. The company itself is called revivicore. It's parted out as the U.S. division of the Scottish company that cloned alley the sheep. The UK company that did alley the sheep.

This is like they're sort of like American option. Okay. And from there, we actually cloned the world's first pigs. So anyway, I talked to David Eres. He's the company's chief scientific officer.

And also John Bianchi. Lead product development enterprises as a revivicore. And I also am in charge of regulatory affairs. So so at what point and either of you can take this. At what point did you guys realize?

Okay. And I just wanted to ask them like, okay, you made this pig for all of these medical transplant reasons.

“But did you know about the whole food side of things?”

I'll take this one day, unless I'm the poor sap that I had to work with the FDA. I shouldn't say that. It was a very collaborative effort with the FDA. And they told me that while they were in the middle of getting FDA approval for this pig to be used for medical reasons, they heard a certain radio show. After listening to the radio lab episode, the original episode,

listening to Amy Pearl with why not just expand the application to include food. We realized that the pigs that we had developed so that their organs wouldn't be rejected would also be a food source for these patients that have the Aflegal allergy or the red meat allergy. Okay, wait, so hearing Amy Pearl on our show had something to do with thinking that we should make this a food product? It was absolutely a motivation of mine after listening to Amy.

What? Yeah, probably. Yes, so yeah, now because of Amy Pearl and her story, this pig is now FDA approved for medical devices and things like that and transplants, but also for food to use the meat of those pigs to make pork products that like people with Aflegal syndrome can.

Wow. So, of course, we immediately like called up Amy Pearl and we're like, we got something to tell you.

We always have tiny little bundles of cuteness in your life.

When we talked to her, she had a couple of really small foster kittens like scrambling up and down her shoulders and muting in the background. So, we explained to her, you know, the whole deal. There's this pig that doesn't have Aflegal that's being used for transplants from which you could make meat that would be safe to eat for people like you, Amy Pearl.

Because it's been a long time, long time since I've had pork or beef.

I've found plenty of delicious things to eat, but aren't bacon. And she said that, you know, even if there is now some pork that's totally safe, she still feels sort of the same way she did at the end of the original show, which is that she's kind of just over read me.

“I've kind of moved on from it, honestly, and happily it sounds like.”

Yeah, I feel like it's better for my piece of mind. It's better for my health. It's better for the planet itself. And I feel lucky and happy. But then, of course, you know, we had to tell her that, you know, we talked to the guys that river corps and that she and her story were sort of an inspiration for this meat becoming available to people.

I'll just play you a clip of something they said to me. It was absolutely a motivation of mine after listening to Amy. When I heard the radio lab podcast, I'm thinking, well, we hold the hammer. Oh, God. Great.

I'm hit so much. Oh. Oh, well. But it's fine. I mean, I guess she sounds like such a nice guy.

“Same more. Same more on what your feel. What were you thinking as you heard it?”

You sort of like hung your head. I mean, I was thinking that.

Never should have gone on a radio lab.

I just like always thinking. Missing thoracic things. What I was thinking like. Here's a person who's like. Here's me just like talking about how delicious meat is and like juices and they're like, yeah, I love meat too.

And they're like, she seems sad. I'm going to make meat for her. And then it's like, but I actually don't really, I actually, anyway, I can make it for you. I figured it out. I have the hammer.

But I actually don't want. Okay, I'm making it. Here it is.

“I think she felt like because of her, they'd gone and solves this problem that she didn't even really want solved.”

It's just kind of like, you would like go to some kind of special FDA store to buy some special genetically modified pork. Just so you could have a bite of some kind of meat. I mean, it just was like, I don't know. Do you guys ever get into philosophy, you ever? It just like, it immediately for me when you say, oh, they created this pig that you can,

that, if it got people can eat, my next thought is like, what is the meaning of life? Why am I here? Why? Can you think you can close the gap between those two stars a little bit? Like, whether there's something in our business, because it's like, well, is that good or bad?

Well, I guess it's good for people who want to eat pork, but it's bad for the pig. It just immediately brings to mind, you know, how to live. Do you live to satisfy your desires and and be happy or do you live to not harm others or what? Why are we even here? Our pigs below us are, are they above us?

Is it okay to put a pig first? Like, what if someone's kid is dying of kidney cancer?

We'll see that then now, like, that's now how, like, you know, this question has another whole layer, because it's not just that they made a pig for people who got bit by a tick, but wish they could still have a hot dog. They also then, it turns out, made a pig that like, maybe have a kidney that could save a life for there's no other kidney available, or maybe in the future more and more and more.

But it's just, it's kind of like, when you start thinking about breeding animals, just for organs for people, it's like, redesigning all over again, like, should we be eating another animal that might be intelligent? It's like, you just answering all those questions again, but for another purpose, because, like, you can get organ, like, like, kidneys out of other people, and they're, it's like, safe and... I mean, yeah, that's a good point, and I asked this guy, the doctor about this,

and, you know, was sort of pushing him on like, why? Like, you just opened the door to like a whole new way of exploiting animals. And I think his thing, which I'm convinced by, honestly, is like,

And when it comes to like, making the decision for yourself or like, for a loved one,

“if you're like, they need a kidney, and you have the option to put a pig kidney in them.”

You're like, that's not even a question. You know, we eat millions of pigs anyway. I guess on balance, I feel... Okay, you know, I mean, I totally agree with you, but why don't they just... Why don't they just make a fake kidney? Yeah, I mean, if somebody, like, imagined humans, did not think like,

oh, it's okay to take to like, kill an animal just to get its kidney for someone else. It was like, not even something that crossed their mind. We would have invented a plastic kidney by now, probably. So, at this point in the interview, unfortunately, we actually still had one more thing that we had to tell Amy that we learned from the guys that rivivicore.

I'd have to tell you something that you might like even less. What they named the pig Amy before they hit it with the hammer. Yeah, yeah, they did. What? Yeah.

Are you kidding? No, I'm not. I'm not kidding.

By the way, the first pig that meant went to market, we named Amy.

After Amy first? Of course, well, I did it. Oh, my gosh. I'm not sure Dave approved that name, but did they...

“What did they name the one who donated the kidneys?”

The first one that they slaughtered for me. They named it Amy. And, unofficially, but they did, yeah. I mean, I can see why they picked something that was motivating for them. Like humanizing and motivating in there.

They're like quests to solve this thing that they decided was a good problem to put their thoughts blind. I mean, I can't bother me. I can't let myself think about that. Poor poor poor poor living creatures that suffer. Yeah.

But I do think it's good. I am grateful that like you are holding the position of making all of us think twice, including me.

Like, I think I've been part of the like, "Oh, this is a breakthrough."

And look at the pig, kidney, and the human, and the heart is beating, and everything is working. It's all cool. And I do think that it's really helpful for that you're reminding me there is a cost to this that we shouldn't ignore. And that, you know, that we should challenge our imaginations almost to imagine a world where we don't have to exploit these pigs and find another way. There could be some young budding scientists that listened to this version of the story and come up with an artificial kidney and name it Amy.

That would be great. That would be great.

“Yeah, but I think that's the only way to make this right.”

It's funny to think that there's like, I mean, how big was this pig at the end? Like, usually pigs, I guess when they slaughter them for me, maybe they're smaller. But like, I met a pig in Vermont that was like 800 pounds, and I gave her a whole watermelon, and to her it was like, like a gum drop. Oh, thanks. Yeah, I mean, she was just giant.

I took a hoe. I was like scratching her back with a hoe, and it just looked like a little toothbrush on her, and she was like, "Oh, that was so good." I mean, I wonder if Amy got to be that big. 800 pounds, Amy. Pretty formidable. Watch out.

I'm just like now wishing I could change places with her, and then I'll have done my time. And like, I would have now be like left the mortal coil, and she would be sitting here in this interview with her pig intelligence, which is plenty for this, probably. And you think she could raise those kittens, and then she would end up on like one of those unlikely friendship calendars, where it's like, "Look at the pig raising the kittens." I wonder if there's a resemblance.

What an incredible turn of events.

What do you think? I'm just thinking about Amy, the pig, building about her business, you know, with no thought to any of this. It's imagining like, "Oh, it's so warm here in the mud. I'm going to stay here for a little while."

When you're brain hurts, you just have to like, retreat to your body.

Hmm, yeah.

“Thank you, Amy Pearl, for coming on the show again, and making us think more deeply than we were again.”

This update to the episode was reported and produced by Saracari, and also thank you to Amy's a pig. Thank you, Amy, the pig.

Okay, and finally an update to the update. It is now Lulu in 2026, and back in March of 2024, surgeons transplanted a pig kidney into a living patient for the very first time.

That patient was a 62-year-old man living with end-stage kidney disease. His name was Rick Flaman, and he lived with the kidney for about two more months before dying from heart issues, which his doctor said were unrelated to the transplant. The pig for its part was genetically edited, of course, but we couldn't find out any more information about its life or name. Thank you to the pig for its service. Hi, I'm Gabby, I'm from the Bay Area California, and here are the staff credits.

Ready-alab is hosted by Lulu Miller and Let's If Nasser. Soron Wheeler is our executive editor. Sarah Sandback is our executive director. Our managing editor is Pat Walters. Dylan Keef is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Jeremy Bloom, W Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Syndo Nina Sombundan, Matt Kielty, Mona Modgalker, Alex Nisan, Sara Kari, Natalia Remirez, Joanna Strogetz, Anisa Vizza, Arian Wack, Molly Webster, and Jessica Young, with help from Gabby Santis and Maya Apple Beam Millamid.

Our fact checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, Natalie Middleton, Angelie Mercado, and Sophie Semi. Thank you for listening to Return of the Alpha Gale. If you just didn't get enough of that sweet tick,

“allergy content, you should check out what our neighbors and fellow science lovers science Friday.”

Put together on the subject of their episode is appropriately titled, "How does a tick bite cause a red meat allergy?"

In it, you'll hear them talk with one of the first allergists to connect the allergy to tick bites almost 20 years ago.

The latest research into the Alpha Gale Syndrome and how almost two decades later there are still so many mysteries, including why some people are more susceptible to developing the allergy than others and giving hints about which blood types make your risk higher or lower.

“To learn more, check out the conversation on Science Fridays podcast by searching for how does a tick bite cause a red meat allergy?”

Wherever you cast your pods.