I might be given the heart from a pig. A pig? Shh! Keep your voice down and you're not

to talk to anyone. You're joking. You're seriously thinking about getting a heart from a

pig. I've got to do something. A pig's heart. Don't you mind? Can they do that? I've

done it before. You've got to be poor. Yeah. In 1997, Marjorie Blackman published the Children's

Book Pick Heart Boy. The book is about a 13 year old boy with a bad heart who accepts a transplant

of a pig's heart into his body in order to live. The book was turned into a TV series and aired

on the BBC in 1999. The story is pure science fiction, but Blackman got the idea from a real

article about Xenotransplantation, the act of transplanting an animal organ or product

into a human to cure disease. A lot has changed in the world of species to species organ donation

since then. This month's scientists set the University of Alabama performed the transplant

of a genetically modified pig kidneys into a brain dead human being and then surgeons

at the University of Maryland Medical Center transplanted a heart from a genetically

modified pig into a living human patient. The knee for organs in the US is dire. More

than 100,000 patients are on the national transplant list and 17 of them die each day waiting

for organs. How can the use of Xenotransplantation address this need? Well, discuss all that and

more after the break. I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A podcast where we get to the

heart of the story. Remember to join future conversations, download our 1A Vox Pop app and

leave us a voicemail.

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BetterHelp therapist Hesu Jo knows that lockdown has been hard on us as humans. We as people

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