While the Trump administration has threatened tariffs on a spate of
Don’t look for it in grocery stores. The company that bred these special pigs shares its small supply, for free, with allergy patients.“We get hundreds and hundreds of orders,” said David Ayares, who heads Revivicor Inc., as he opened a freezer jammed with packages of ground pork patties, ham, ribs and pork chops.
The allergy is called alpha-gal syndrome, named for a sugar that’s present in the tissues of nearly all mammals - except for people and some of our primate cousins. It can cause a serious reaction hours after eating beef, pork or any other red meat, or certain mammalian products such as milk or gelatin.David Ayares, president and chief scientific officer of Revivicor, holds a package of frozen meat during an interview at the company’s offices in Blacksburg, Va., on May 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)David Ayares, president and chief scientific officer of Revivicor, holds a package of frozen meat during an interview at the company’s offices in Blacksburg, Va., on May 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Shelby Lum)
But where does organ transplantation come in? There aren’t enough donated human organs to go around so researchers are— and that same alpha-gal sugar is a big barrier. It causes the human immune system to immediately destroy a transplanted organ from an ordinary pig. So the first gene that Revivicor inactivated as it began genetically modifying pigs for animal-to-human transplants was the one that produces alpha-gal.
While xenotransplants still are experimental, Revivicor’s
won Food and Drug Administration approval in 2020 to be used as a source of food, and a potential source for human therapeutics. The FDA determined there was no detectable level of alpha-gal across multiple generations of the pigs.The foundation says private security contractors guarding its sites have not fired on crowds. Israel’s military has acknowledged firing warning shots on previous occasions.
The foundation said in a statement it distributed 16 truckloads of aid early Sunday “without incident,” and dismissed what it described as “false reporting about deaths, mass injuries and chaos.”U.N. agencies and major aid groups have refused to work with the new system, saying it violates humanitarian principles.
Thousands of people headed toward the distribution site hours before dawn. As they approached, Israeli forces ordered them to disperse and come back later, witnesses said. When the crowds reached the Flag Roundabout, around 1 kilometer away, at around 3 a.m., Israeli forces opened fire, the witnesses said.“There was fire from all directions, from naval warships, from tanks and drones,” said Amr Abu Teiba, who was in the crowd.