内容摘要：In rural areas, drugstores often serve multiple roles for their communities, with pharmacists seeing regular customers more than a doctor does, said Megan Undeberg, a community pharmacy expert at Washington State University. That means they may be the first to notice signs of things like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease and suggest the patient seek help.

In rural areas, drugstores often serve multiple roles for their communities, with pharmacists seeing regular customers more than a doctor does, said Megan Undeberg, a community pharmacy expert at Washington State University. That means they may be the first to notice signs of things like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease and suggest the patient seek help.

can still eat pork from a surprising source:created for organ transplant research.

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.In 2008, he founded the Institut Baulieu to understand, prevent and treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Honored with the grand crosses of the Légion d’honneur (legion of honor) and the Ordre national du Mérite (national order of merit), he was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1982, which he chaired in 2003 and 2004.He was a member of the national advisory committee on life sciences and health (1996-2002) and received numerous awards, both in France and abroad.

French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to Baulieu in a post on X, calling him “a beacon of courage” and “a progressive mind who enabled women to win their freedom.”“Few French people have changed the world to such an extent,” he added.