Maradyn Briggs News Analysis.

Wednesday 1090

1. Cite the name of the news source, the article title, the date, and the byline (thereporter
name). Paste a link to the article here (in Canvas).
https://www.sciencenews.org/article/luhan-yang-sn-10-scientists-to-watch?mode=topic&
context=69
Luhan Yang Strives to Make Pig Organs Safe for Human Transplant, Alexandra Witze
10/4/2017

2. . What are the main conclusions of the scientist(s)?

The main conclusions of the scientist is that the issue between pig to human organ transplant
was mainly founded in the retroviruses found inside the pigs that the human bodies reject. So
Yang found a way to genetically remove the coding of the retroviruses from the DNA of the pigs.

3. What are some possible impacts this information could have on society or on
individuals?
According to the article there are millions of people waiting for organ transplant and if this idea
was successfully implemented it would meet that need for many people, cheaper and easier
than waiting on the transplant list.

4. Are other scientists, or policy-makers, mentioned as being in disagreement with the

research scientists? If so, what might make you tend to take their doubts seriously (or
not take them seriously)?
There wasnt any mentioned disagreements in the article although the topic in which this
individual is diving into is DNA modification of mammals and so the field is potentially riddled
with people who find that taking science too far. Most notably those who ask where we would
draw the line and if we would continue this type of modification on human beings. Yet the
individual heading this project is working hard and well with in scientific guidlines in a very
ingenuitive way,
5. Are scientists mentioned in the article affiliated with a nonpartisan group, like a
University or Government, or affiliated with a for-profit corporation? If the latter, do you
suspect that altered their conclusions?
Yes these scientists are mentioned to be a part of eGenisis a company they founded, that is a
sub group of Cambridge university. I dont find it particularly worrisome or that their involvement
would influence them strongly or create a bias that i need to be aware of as a consumer of this
information.

6. In what ways did the article change and expand your views of the topic? If it did not
change or expand your views, describe what you knew about the subject before reading
the article.
I think that it expanded my views on the topic because i didnt know it was possible to have pig
to human organ transplants I mean I knew that they used pig hearts sometimes when they
used to do open heart surgery and weird stuff like that. I just thought that it was completely
impossible to have that cross species organ donation and yet this article explained the reasons
that it was improbable and not working currently and the scientist has seemingly found a way to
make it work in the future if it all works out appropriately.

7. Do you think thereporter did a good job or a bad job of giving background for the story?
Please give an example to support your opinion.

I think the reporter did an okay job on giving background to the story. It wasnt amazing but it
wasnt awful either. They did a middle of the road job on providing background information, but I
think that is okay, because this was found in a science specific web news site and it pressumes
that its audience would at least have some information on the ideas that it was presenting.
Researchers have long dreamed of using animal organs to alleviate the shortage of human
ones, a field called xenotransplantation. So far those efforts have ended in failure, usually with
the persons immune system rejecting the transplanted animal organ. Here is an example of
some background that the article gave. As you can tell its decent but not extremely
detailed by any means and leaves a lot for you to fill in on your own. However its still
gives you enough context to understand the rest of the article.