About this Event
About the Book: The incredible history and promise of inter-species organ transplantation, from an award-winning transplant surgeon.
With more than 100,000 patients in the United States waiting for life-saving organ transplants, the shortage of organs will never be solved if someone must die for someone else to be saved. And yet a solution is well within reach: xenotransplantation, or the transplanting of organs between different species—the once unimaginable scientific achievement that Joshua Mezrich explores in Every Living Creature.
The story begins with efforts using chimpanzees and baboons from the 1960s through the 1990s, rife with ethical and practical complications and disappointments. The successful cloning of Dolly the sheep revived xeno- optimism, followed by the discovery of CRISPR-Cas9, which finally opened the door to xenotransplantation in humans, using genetically modified pigs as organ donors.
The protagonists of this story are as incredible as the science it details: a transgender visionary, the highest-paid female CEO in the world, who simply wants her daughter to live; the surgeon saved by a high-risk heart transplant, who swears by the promise of pigs’ organs; the brilliant and brash surgeon-scientist-entrepreneur, who is risking everything to make xenotransplantation a reality. Each plays a part in what is, in the end, the story of a miracle—not the answer to a prayer, as Every Living
Creature makes clear, but a miracle we can breed.
About the Author: Dr. Josh Mezrich is Professor at the University of Wisconsin and holds the Mark A. Fischer Chair in Transplantation. He received his bachelor's degree at Princeton University in Russian Language and Literature and his medical degree from Cornell University Medical College in New York. He completed his surgical residency at the University of Chicago Hospitals. During residency, he spent three years in a research fellowship at the Massachusetts General Hospital. He completed his transplant fellowship at the University of Wisconsin and joined the University of Wisconsin Surgery faculty in 2007.
His surgical interests include liver transplantation, kidney transplantation and laparoscopic donor nephrectomy. He is the surgical director of the kidney transplant program. He runs a translational science lab investigating the role of the microbiome and serum biomarkers on organ quality in brain dead donors.
Josh’s first book, When Death Becomes Life: Notes from a Transplant Surgeon, was published by HarperCollins on January 15, 2019, and has sold in 12 countries outside the United States. His second book, Every Living Creature: How Xenotransplantation Will Change Our Lives, has a publication date of April 7, 2026.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Mystery to Me, 1863 Monroe Street, Madison, United States
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