Taking a living organ from one person and making it work inside another is one of medicine’s most astonishing achievements — and the biggest obstacle isn’t the surgery, but the body’s own defences. This episode explains how transplants work, why rejection is so hard to beat, and the bold new frontier of using animal organs.

You’ll come away understanding why the immune system attacks a transplanted organ, how anti-rejection medicine makes transplants possible, why donor organs are so scarce, and where the emerging science of animal-to-human transplants stands.

Talking Science is sponsored by Kinsoft. Visit www.kinsoft.com.au

Further reading: Australian Government – DonateLife; The Transplantation Society – patient resources; recent news coverage of g ...