African swine fever, a highly contagious ailment that requires slaughtering of infected animals, has 6,000 animals schedule to be destroyed in Poland - a potentially big problem for farmers and bacon lovers.
Science may be here to help - by using a gene from African warthogs, which are naturally resistant to African swine fever. By ‘flipping’ a gene in fertilized eggs from domestic pigs, the experimental animals will have a gene more like that of the wild pigs. Then the altered eggs are transferred back to the mother pig and are gestated and born normally.
Will Natural Resources Defense Council flip out because it's science for the public good? Sure, they never met a biology study they liked. But the world outside elite, $100 million fundraising companies should be happy.
Dr. Ruth Kava of the American Council on Science and Health has the story.
