Overview

• Grade Level: AP World History / AP European History / AP Biology / Bioethics (grades 9-12)

• Time Required: Bell-ringer (7 min audio), single class (45 min), or extended (2 classes)

• Historical Period: 17th-century France, the Scientific Revolution (1665-1670)

• Modern Connection: Pig kidney xenotransplantation and the ethics of crossing the species barrier

Learning Objectives

Students will be able to:

1. Explain how Jean-Baptiste Denys's 1667 blood transfusions represented an early attempt at cross-species medical intervention

1. Analyse how a single adverse event (Antoine Mauroy's death) led to a 150-year regulatory freeze on blood transfusion

1. Evaluate the structural parallel between the 1670 ban on blood transfusions and contemporary debates over xenotransplantation

1. Construct an evidence-based argument about when medical innovation should be restricted versus when the cost of restriction outweighs the risk

Before Reading

Anticipation Questions

1. If a new medical treatment saved nine patients but killed one, should it be banned? What information would you need to decide?

1. What does it mean to "cross the species barrier" in medicine? Can you think of examples?

1. How do governments decide when a new medical technology is too dangerous to continue?

Key Vocabulary

• Transfusion: transferring blood or blood products from one body into another

• Xenotransplantation: transplanting organs, tissues, or cells from one species into another

• Species barrier: biological differences between species that normally prevent transfer of biological material

• Immunological rejection: the body's immune system attacking foreign biological material

• Gene editing (CRISPR): technology for precisely modifying an organism's DNA

• Parlement de Paris: the highest court in France under the ancien regime (not a parliament in the modern sense)

• Precautionary principle: the idea that if an action raises threats of harm, precautionary measures should be taken even if cause-and-effect is not fully established

• Regulatory freeze: when authorities halt a field of research or practice, sometimes for extended periods

During Reading

Guided Questions

1. What was Jean-Baptiste Denys's reasoning for using lamb's blood specifically? How does this reasoning reflect 17th-century medical thinking?

1. What happened to Antoine Mauroy, and why does the story note that his wife was found with arsenic?

1. How long was blood transfusion banned after Mauroy's death? What does the story suggest was lost during that period?

1. How many genetic modifications were made to the eGenesis pig kidney, and what were they designed to do?

After Reading

Discussion Questions

1. Why did the medical establishment react with horror to Denys's successful transfusion, even before Mauroy died?

1. The story says "the case for stopping is always reasonable in the moment." Do you agree? Can you think of examples where stopping was the right call?

1. Blood transfusion eventually became one of medicine's greatest life-saving procedures. Does this fact change how we should evaluate the 1670 ban?

1. The eGenesis pig kidney uses 69 genetic modifications. At what point does genetic modification change an animal into something new? Does this raise ethical concerns beyond the transplant itself?

1. If a pig kidney recipient dies in 2026, should the programme be halted? How is this question different from the one faced by the Parlement de Paris in 1670, and how is it the same?

The Parallel

1. What is structurally similar between Denys's lamb blood transfusions and modern pig kidney transplants? (Consider: crossing the species barrier, public reaction, regulatory risk, potential benefit)

1. What is fundamentally different? (Consider: the state of medical knowledge, the precision of the technology, the regulatory framework, public access to information)

1. Does the parallel illuminate the current debate, or does it mislead by implying that all caution is equivalent to the 1670 ban?

Activities

Bell-Ringer (7 minutes)

Play the audio narration. Before playing, write on the board: "What is the cost of caution?" Ask students to note one moment during the story where they changed their mind about whether the authorities made the right call.

Single Class (45 minutes)

• 0-7 min: Audio narration (bell-ringer)

• 7-12 min: Quick-write: "Was the 1670 ban justified? Why or why not?" (3 sentences)

• 12-22 min: Small group discussion (4 students): each group receives one of the Discussion Questions (1-5). Groups prepare a 2-minute summary.

• 22-35 min: Group presentations + whole-class debate on question 5 ("If a pig kidney recipient dies in 2026...")

• 35-42 min: Individual reflection: "Write a one-paragraph policy recommendation to the FDA about xenotransplantation. Use at least one piece of evidence from the 17th-century case."

• 42-45 min: Exit ticket: "Name one thing the 1670 regulators got right and one thing they got wrong."

Extension Activity

Research project (2-3 days): Identify another medical technology that was banned or restricted after an adverse event (e.g., thalidomide, gene therapy after Jesse Gelsinger's death in 1999, early vaccine mandates). Write a 500-word essay comparing the regulatory response to the 1670 blood transfusion ban. Was the restriction proportionate? How long did it last? What was the cost in lives or progress?

Primary Source Connections

1. Denys's published letter to the Journal des Scavans (1667): his own account of the first lamb blood transfusion. Type: scientific letter. Available via Gallica (Bibliotheque nationale de France) digital archive.

1. Richard Lower's Tractatus de Corde (1669): includes descriptions of his animal-to-animal transfusion experiments at Oxford. Type: medical treatise. Available via the Wellcome Library digital collection.

1. The Parlement de Paris transfusion ban (January 10, 1670): the decree prohibiting blood transfusion. Type: legal decree. Referenced in Holly Tucker, Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution (2011).

1. eGenesis press release on EGEN-2784 IND clearance (2025): the FDA's clearance for clinical trials of genetically modified pig kidneys. Type: regulatory document / press release. Available at egenesisbio.com.

Standards Alignment

C3 Framework

• Dimension 1 (Developing Questions): supports compelling question "When should society restrict medical innovation, and who decides?"

• Dimension 2 (Applying Concepts): applies historical causation (how one death triggered a 150-year ban) and change over time (evolution of medical regulation from monarchical decree to FDA framework)

• Dimension 3 (Evaluating Sources): the story's evidence manifest provides a model of source verification; students can compare primary accounts of Denys's trial with the narrative

• Dimension 4 (Communicating Conclusions): the FDA policy recommendation activity requires students to construct an evidence-based argument drawing on historical precedent

AP Alignment

• AP World History: Key Concept 4.1, Globalizing Networks of Communication and Exchange (spread of scientific knowledge across England and France); Key Concept 6.3, Science and the Environment (bioethics in the modern era)

• AP European History: Period 2, Age of Reformation and the Scientific Revolution (Denys and the Paris Faculty of Medicine as a case study in institutional resistance to innovation)

• AP Biology: Big Idea 3, Living Systems Store, Retrieve, Transmit, and Respond to Information (gene editing in xenotransplantation); cross-cutting with bioethics