The mystery that led this family to get their stomachs removed

When Karyn Paringatai learned about a pattern among her family members, it changed the course of her life: A lot of people died young. As Karyn dug into her family history, she learned many Maori families, like her own, suffered from a rare form of stomach cancer called diffuse gastric cancer. Sarah Zhang recently wrote a story on this kind of cancer as a staff writer at The Atlantic . Today, she gets into all the details with Short Wave host Emily Kwong: the mutation that causes it and the life-changing decision people with the mutation have to make – risk dying or get surgery to remove their entire stomach? Interested in more science? Email us your question at shortwave@npr.org . Listen to every episode of Short Wave sponsor-free and support our work at NPR by signing up for Short Wave+ at plus.npr.org/shortwave . Listen to Short Wave on Spotify and Apple Podcasts . See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy

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The mystery that led this family to get their stomachs removed is an episode from Short Wave by NPR.

This episode is 13:28 long.

This episode was published on Apr 27, 2026.

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