Prabhakar and colleagues from the University of Chicago, the Illinois Institute of Technology, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (Boston), and Johns Hopkins University (Baltimore), focused on the carotid bodies, a tiny cluster of cells embedded in the left and
right carotid arteries, which pass through the neck.
Mackey was left with such paper - thin skin on the
right side of his neck, over his
carotid artery, that doctors told him one bad scratch from a dog would kill him even if he were standing in the ER, much less out on the trail.