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I heard they are humanized 'pigs'. Ie. engineered so their organs don't trigger our immune system. Not sure how true is this, or it is just a myth.
Careful with that. You might end up with pigoons [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake
I think O&C and The Year of the Flood represent the most likely near-future world, maybe 2035 or so, of any science fiction I can name.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pigs are really common in biomedical testing. They are physically a similar size and weight to humans. They also reach maturity in about 6 months. Much cheaper to raise than primates, and more likely to get approval for testing. My friends in biomed grad school named one of theirs cyber pig because it has about 30 different experiments ran on it before it was killed, and afterwards it was portioned out for further te…
Bit of a tangent: I read the article to my wife and she mentioned that there is an episode of Grey's Anatomy where they wanted to perform a transplant of a pig's bowels but the Jewish (or Muslim?) lady refused. Interesting how one might choose to their faith over their life.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raising_the_Bar_(South_Park)
The biggest surprise for me is that organ transplant from animals had been attempted in the past, I was sure it had not been done yet. Apparently there was a newborn that lived for 21 days with baboon heart in 1984: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Fae Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenotransplantation ) also lists one successful kidney transplant from chimpanzee in 1964: > Out of 13 such transplants per…
I wonder why a pig heart rather than one from another primate? The article mentions a baboon heart in an earlier attempt at xenotransplantation with an infant. Is a pig’s heart as, or more, compatible or is it more a matter of availability?
Does this create any potential for disease/virus vectors across species if not handled properly?
Genuine question: why is an artificial heart such a hard thing to make? At least from a lay-person's perspective, it's just some pumps and valves, which we've gotten pretty good at making. Obviously I'm wrong about that because there really isn't a permanent artificial heart yet, but it's something I have wondered for awhile.
See "total artificial heart": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_heart Layperson speculation: hard to power 24/7 without an external power source, it must connect seamlessly to the blood stream (can't have it disconnect from the aorta after five weeks), and the surfaces exposed to the blood must not cause blood clots (so careful at the seams).
If pigs (or any animal) broaden the compatibility to other organs, what are the ethical implications for raising them with the intention to harvest their organs, if any? On one hand, we already raise pigs to kill and eat routinely, and (mostly) people don't care - is this any different than say, buying a pig heart at the market to eat? On the other hand, it does somehow feel different to me, perhaps because sharing o…
Eat all the bacon you want, get heart disease, get new heart, eat more bacon.
/s
We're getting good at building artificial nonorganic heart, still a bit away from growing conventional hearts. I wonder how these future options intersect, whether one will win out over another, or we will be having hybrids? Electromagnetic motors work fine, but a big issue with them is the method of powering them and maybe biocompatibility issue. Normal organic hearts don't have this disadvantage but their downside…
If pigs (or any animal) broaden the compatibility to other organs, what are the ethical implications for raising them with the intention to harvest their organs, if any? On one hand, we already raise pigs to kill and eat routinely, and (mostly) people don't care - is this any different than say, buying a pig heart at the market to eat? On the other hand, it does somehow feel different to me, perhaps because sharing o…
> what are the ethical implications for raising them with the intention to harvest their organs, if any? We slaughter more than 100m pigs per year in the US for food. I don’t think a few more million are going to cause a moral dilemma.