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U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

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Re: U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

#401

Post by deltaonefour »

_nothing wrote: post #398
deltaonefour wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A swiss army knife is designed to be used in many different ways. Just because you don't use all the ways doesn't mean it's not designed for it. You are an omnivore and you are designed to eat meat. Additionally, you are not designed to eat cellulose which is a huge component of what it means to be a herbivore. You are designed to eat meat, and designed to eat certain types of veggies. Who's to say that the veggie pa…

I already said this in a different comment, but the difference is that we were not designed while a Swiss army knife was. Design implies intent— it implies that something was developed for a purpose, that it's supposed to be used in a certain way. Whether or not I use the corkscrew on my Swiss army knife doesn't change the fact that someone built the corkscrew for the purpose of opening corked bottles. The enzymes/fe…

> Design implies intent— it implies that something was developed for a purpose, that it's _supposed_ to be used in a certain way.

You could say "design" by natural selection which is MY primary intent.

What is the appropriate word if not design? Your hands have a purpose even if they were not "designed." The purpose in this case is to grasp things. The purpose of the human body is then to eat meat and vegetables.

The word design flows better than purpose. Take the two sentences:

   The human body was not designed to consume arsenic.
   The purpose of the human body is not to eat arsenic.
See? Anyway let's not get too pedantic about this. I'm sure you get my intent despite the creationist technicality that the word "design" implies... I am clearly not implying THAT.

Re: U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

#402

Post by shmde »

VeninVidiaVicii wrote: post #278
tricky wrote: post #26

You might be asking, why a pig? I don't know, but forever ago I wrote software for a cardiovascular imaging lab and pigs were their primary test subjects. I was like, "why pigs?" and the PI was like, "Imaging-wise, pig hearts aren't too different from humans. Plus, we can give them a heart attack in the scanner and not go to jail. Some labs use dogs. I just can't do that."

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. - Winston S. Churchill

I am be responsible for purposefully creating a famine in India killing 3 million people and still be quoted as a badass in the future - Winston S. Churchill

Re: U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

#403

Post by enjoyyourlife »

FundementalBrit wrote: post #115

Will make Jews and Muslims question their faith if this becomes a mainstream thing. Personally I think this is a amazing scientific achievement and will be following the story closely.

The prohibition is against eating pig, not benefiting from it

Re: U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

#404

Post by postalrat »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #194
tricky wrote: post #26

You might be asking, why a pig? I don't know, but forever ago I wrote software for a cardiovascular imaging lab and pigs were their primary test subjects. I was like, "why pigs?" and the PI was like, "Imaging-wise, pig hearts aren't too different from humans. Plus, we can give them a heart attack in the scanner and not go to jail. Some labs use dogs. I just can't do that."

I was only recently acquainted with the idea that there are many people on the internet who become very angry that some people eat dog meat, but do not with say cow meat or pig meat. — I find this rather strange and do not understand this.

We owe dogs a great debt for helping humanity for many thousands of years.

Re: U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

#405

Post by SavantIdiot »

pkaye wrote: post #249
SavantIdiot wrote: post #41

This is great news. The organ donor wait list is 6-8 years for most organs (kidneys, livers, etc.). Please be an organ donor.

Yup, I'm a kidney dialysis patient waiting 6 years on the list. In theory I'm approaching the front of the list but they still need to make sure I get good compatibility so who knows. I've know people who have waited for 8-10 years!

I'm pulling for ya!

Have you been doing at-home dialysis or at a facility?

Re: U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

#406

Post by grishka »

I'm surprised no one here is talking about Michael Levin's morphogenesis research. It's absolutely fascinating and might someday obviate the need for transplants and prosthesis altogether. Here's one of his lectures: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41b254BcMJM

Re: U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

#407

Post by _nothing »

deltaonefour wrote: post #392
_nothing wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chasing an animal down, killing it, and eating it is in my opinion a significantly different activity than subjecting it to thirty likely-invasive procedures over the course of its life and then continuing to perform experiments on its dead body. Not saying it's more or less morally questionable, but significantly different. Evolutionary biology is overused as justification for human behavior. We were not "designed"…

>Evolutionary biology is overused as justification for human behavior. Let me get one thing straight. I am not justifying anything. My angle is, what's the point? Don't justify anything at all. We're evil for killing, so be it. I am looking at it from a completely dispassionate angle. I do not need to somehow merge and mutate my moral framework to make it work with the existing reality. >We were not "designed" to eat…

I think we're on the same page in believing that there's not an inherent morality to these behaviors. I'm not accusing of you to try to justify some morally evil act.

The comment you originally replied to said this:

> Weird how this is said without a shred of sympathy or concern for an intelligent, helpless creature

To which you replied:

> It's not weird at all. Biologically speaking, we are designed to eat meat. > The weird thing is how we developed sympathy and concern for such things.

What I was responding to was the claim that because we evolved the capacity to eat meat, we should naturally be dispassionate to the killing of animals. What I'm saying is that since we evolved both the capacity for carnivory and sympathy, that our capacity for eating animals does not make our sympathy for animals at all unnatural.

It's not unnatural for us to want to kill animals for our survival. But it's also not unnatural for us to care about and feel sympathy towards animals. I feel that you've been using our capacity for meat-eating to deem vegetarianism, sympathy towards animals, etc. as against our nature.

With that, the point of my differentiating between the act of hunting and eating animals versus experimenting with them and their dead bodies is comparable to the difference in severity of humans fighting each other versus torturing each other. Humans clearly have the capacity for both, and yet one typically elicits a higher negative reaction in people than the other. Our ability to empathize with all sorts of pain falls along such an axis.

Edit:

To your last point, if people naturally develop an empathy towards animals so strong that it overrides their own sense of self-preservation, why is that unnatural? Is a human giving their life to save other humans unnatural? That's exactly why I keep repeating that there is no "design" - or if you'd prefer, "intent". There is no rule in nature that says species are supposed to prioritize the survival of their own, and so deviating from that nonexistent rule is not unnatural. If experimenting on animals is absolutely necessary to humanity's survival and humanity one day refuses, it will simply die out like millions of species before it. Going extinct isn't unnatural either.

Re: U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

#408

Post by zizee »

dexwiz wrote: post #342
Sporktacular wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird how this is said without a shred of sympathy or concern for an intelligent, helpless creature. Weirder how it can be said without a sympathetic or concerned response. I hope we can someday move beyond seeing animals as a mere resource.

From what I heard, the pig lived a relativity good life. It was well cared for by the large animal veterinary school on campus. Had more space and better food than any factory raised pig. All experiments passed an ethics review. The pig was anesthetized before any procedure. The number of experiments may sound barbaric on the surface, but it was to reduce the overall number of pigs used in trials. Modern medicine wou…

Sure, perhaps it can be justified by the greater good, but that should not preclude feeling sorry for the animal in question.

Re: U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

#409

Post by [deleted] »

deltaonefour wrote: post #353
Sporktacular wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird how this is said without a shred of sympathy or concern for an intelligent, helpless creature. Weirder how it can be said without a sympathetic or concerned response. I hope we can someday move beyond seeing animals as a mere resource.

It's not weird at all. Biologically speaking, we are designed to eat meat. Our bodies produce all of the enzymes, such as protease and lipase, necessary for the breakdown and absorption of meat. The weird thing is how we developed sympathy and concern for such things. Human civilizations' current abundance of resources allows us the luxury to develop moral "philosophies" and become "vegetarians" effectively masking o…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

#410

Post by cpeterso »

In Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space novels, there is a race of humanoid pigs called "hyperpigs", distant descendants of pigs that had been genetically-enhanced with human DNA to make their organs more compatible with humans for transplant.

https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Hyperpigs

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