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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

#411

Post by conradev »

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…

That is like saying biologically speaking, 65% of the world’s population isn’t designed to drink milk, because they don’t produce the enzyme lactase. Yes, it is true. No, it does not mean anything on its own.

Those same moral philosophies stop us from killing each other for sport, even though it is in our “savage nature”.

Meat consumption is ultimately driven by consumer choice, and consumers will choose what they want to eat

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

#412

Post by scoopertrooper »

graderjs wrote: post #394
dexwiz wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Weird that these statements are made (and I don't mean by you, it's a trope to make them by people in general in discussions like this, I'm not picking you out) that it somehow justifies, or ameliorates, the awfulness of experimenting then dissecting (as someone said) a helpless intelligent creature. I think these statements justify animal trials and using it to benefit humans definitely. But it doesn't justify or ma…

If you can accept humans can eat helpless intelligent creatures, then the fact we perform ethics-reviewed anesthetised procedures and later dissect the same animals really shouldn't keep you up at night.

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

#413

Post by riversflow »

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…

> Human civilizations' current abundance of resources allows us the luxury to develop moral "philosophies"

You've got it backwards; Human's current abundance is the creation of human cooperation, which doesn't really work without some sort of ethical framework. Philosophy enables us to achieve more, it is not the result of our achievement.

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

#414

Post by schappim »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #237
jacobn wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Friendly reminder that the heart produces electricity; ergo, it can be used to mine crypto.

I've seen the Matrix, I know how this ends.

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

#415

Post by inawarminister »

screamingninja wrote: post #387
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…

> Either way you ARE designed to eat veggies and MEAT, you can choose to eat veggies and deny half your nature, yes.. that is your choice. Is that similar to you only acknowledging being designed to eat meat and denying half of your nature?

There are people who do carnivory diet, eating 100% meat and organs for a while. They are mostly okay, some have their health better than their previous diet. Human body is awesome in our flexibility in seeking niches.

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

#416

Post by JetAlone »

mlyle wrote: post #379
JetAlone wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But the second that you claim that medical choices that someone else might reasonably choose to make are an "abomination"-- you're framing things in a way that people will reasonably interpret as judgment and wanting to prohibit-- or at least denigrate-- those choices by others. You've made a good point about how some of the other posters are feeling. I have difficulty coming up with another word I could have used t…

>You've made a good point about how some of the other posters are feeling. I have difficulty coming up with another word I could have used to communicate what I meant that could have had a different effect. Even without using a strong word, people can be eager and are sometimes trained to perceive the slightest denigration against their choices. I don't think it's that hard. "I can agree with the spirit in which the…

>I don't think it's that hard.

It may be less difficult for you. I don't think it would be out of line to say you have been an exemplar of the civility the HN rules promote.

"Do as thou wilt" itself is an absolutist codification. Somebody, somewhere, has made an invalid choice at some time in their life. I'd like to be optimistic and say also that at some point, just about every single person out there has said or done something very valid and good, and when they do it acts as a pointer towards what is good and edifies. From my own experience, the sinking feeling of realizing some of my own choices were invalid lead me to some self improvements that I'm really grateful for... So I'm convicted that avoiding the "bad feel" of invalidation would have been an unwise compass.

Still, it's a real hazard to come on too strong. Maybe I'll be able to take what you've said on board to develop a more effective way to communicate perspectives, or maybe it's an inevitable diatribe circus - time will have to tell.

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

#417

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

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."

My grandfather had a pig's heart valve in his chest, worked great.

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

#418

Post by ehnto »

emersonrsantos wrote: post #349
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 don't get it that dogs/cats/horses/etc are sentient but pigs/cows/chicken and other animals are not.

It's a social construct like any, a partition or compartmentalization we put up to allow us to behave certain ways. Some cultures have different outlooks, some individuals have different outlooks.

I think the only logic to glean here, is that we're able to get more resources out of a cow, so it was useful for us to compartmentalize and abstract away farming them as different somehow, so we did.

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

#419

Post by _nothing »

deltaonefour wrote: post #401
_nothing wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't think you're a creationist - this is just a very common distinction in thinking about evolution that results in all sorts of illogical fallacies.

This is my exact point: Your hands have no purpose. They evolved in a way that aided in survival. If someone is born mutated with their fingers fused together and then suddenly the entire earth floods and they find their solid hands help them swim better - were their hands evolved for the purpose of swimming? Were they designed? Is that human then "supposed to" swim?

We're finding microorganisms that can consume plastic. Does that mean they evolved for the purpose of eating plastic, a substance not typically found in nature?

In my worldview, no, they weren't. They can consume plastic, but that has no bearing on their purpose, and they aren't leaving part of their purpose unfulfilled if they don't eat plastic and instead eat other substances they evolved to be able to eat.

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

#420

Post by bongoman37 »

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…

People forget about how hard it is to get through ethics reviews for animal testing. I remember a PI telling me that it was easier to run psych experiments on undergrads compared to rats or mice.
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