Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient

apnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

441–450 of 731 posts

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

#441

Post by emodendroket »

pipodeclown wrote: post #333
Hnrobert42 wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, except we are not talking about two people. We are talking about killing a pig to save a human, potentially thousands of humans.

A thought experiment I always like to posit is: what if we were the animal that needed to be tested on for the benefit of medical research that could safe a lot of the members of an alien species that is much more intelligent than us. Would that by extension also be justified? I eat meat by the way so I'm not trying to supplant my ethical views on you.

I don't see that as really an ethical question... from their perspective, probably yes. From our perspective, we'd probably be trying to kill the aliens.

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

#442

Post by emodendroket »

foerbert wrote: post #317
sytelus wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this so much worse than killing pig and salivating its meat and devouring it? Think about it, you are killing a living animal for your one meal when you had all the options in the world. Many people are not even eating it fully and simpply just tossing it away literally in a trash. As usual, I am sure a lot of people will run to Bible to justify this.

I mean, plenty of people also have a problem with that. I'm not sure a discussion on the ethics of a thing should end just because a similar thing is more widespread.

It seems a little ridiculous to worry about animals being used for life-saving medical research when most Americans are eating meat every single day, to be honest. Sure, one could consistently oppose both, but from a sheer sense of proportion, why is _this_ the thing to worry about?

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

#443

Post by emodendroket »

codebolt wrote: post #373
deltaonefour wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 beings are also designed for aggression towards each other, yet we generally try to control those parts of our 'savage nature' in modern society. Torturing defenseless animals is not an inescapable facet of human nature. It's something we choose to do and be OK with.

> Human beings are also designed for aggression towards each other, yet we generally try to control those parts of our 'savage nature' in modern society.

Yes, we've developed quite sophisticated organizations to coordinate the violence, and then developed quite sophisticated weapons to carry it out.

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

#444

Post by catgary »

dexwiz wrote: post #370
tcgv wrote: post #360

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for your clarification. It's good to read that the pig was well cared and experiments passed ethics reviews. To be fair your original comment was lacking this information, hence when I first read it felt (unintentionally as we can see now) a bit cold-hearted to me as well.

Honestly, I felt that the ethics board part was implied. In western universities it's very hard to do animal testing. No one just strolls down to Pets Mart and picks up some mice. The Animal Welfare Act governs animal testing in the United States, and school risk funding if they don't follow the law. To be honest, I don't know the ins and outs of the specific programs. I just know they had to present and get their pr…

I know University of Calgary had a bio professor who got in hot water for abusing animals (essentially: he encouraged his student to not anaesthetize animals before surgery to fudge numbers). So there are definitely grad students who will happily torture animals if it can help their career.

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

#445

Post by wruza »

mlyle wrote: post #267
JetAlone wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd want to question why I'm doing it. For example do I have kids I need to stick around to support? Or am I just going to be discharged to mostly play video games, alone? Because I don't see a need to extend that life. Then I'd want to think about what it symbolizes. Is it really so irrational to just let my body die when my God-given guts fail instead of depending on the hands of man to possibly convert my body int…

Conversely, there's this well-worn pseudo-parable: A fellow was stuck on his rooftop in a flood. He was praying to God for help. Soon a man in a rowboat came by and the fellow shouted to the man on the roof, “Jump in, I can save you.” The stranded fellow shouted back, “No, it’s OK, I’m praying to God and he is going to save me.” So the rowboat went on. Then a motorboat came by. “The fellow in the motorboat shouted, “…

I've heard this one, but then and now, what did God expect, if He didn't send any event to the man which would make him think that 1,2,3 was the salvation. He knows everything in advance, doesn't He?

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

#446

Post by watwut »

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…

> Other animals have also been shown to "befriend"/care for/grieve over animals of different species, so our own capacity to sympathize for animals should be no surprise.

This part is actually true. Some animals do befriend, cooperate with or grieve over animals of different species. Not all animals are bugs and spiders.

> Empathy evolved to aid in survival of our genome, but when empathy evolves to the point where we are unable experiment on animals to assist in helping our own species... that is something unnatural.

Evolution is not a god. Things evolve because it happens, not for fixed purpose. If we genetically evolve to be "unable experiment on animals to assist in helping our own species", then that evolution is as natural as anything else.

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

#447

Post by hulitu »

alex_sf wrote: post #347
pipodeclown wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thought experiment I always like to posit is: what if we were the animal that needed to be tested on for the benefit of medical research that could safe a lot of the members of an alien species that is much more intelligent than us. Would that by extension also be justified? I eat meat by the way so I'm not trying to supplant my ethical views on you.

Fwiw a lot of people would argue that sacrificing one human for the benefit of many more is worthwhile. Not something to celebrate, but an acceptable tradeoff.

The problem is that some of those people are also ok with sacrificing many humans for the benefit of few.

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

#448

Post by foragerr »

foerbert wrote: post #332
theonething wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume you're vegan then.

I'm not sure why you think that's relevant. (Note - I am not OP.) Being hypocritical is an indictment at the speaker, not of the speech. The most hypocritical person to ever live may well be completely right about their most hypocritical belief. It's just not relevant to the the validity of the idea. So why do people constantly try to use it as a counterargument? It seems especially prevalent in these sorts of discus…

Textbook ad-hominem

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

#449

Post by TulliusCicero »

jakear wrote: post #343
badRNG wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A (somewhat?) vegan perspective. I've teetered on staying committed to veganism for ethical reasons, and have spent time on and off with vegan diets. I don't at all think (nor do I think most vegans think [see disclaimer]) that pigs are worthy of equal moral consideration as humans. I, along with most humans, think that pigs as well as other animals are worthy of some level of moral consideration. Most would be right…

A bit off topic but you seem level-headed and I've been wondering about this for a while: what's your vegan "endgame"? The way I see it, the "vegan utopia" would get rid of all small family farms (even strictly milk/egg ones) -- where animals are given all the food they need, have access to good medical care, are sheltered from predators, and are able to reproduce and nurse offspring -- and replace all that with... a…

> The way I see it, the "vegan utopia" would get rid of all small family farms (even strictly milk/egg ones) -- where animals are given all the food they need, have access to good medical care, are sheltered from predators, and are able to reproduce and nurse offspring

This is, like, the most charitable interpretation possible of the current state of farming for meat.

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

#450

Post by bayesian_horse »

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…

You are also designed not to harm your fellow beings.

That may sound like a contradiction, but it's just the "fellow beings" parts that is culturally or individually changed. There have been soldiers who went to war who couldn't shoot their enemies, even though they might even have "wanted" to. Compassion seems to be a very fundamental building block of the Human mind.

Post reply on HN