U.S. surgeons transplant pig heart into human patient • Hacker News Board

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

#491

Post by marliechiller » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 9:23 AM UTC

_nothing wrote: post #419

deltaonefour wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 thei…

I think this point is very hard to argue against. Natural selection has no intent, mutation is random and its consequences are thus flukes as to whether they work or not to support an organisms survival. Very well explained @_nothing!

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

#492

Post by bayesian_horse » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 9:26 AM UTC

deltaonefour wrote: post #476

bayesian_horse wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are designed to survive. If that survival involves harming people than that is what will occur. You are also designed to fuck a woman and make her pregnant and many men will fulfill this goal at any cost. Hence why rape exists.

None of that is true. There are stories over stories of Humans refusing to do harm to other Humans even if it means their death. Conditioning Humans to kill other Humans often involves dehumanizing the enemy in order to circumvent that built-in safety measure. Not everybody can just defuse that switch when he needs to.

You are ASSuming I am male and heterosexual. You are assuming homosexuality has somehow not evolved naturally or does not play a part in the natural repertoire of Human social structure (spoiler alert: it does, even in terms of procreation).

You do not understand sexual desire, which is not about reproduction, even though reproduction can be a side effect (and usually isn't, even without contraception). You do not understand rape and sexual assault which often is not about sex or sexual pleasure.

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

#493

Post by krageon » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 9:29 AM UTC

riversflow wrote: post #413

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 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.

A dictatorship is a human cooperation as well and while it technically has an ethical framework it's not exactly a victory of philosophy.

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

#494

Post by TinkersW » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 9:34 AM UTC

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.

Dog = carnivore domesticated as ally(superior smell/high speed etc)

Cow = herbivore domesticated for milk/meat

Eating dogs is terribly inefficient since they are carnivores. Seems fairly obvious that hunter gathers wouldn't have typically done this, and that it is a recent thing in regions that had famines & excess stray dogs.

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

#495

Post by JetAlone » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 9:35 AM UTC

theplumber wrote: post #487

JetAlone wrote: post #334

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This advice only "stands", for apostasy and betrayal of the people I love in my community, and of the martyrs and saints who underwent beatings and who gave their lives for God being tortured to death in the colosseum. To give up and let their view, consumed with love for God and each other die in me... All because I couldn't endure a little hostility from some unknown people on the internet who thought I was silly f…

You built just a narrative that makes you comfortable with your life. It's not like the "saints" were the only ones tortured at the colosseum but as usually people remember and care only about the ones sharing the same beliefs(i.e pack mentality). People are bing killed and tortured today as well for various reasons(i.e "god" doesn't like their orientation or behaviour). See also Rohingya genocide. Do something for t…

That's a subtle antichrist attitude, falling in line with Judas' anger at Christ being given expensive ointment, saying it could have been sold and the proceeds distributed to the poor. It is to try to use good principles to spite the very Truth that the good principles are derived from in the first place. Moral actions need to point towards that transcendent - that's why I need to follow my religious convictions first, and any aid given to those in need along the way are good works oriented properly. There is no aimless good, no worthy history made independent of the identity of Truth. That's why I am so encouraged by the martyrs of the colosseum, of course, and the end effects of their actions was that the colosseum eventually got shut down and no criminals or gladiators were tortured there anymore, as you correctly said. Believer and nonbeliever alike can be raised up by the efforts of those of faith, and we don't have to live in scorn for each other.

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

#496

Post by OJFord » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 9:41 AM UTC

Sporktacular wrote: post #215

OJFord wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously it's very culture specific, but pigs are quite far from 'man's best friend'.

Arbitrary standard gets drawn and then pigs get condemned to failing to meet it

Isn't that life? Or society at least.

I didn't say there was any logic or deep meaning to it, just that someone being willing to sacrifice pigs but not dogs for scientific research doesn't surprise me at all. In mine, even vegetarians generally find the idea of those in others eating dogs (more so than pigs et al.) abhorrent.

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

#497

Post by spoonjim » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 9:43 AM UTC

emodendroket wrote: post #443

codebolt wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With the end result of vastly fewer deaths from violence per capita compared to primitive societies.

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

#498

Post by skissane » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 9:50 AM UTC

ChuckNorris89 wrote: post #483

hulitu wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think that humans make terrible things to animals, you should check what they do to other humans. There are "beautiful, human" stories about a certain Dr. Mengele, or Unit 731 or Guantanamo...

The weird thing was, the parties from the Nazis and the Imperial Japanese Army, responsible for atrocious experiments on humans, were pardoned by the allies in exchange for their findings and research results.

The Allies never pardoned Mengele. He escaped capture and execution due to a combination of bureaucratic bungling (he was captured by the US in 1945, and while in custody his name was added to a list of wanted major war criminals, but somehow the list never made it to the POW camp authorities until after they'd already released him), then the US government somehow forming the false belief that he had already died, then the obstacles Mossad encountered trying to track him down in early 1960s Argentina, then Mossad deciding that the security threat posed by the Arab states (in the years leading up to the Six Day War) was a higher priority, and that by the time (1985) that public pressure had built to the point that the Israeli, West German and US governments were motivated to make a serious effort to find him, he had already died (while vacationing under a false name in Brazil in 1979).

He escaped justice through ineptitude, lack of political will and competing priorities, luck, and the assistance of the Nazi underground, not due to any active decision to forgive his monstrous deeds.

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

#499

Post by Milner08 » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:04 AM UTC

joshuaissac wrote: post #99

samwillis wrote: post #32

When I was a teenager there was a novel adapted for TV by the BBC called “Pig Heart Boy”. It explored the emotional impact of this type of procedure on a teenager and the response from the public, both good and bad. I don’t remember much about it but it looks like it won a BAFTA. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig_Heart_Boy

The novel was also on the reading list for English at many secondary schools in the mid 2000s.

Yeah when I read the title of this article my first thought was 'isnt that a thing, why is it news'. Then I realised that its not very common and I was just thinking of the book/TV show!

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

#500

Post by cheese_goddess » Tue, Jan 11, 2022, 10:15 AM UTC

nsonha wrote: post #473

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.

lol that's it? If they said something like "how you feel about it is inconsequential" I would accept it as a pragmatic/stoic way to look at it. There is no way a life in a lab can be even remotely good, well cared or not, but it's hard to compare when a typical life of a pig ends with being slaughtered, only to end up expired pieces of meat most of the times.

How do you think a life of a pig would end if it wasn't being slaughtered? Most likely it would be half-eaten alive by a predator and the rest left to rot or be taken by scavengers. The same thing will happen now (the expired pieces of meat will mostly become food for insect larvae) except it's a human doing the slaughtering and the animal is killed before being eaten.