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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

#521

Post by mutatio »

shmde wrote: post #512
mutatio wrote: post #461

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the Bengal famine is that simple, certainly not to say "purposefully creating"...

Time and time again it has been proved and backed by research that it was indeed purposefully created. I don't understand why people aren't able to swallow that Churchill was responsible for the devastating famine. Its the same everywhere, even in r/history subreddit people just straight away deny Churchill was responsible for the famine. I understand that he is hailed as a hero for WW2 but he definitely has 3 millio…

Let's not hijack the thread with politics. I will say this, there was no motive for it to be "purposefully created" - that is nonsense, try and think about it objectively for a second. It's far more nuanced than that. The issue here is the motivation for your post, do you interject any mention of Gandhi with critiques of his character / behaviour?

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

#522

Post by PickledHotdog »

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."

Think that's the same reason they were used in nuclear testing, at least in the USSR.

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

#523

Post by yawaworht1978 »

I have worked/imterned on a pig farm once.

The pigs realize more than you'd think, their moms know when you're about to castrate the babies and they remember it, too.

When the slaughterhouse van comes along, they can feel something is wrong, this is, before the van is even visible. They might remember other pigs not coming back from the ride or something, but to kill another animal to save the human animal is not very nice.

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

#524

Post by kaba0 »

goldenkey wrote: post #324
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.

We are talking about torturing a pig, killing is really no big deal -- everything dies but not everything suffers.

As for what constitutes torture is arguable. To me, doing surgery with anesthesia don’t automatically fall into that category (though of course it can — eg. the famous experiment of putting a second dog’s head to another one’s torso was torture in my opinion).

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

#525

Post by depr »

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #523

I have worked/imterned on a pig farm once. The pigs realize more than you'd think, their moms know when you're about to castrate the babies and they remember it, too. When the slaughterhouse van comes along, they can feel something is wrong, this is, before the van is even visible. They might remember other pigs not coming back from the ride or something, but to kill another animal to save the human animal is not ver…

Would you refuse a pig heart if it meant the pig would live but you would die? Would you want your loved ones to do so?

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

#526

Post by kaba0 »

chii wrote: post #329
theplumber wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find such a remark weird given that "you" are serving such "helpless" creatures at your favorite restaurant. I think it's the ultimate hypocrisy. Not to mention that we have a situation where helpless creatures are sacrificed for the science/common good of human beings and the other situation where they are murdered for the taste of their meat & bones.

Both food, or medical, is a use of a resource that is created by and for humans. The pig wouldn't have been born had their purpose for food, or medical use, not been there. it's not like humans are capturing wild pigs and using them. I would say that wild animals deserves the right to exist and not hunted (unless they're threatening human interests), but the same cannot be said for bred animals.

I think bounding morale boundaries to the way of something coming to life is a terrible idea (instead of sentience).

Is it okay by extension to eat/do research on/torture on a human baby that was created in a lab and was came to term without a mother, but in vitro?

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

#527

Post by teekert »

Sporktacular wrote: post #230
dexwiz wrote: post #61

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…

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.

I think it's good that you can have empathy for the animal but you could also sympathize with the people (inc children) that may someday have such a heart as their only option.

Everybody wants to move beyond animals, a lot of research is being done on Organs on a Chip etc, but until then, we have animals. See them like the nuclear powerplants that we use instead of coal, until we can finally move to fully renewable energy.

Sometime I ask myself, how many mice or pigs would I kill to save my child? And my answer is: As many as it takes.

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

#528

Post by kaba0 »

deltaonefour wrote: post #365
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.

Looking at this thread what I find strange is how we try to justify things to ourselves. How we come up with these frameworks to justify our behavior is the strange thing to me. On one hand we have the vegans who deny their very biological nature in order to fulfill the precept: "thou shall not kill." Vegans don't eat meat eat even though the human body is clearly a machine designed to eat meat. Why deny nature? On t…

> Vegans don't eat meat eat even though the human body is clearly a machine designed to eat meat. Why deny nature?

It was not designed, and neither did it evolve into a machine designed to eat meat. Those would be cats who are obligate carnivores. We are omnivores (as is pretty much everything — digesting meat is much much easier than digesting plants).

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

#529

Post by kaba0 »

frozenport wrote: post #263
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.

I don't see them as intelligent

They are, it’s a fact.

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

#530

Post by nsonha »

snovv_crash wrote: post #515
nsonha wrote: post #503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the life of such pig would not even begin, which is a good thing, if wasn't for human to have so much meat on display that it gets expired.

Wishing you had never been born is one thing, wishing someone/something else had never been born is not a response of empathy but rather personal guilt.

This is not even a question, being born into a life of slavery and ultimately being slaughtered is worse than not being born. Think about it, you are born into a prison and given no chance to even develop a proper consciousness. This is very different than a fully aware human getting locked up in a prison.
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