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

531–540 of 731 posts

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

#531

Post by kaba0 »

hackinthebochs wrote: post #273
cipheredStones wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few (if any) Jews believe in eternal damnation. Generally speaking, Judaism places very little emphasis on the afterlife, and there's no widely-held doctrine about it. To the extent there's a shared belief at all, it's that everybody goes to a place called Sheol, without differentiation by merit.

That's so strange that Christianity and Judaism can have such divergent views on the afterlife. I guess it never occurred to me (as a former Christian) that Christian views on the afterlife are totally derived from the new testament.

Isn’t that mostly a middle ages creation? The whole Dante’s Inferno and related imaginary is not based on canon as far as I know.

Jesus was much more practical in my view and placed much more emphasis on helping others through real means.

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

#532

Post by kaba0 »

redanddead wrote: post #266
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…

What is it about primates that make them expensive?

Other than expenses, they develop much more slowly. As per another commenter a 6 months old pig is practically adult, while it is much longer for most primates.

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

#533

Post by wanda »

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.

Are you... are you serious?

The day that every statement of unfortunate fact has to be prefaced by an expression of emotional disapproval...

that is the day I officially give up on our already laughable species.

No one should have to explicitly state their disapproval of something unpleasant -- it can go without saying.

And I, for one, prefer to get facts and information without a person's opinion on the matter -- nothing could be less important to me than a given individual's emotional perspective on a matter.

It's of no interest to me how other people feel about something in forming my own judgements, and there's a high probability that their "feelings" will be poorly justified/based on misunderstanding/entirely insincere/etc.

I care about the data, and I'll form my own opinion on it.

The last thing I need to know about the subject of the pig used for many experiments...

is that some random person online who shared the information with me...

...disapproves of the pig's unfortunate journey.

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

#534

Post by RalfWausE »

sailfast wrote: post #356
mise_en_place wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t think it’s weird at all. If a million people were to die of COVID tomorrow, I wouldn’t really care emotionally. They all had their own life narratives, emotions and intelligence. Yet it wouldn’t phase me one bit. Perhaps intellectually I would have some compassion for them, and would hope they didn’t suffer. On the other hand, if a close relative or friend dies, I would mourn them immensely. Similarly, if I h…

A MILLION people? Not one bit? "Perhaps intellectually I would have some compassion for them?" I guess you're proving Stalin (paraphrasing Tucholsky?[0]) was right? "The death of one is a tragedy, but the death of millions, a statistic. [0] https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2011/0603/Political-m...

Why should he? If he didn't knew anyone of the dead, i can totaly relate to this. I, for me personally speaking, would see it as factual BAD would a million people die tomorrow of Covid, but i wouldn't mourn anyone if i didn't know him personally.

Perhaps i am a psychopath, but even an event like 9/11 left me just with the feeling of "oh, i think this is not good" instead of the shock or anything like my peers expressed...

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

#535

Post by hycaria »

pkaye wrote: post #245
MichaelRazum wrote: post #62

The pig life expectancy is about 12-18 years. Does it mean that the heart will work about so long?

As a kidney dialysis patient who is 6 year in the waiting list, I know the wait times have been slowly creeping up. Any bridging solution to reduce need for dialysis or even better forms of dialysis would be welcome. Despite the anti rejection medication people tell me they feel way better when they get a functional kidney.

Why do you have kidney failure?

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

#536

Post by neilparikh »

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…

> animals scrapping it out against the brutality of raw, unfiltered, natural selection

Farm animals are bred by humans, not taken from the wild, so you wouldn't be introducing any new animals to the wild, to "deal with brutality". You'd simply not bred new animals to live in farms.

Also, I think even small family farms practice male chick culling, so it's not really a great status quo.

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

#537

Post by necovek »

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?

It seems you are getting too focused on "to eat meat": in precise terms, GP never said "to eat meat exclusively" or "to eat only meat".

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

#538

Post by doctor_eval »

zanethomas wrote: post #45
hwbehrens wrote: post #38

If pigs (or any animal) broaden the compatibility to other organs, what are the ethical implications for raising them with the intention to harvest their organs, if any? On one hand, we already raise pigs to kill and eat routinely, and (mostly) people don't care - is this any different than say, buying a pig heart at the market to eat? On the other hand, it does somehow feel different to me, perhaps because sharing o…

Eat all the bacon you want, get heart disease, get new heart, eat more bacon.

Same pig supplies the heart AND the bacon.

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

#539

Post by kaba0 »

conductr wrote: post #437
tombert wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was about to say, aren't pigs smarter than dogs generally? Seems like a strange line to draw.

Why does intelligence get to be the barometer for this? To me, pigs are essentially big rodents that also happen to be quite delicious. When I eat pork I don’t care how the pig’s intellectual potential will never be realized. I get a side of eggs and go on with my day.

What else would matter? Ethical dilemmas stem from the sentience of a given being. Killing a cell is not really morally questionable, since it is just a (very) complex machinery. While we are ourselves also an even more complex machinery on a physical level, we have certain emerging properties that are not found in cells, but are found in dogs, pigs, etc.

So one can very well claim that torturing beings that can feel pain is wrong.

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

#540

Post by nightowl_games »

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…

> not very nice

I have started to specifically think of myself as "not nice". It's a more accurate way to describe myself.

I am not nice, nor do I strive to be. Life is hard and so am I.

Post reply on HN