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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

#551

Post by plutonorm »

nightowl_games wrote: post #540
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.

To try to be nice is to rally against nature itself. If you strive to be nice then you are automatically at odds with the driving force of nature. You want to make the world a nice place? Then by definition there can be no losers and if there are no losers there is no evolution. If there is no evolution, there is no life, only a slow descent bck to maximum entropy. So the ultimate question is not "do you want to be nice?" but "do you prefer life over non life?". Is the pain of existence worth it? some say yes, some say no, both are valid opinions. Personally I say yes. But I wouldn't blame a person for being anti life and working actively to destroy it.

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

#553

Post by iyn »

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.

Thank you for saying that. I'm still shocked how deep such "mental illusions" can go. But it's also dangerous thing to say, because it triggers "internal contradiction" error in most people and you get to experience people's justifications and/or attacks as a form of defense. One of those things that are invisible now but will be shocking from historical perspective.

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

#554

Post by andrepd »

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 assume the experiments were approved by some ethics board so that they weren't just for fun. Experiments on animals are justified if we think we can save human lives with that knowledge.

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

#555

Post by llarsson »

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."

Humans and pigs famously share approximately 98% DNA, so we are very similar. Aside from weight and size.

Non-scientific:

- https://thednatests.com/how-much-dna-do-humans-share-with-ot...

Scientific:

- https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25689318/

- https://aces.illinois.edu/news/human-pig-genome-comparison-c...

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

#556

Post by pxmpxm »

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…

It's really strange to me how these topics lately have tendency to devolve info infantile exchanges like the one above, where the first statement only serves to demonstrate author's emotional bona fides and the second validate and assuages it by offering a platitude. This is how one would interact with a child.

EG:

Op -2: Awww but pigs, I like pigs

Op -1: They were happy pigs

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

#557

Post by williamdclt »

TinkersW wrote: post #494
Blikkentrekker wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Inefficiency wouldn't matter for hunter-gatherers, as they're not the ones that feed the animal (they hunt, don't farm). Also pretty sure that dog-eating isn't a recent things, I don't see why people "back then" wouldn't eat stray dogs in periods of low resource.

More importantly, inefficiency most definitely isn't the reason for which people on the internet "become very angry" at the idea of eating dog.

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

#558

Post by pharke »

nsonha wrote: post #503
cheese_goddess wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

This line of argument also supports the extermination of all living beings because it prevents all future suffering. Think about that before you use it.

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

#559

Post by aflag »

jakear wrote: post #453
TulliusCicero wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Certainly large scale factory farms should be avoided at all costs. But animal husbandry is an ancient art that a good number of small family farms still practice. They're the ones I'm referring to here. Also note I'm specifically referring to egg/dairy production as opposed to meat production.

There are many ancient arts that got lost as time progresses. Not sure if we should fear changing our ways. I've drastically reduced my meat consumption in an effort to help with climate change. The end game for me is for, some time in future, meat consumption to be seen as something old fashioned that no one does anymore. Like wearing a top hat.

The only reason I'm not 100% vegan/vegetarian is because, since most people aren't, it restricts a lot the number of dishes you can eat. Specially when you go out in a restaurant. But, if more people would be vegetarians, I'm sure that would change.

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

#560

Post by pharke »

chii wrote: post #325
the_arun wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how long will it extend the life of a human after transplanted with Pig's heart. 5 years? Then I guess after every x years, they need new transplant? Though better than death, it is a painful stress.

you recover somewhat, just in time to have another surgery and another lengthy recovery period...not sure whether it is a good life, or a peaceful death is better.

There's a lot of assumptions going on here. Domesticated pigs can live up to 23 years. We'd also need to know if heart failure is a leading cause of death in pigs, if it's not then the heart could be viable long past that age. There are a lot of completely unknown factors like how a xenotransplant will fare in the host body over a long period of time. That's open ended if there are no rejection issues due to gene editing. Also, the person in the article clearly doesn't share your view on death and there are a large number of people out there that agree with him. Their chance at a longer life shouldn't be curtailed by other people's preconceptions.
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