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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

#561

Post by pharke »

williamdclt wrote: post #557
TinkersW wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It most certainly would matter for hunter gatherers. They hunt and they would be hunting the same prey as the dogs. They are feeding the dogs by giving up some of their potential prey as food whether thats by giving it to the dogs after they kill it or allowing the dogs to kill it and eat it instead of them.

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

#562

Post by jhgb »

kaba0 wrote: post #549
jhgb wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you're still arguing about perfectly following a set of arbitrary rules. The very fact that they're arbitrary means you'll get people who'll make up arbitrary religious rules for themselves (and they will perfectly follow those ) and the "beliefs of the different islamic branches/sects/schools" will be no more relevant for the beliefs of an individual than a codified national language is for some people's idiolec…

They are not arbitrary though. Historic, perhaps. E.g. pork was disallowed as far as I know due to the spread of diseases from bad conservation techniques at the time.

But that's one of the differences between faith and knowledge, namely justification. You'd be correct to claim that it's non-arbitrary if you happen to know that this justification was how it was arrived at. Randomly arriving even at a correct belief without justification would not AFAIK constitute knowledge.

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

#563

Post by cheese_goddess »

technothrasher wrote: post #550
cheese_goddess wrote: post #518

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cats are "biologically designed to kill and eat flesh" but have you ever seen what cats do to the animals they capture for food? On the other hand, humans don't, as a rule torture our food and we usually kill our food before we eat it. Not all meat-eating animals have the same kind of behaviour toward their prey. Humans are "biologically designed" to love other animals and care for them. Not in an Elmyra Duff kind of…

> A lion could not domesticate a flock of sheep. It would just fall on the sheep and slaughter them, on the first day. What a simplistic view of lions. I agree that lions don't really have the capacity to domesticate a flock of sheep, but to suggest that they're mindless killing machines that would meaninglessly mass slaughter sheep the first chance they got is weird. They're complicated creatures with rich emotional…

It seems my views are not simplistic enough to not warrant a snotty response from someone who knows so much better. Oh, what tortured lives we simple folk must live...

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

#564

Post by nsonha »

pharke wrote: post #558
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.

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.

No, because I never claimed that preventing suffering is the only goal. Just add one more goal which is potentially experiencing pleasure then you can justify most lives, well except that of those pigs

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

#565

Post by pharke »

nsonha wrote: post #564
pharke wrote: post #558

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

No, because I never claimed that preventing suffering is the only goal. Just add one more goal which is potentially experiencing pleasure then you can justify most lives, well except that of those pigs

In which case it becomes an optimization problem where you have to find the optimal number of living beings to exterminate in order to provide the maximal amount of pleasure for those remaining. Not any better.

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

#566

Post by OOPMan »

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.

No post body was provided.

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

#567

Post by [deleted] »

pharke wrote: post #558
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.

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.

[deleted]

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

#568

Post by MattRix »

_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…

Your scenario with mutated hands ignores that evolution is about selection, not just single mutations. If hands evolved over a period of millions of years to be able to push water better, you could indeed say they evolved for the purpose of swimming. This is similar to saying that an eye’s purpose is to see, or a heart’s purpose is to pump blood, which are hardly controversial statements.

A purpose doesn’t have to imply concious design, intent, or immutablity.

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

#569

Post by nsonha »

pharke wrote: post #565
nsonha wrote: post #564

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, because I never claimed that preventing suffering is the only goal. Just add one more goal which is potentially experiencing pleasure then you can justify most lives, well except that of those pigs

In which case it becomes an optimization problem where you have to find the optimal number of living beings to exterminate in order to provide the maximal amount of pleasure for those remaining. Not any better.

> find the optimal number of living beings to exterminate

you are conflating birth control with "exterminate", not the same thing. Birth control has its roles, does it not?

> in order to provide the maximal amount of pleasure for those remaining.

I never said that, pleasure is an example, society is optimized for way more variables that suffering and pleasure.

In the context of farm animals, it looks like the only purpose for the pigs to exist is to be food, then when the food is over-produced and wasted, then you have to question why have that many of them born into a miserable life then die pointlessly.

> Not any better

just say it like that, no explanation? What is not good? Optimization?

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

#570

Post by MattRix »

marliechiller wrote: post #491
_nothing wrote: post #419

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

Their post missed the fact that evolution is about selection, not just single mutations.
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