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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

#581

Post by conductr »

kaba0 wrote: post #539
conductr wrote: post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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

That’s fine and all except we don’t live in a morality version of the matrix. Philosophical arguments hardly effect human behaviors at large.

> Killing a cell is not really morally questionable

Perhaps. But once the cell is fertilized there’s a large population of prolifers that beg to differ yet there is objective no intelligence at this stage of life.

Humans are not so rational as I think you’d like them to be. They also just are rather uncaring hence while this argument/PETA and so on don’t usually change anyone’s feeling towards the issue.

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

#582

Post by jakear »

neilparikh wrote: post #536
jakear wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Right, instead of a large biomass of generally happy “farmed” animals you have a small biomass of incredibly stressed “natural” animals. It’s not obvious to me that that’s as clear of a win as vegans would have me believe.

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

#583

Post by Simon_says »

kaba0 wrote: post #514
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…

No, we can eat meat but we are by no means obligate carnivores like cats are. A cat will die on a no-meat diet, while we can easily live on plants alone.

> we can easily live on plants alone.

This has only been true for about the past 50 years, when vitamin B12 was synthesized. There's no plant source for the vitamin. And I'm not even sure the vegans call a vegan diet "easy".

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

#584

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

#585

Post by edanm »

alex_sf wrote: post #347
pipodeclown wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A thought experiment I always like to posit is: what if we were the animal that needed to be tested on for the benefit of medical research that could safe a lot of the members of an alien species that is much more intelligent than us. Would that by extension also be justified? I eat meat by the way so I'm not trying to supplant my ethical views on you.

Fwiw a lot of people would argue that sacrificing one human for the benefit of many more is worthwhile. Not something to celebrate, but an acceptable tradeoff.

Frankly, almost every country has an army, which is a in a since a vehicle that sacrifices some people to save others (young people, too).

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

#586

Post by kaba0 »

chii wrote: post #577
kaba0 wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

it isn't OK because it is a human (whether created in vitro, or born al natural) - humans are granted human rights (by other humans, out of self-interest i might add) which ostensibly prevent such things from happening to them. That is why slavery is against human rights.

We aren’t talking about current laws though, but philosophy/moral ones. Of course animal experiments are legal (if they pass an ethical examination)

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

#587

Post by Ensorceled »

tired_medicine wrote: post #269
kashunstva wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tissue component of bioprosthetic valves is treated ex vivo in such a way as to greatly reduce the immune reactivity. It's practically not a consideration. Mechanical prosthetic heart values are generally favoured only in older patients where re-operation is not likely to be required. The reason being that bioprosthetic valves have a more limited long-term durability. So why not always use mechanical valves? Thei…

Mech valves are actually favored in younger patients, since they don't become calcified, like bioprosthetic valves. However, they do require life long anticoagulation with warfarin, which is dangerous to live with.

Calcification was what happened with my grandmother; due to other ailments and QoL (she was 85) she declined getting a new valve.

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

#588

Post by hungryforcodes »

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.

It's typically a North American - or sometimes Western European problem. As people become more lonely, they rely more on their companion pets. But ignore the obvious contradiction that they eat pigs, chickens or cows each day.

I'm not sure anyone else really worries about it from what I've seen, having traveled around.

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

#589

Post by johnisgood »

kaba0 wrote: post #514
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…

No, we can eat meat but we are by no means obligate carnivores like cats are. A cat will die on a no-meat diet, while we can easily live on plants alone.

No. Lack of meat leads to vitamin B12 deficiency which gives you all sorts of neurological issues. Pretty damn horrible ones.

> The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics warns of the risk of vitamin B12 deficiencies in vegetarians and vegans. Vitamin B12 is found naturally only in animal products. A lack of vitamin B12 can lead to anemia and blindness. It can also cause muscle weakness, tingling, and numbness.

We might not die, we will just get severely disabled. It pretty much mimics MS.

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

#590

Post by nvegater »

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.

I see it a bit different. Using your own sentence structure:

"The line of argument supports the prevention of the existence of an undefined number of living beings to max. the quality of life of other existing living beings."

The argument doesn't seem to me as simple as you are portraying it and I don't see where you got the extermination part from.

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