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

631–640 of 731 posts

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

#631

Post by sharno »

jhgb wrote: post #562
kaba0 wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

IMHO this is human arrogance. It's the belief that as a human you are able to know and justify anything and everything with science and rationale, which is mostly wrong if you look at history.

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

#632

Post by huetius »

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 agree with the sentiment, but you don’t have to attribute human characteristics to animals in order to make the case that this and much else of our contemporary relationship with nature is inhumane (meaning: against human nature).

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

#633

Post by saalweachter »

tempestn wrote: post #468
saalweachter wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quite all that seamless - since we can't hook up the nerves, your new heart won't adjust its rate the way your original did.

I didn't know that. Do all heart transplants come with pacemakers then? Edit: looks like it's just some nerves, not all. > Your transplanted heart will respond to activity a little differently. Your heart rate will not increase like it used to. And you will have a higher resting heart rate. This is because some of the nerves that control your heart were cut during your surgery. https://www.cham.org/HealthwiseArticle.…

My understanding -- which should be taken with two grains of salt, I'm a programmer not a doctor -- is that the pacemaker cells which actually go "beat now beat now beat now" are part of the heart itself, and transplanted with it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiac_pacemaker

The nerves from the rest of the body are needed to tell these cells "we need more oxygen, beat faster" or "sleepy time, beat slower".

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

#634

Post by theonething »

kaba0 wrote: post #586
chii wrote: post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Civic law is decided upon based on what society deems is moral.

Animal experiments are legal because enough people voted to legalize it (or not enough people voted to make it illegal)

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

#635

Post by suifbwish »

medstrom wrote: post #519
catgary wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know University of Calgary had a bio professor who got in hot water for abusing animals (essentially: he encouraged his student to not anaesthetize animals before surgery to fudge numbers). So there are definitely grad students who will happily torture animals if it can help their career.

Damn, they require you to tell them how many mice you've got so you can get that many anaesthesis doses? That rule wasn't thought through.

How many Mice do you have?

800,000.

You used ketamine for all of them?

YES.

Thats a lot of ketamine

YES.

Can you show us the mice?

NO.

Why not

We disposed of their bodies after the experiment.

Then how can we verify the data from the experiment?

Give us ketamine for 800,000 more mice

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

#636

Post by suifbwish »

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.

Morality doesn’t exist. It arises from the emotional responses of those with the power to prevent actions they disagree with or perpetuate ones they do agree with. Social contract theory.

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

#637

Post by steve76 »

TravHatesMe wrote: post #163
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…

Bit of a tangent: I read the article to my wife and she mentioned that there is an episode of Grey's Anatomy where they wanted to perform a transplant of a pig's bowels but the Jewish (or Muslim?) lady refused. Interesting how one might choose to their faith over their life.

[dead]

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

#638

Post by suifbwish »

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.

Empathy does not result in anyone trying to end suffering of another being but the own personal suffering they have through the empathetic connection, and thus they seek to end the suffering of others only because it causes them to suffer.

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

#639

Post by suifbwish »

nsonha wrote: post #530
snovv_crash wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

However since the individual being born is not making the choice, it falls to the individual or group benefitting from the individual being born into the circumstance you described. Universal morality is a form of anthropomorphization, or projecting human characteristics onto an amoral natural world.

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

#640

Post by suifbwish »

zizee wrote: post #408
dexwiz wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Sure, perhaps it can be justified by the greater good, but that should not preclude feeling sorry for the animal in question.

It’s perfectly fine to feel sorry for the animal but there is no moral obligation for others to do so.
Post reply on HN