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Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

irishtimes.com

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Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#291

Post by vidarh »

geoduck14 wrote: post #118
burrows wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The key principle in medicine is to treat anyone who is sick, regardless of who they are. The victims family is saying “Our principle is that people who stab Ed should not get a heart, therefore David should not get a heart.” The doctor is saying “Our principle is that we don’t use the patient’s past violence or convictions to determine whether they should get a heart or not, so the stabbing doesn’t disqualify Davi…

>The doctor is saying “Our principle is that we don’t use the patient’s past violence or convictions to determine whether they should get a heart or not, so the stabbing doesn’t disqualify David.” >Neither party can offer a valid argument as to why their principle is true, because both of their principles are normative. I'm pretty sure someone mentioned that the Dr's pov is that the doctors don't punish crime. Someon…

Exactly. If the law was changed to allow judges to impose "denial of transplants" as a punishment, then one might consider that a good or bad thing, but in that case it would be the courts not the doctors who makes the determination, and the legislative who'd be ultimately responsible for the rule existing.

As long as there is no such law, it's not for doctors to impose such restrictions.

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#293

Post by skissane »

burrows wrote: post #235
skissane wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying that, a valid deductive argument with a normative conclusion must either have a normative premise, or else rely on a logic whose inference rules permit normative statements to be inferred from non-normative ones. I agree with you there. But you haven't explained how this (obviously true) statement is relevant to the original discussion, about the morality of providing life-saving medical treatment to p…

> But you haven't explained how this (obviously true) statement is relevant to the original discussion, about the morality of providing life-saving medical treatment to perpetrators of serious crimes. My original point was in response to the claim that “the key principle in medicine is to treat anyone who is sick, regardless of who they are”. I took this to be an ought and wanted to point out that its truth isn’t est…

That textbook definition of “valid” only applies to purely deductive arguments. Outside of mathematics, most arguments humans make have a significant non-deductive component (inductive and/or abductive). So, unless we assume that moral reasoning is closer to mathematical reasoning than to the kinds of reasoning we normally use in the sciences and humanities-a very dubious assumption-the formal concept of “validity” you are invoking has rather limited relevance to morality. That’s why I read your statement as intending “valid” informally rather than formally, since in its informal sense the term is not restricted to purely deductive arguments; and informally it is very much a normative concept (formally, I think it has multiple formal senses, some of which contain more normativity than others)

I think your overall point is, you are expressing scepticism about claims to know the truth of some particular moral proposition, grounded in a more general scepticism of the possibility of any moral knowledge at all.

I think that kind of general moral scepticism is (usually) a form of normative scepticism. The big problem I see with normative scepticism, is that attempts to argue for it logically and rationally turn out to be self-refuting, because logic and rationality are themselves normative concepts. Furthermore, if one understands knowledge as having a normative component, normative scepticism collapses into radical scepticism (there is no such thing as knowledge), which obviously ought to be rejected.

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#296

Post by newaccount74 »

sdenton4 wrote: post #13
oneepic wrote: post #4

Would have been interesting to hear what the feeling was like 2 weeks later (ie lethargic? walking alright? breathing well?) TFA only says he's alive "with his new heart beating soundly", which could mean a lot of things.

I think two weeks after heart surgery is never fun... A few days ago I noted that recovering from having your sternum broken open takes 6-8 weeks to be able to resume daily basic activities under the best circumstances.

Two weeks after the surgery he probably still has plastic hoses sucking fluid from his thorax and he can maybe sit up with assistance.

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#297

Post by 0xedd »

hallway_monitor wrote: post #70
jostmey wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, the FDA will insert itself to regulate medicine wherever it can. For example, the FDA has been pushing to regulate diagnostic tests as medical devices. It’s funny how Americans surrender medical autonomy to the government but draw a strict line in the sand in other issues

If there was indeed a way to pull back the scope and power granted to the government I think a lot of us Americans would love to hear about it. The way it is, it seems like the US government is an unstoppable machine that will grow until it destroys itself.

One of the amendments is supposed to shield you from tyranny. But, going down a less risky path, I'd vote (no pun) for migration. My parents migrated away from a country that trades in humans to this day, in full view of the gov, and i can't be thankful enough.

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#298

Post by account42 »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #279
Buttons840 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then the next step is to do research showing that pigs that are happy, stress free, and eat a good diet produce organs that are better for transplant. If so, this might be one of the most ethical animal industries.

Maybe we could grow happy, stress free and well fed human beings. Then we wouldn't need so many transplants in the first place.

But happy, stress free and well fed pigs are probably cheaper.

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#299

Post by zo1 »

roywiggins wrote: post #133
dkjaudyeqooe wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The next logical step is to breed pigs with organs that especially suit humans, maybe with some genetic engineering to optimise them. I really can't see anyone needing an organ complaining that they're GMO. As long as we treat animals well while they're alive (and why wouldn't you, you want high quality low stress organs) then there's really no limit here, morally.

That's what they've done here, this are GMO pigs designed to be more compatible with human biology. > The heart transplanted into Mr. Bennett came from a genetically altered pig provided by Revivicor, a regenerative medicine company based in Blacksburg, Va. > The pig had 10 genetic modifications. Four genes were knocked out, or inactivated, including one that encodes a molecule that causes an aggressive human rejecti…

Wow, great info. Very low-key and subtle, but the future is arriving slowly, one pig gene modification at a time!

Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly

#300

Post by mlindner »

jostmey wrote: post #8
phnofive wrote: post #2

Discussed here fifteen days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29882912 Not a huge update but an interesting discussion of FDA approval; can the FDA actually stop or sanction experimental procedures like this?

Yes, the FDA will insert itself to regulate medicine wherever it can. For example, the FDA has been pushing to regulate diagnostic tests as medical devices. It’s funny how Americans surrender medical autonomy to the government but draw a strict line in the sand in other issues

That's actually why we're against it. Once they have the power it's basically impossible to recall it. There were many lines in the sand in the past and they keep being crossed.
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