What if he had kids now?
They transplanted a heart, not testes.
Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly
371–380 of 527 posts
Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly
#372Earlier quoted context omitted.
> regulate diagnostic tests If only there hadn't been a major high profile collapse of a fraudulent diagnostic test company recently.
The hostility towards FDA on HN is incredible. I wouldn't trust some VC funded startup bros with anything related to medicine at all without having passed every single regulatory board tangentially related to whatever they are doing, even more so after Theranos.
It's not like "enforce more" vs. "enforce less" is the only axis along which the behaviour of a government agency can be tweaked.
For an extreme example, imagine you had a court system that picks 100 people at random to execute each year (most of whom are naturally innocent). Then, you have a crime wave. Would you say that the solution to this problem would be that the courts need to be tougher? ...more lenient? Both seem quite obviously wrong: being more lenient would solve the problem of innocents getting executed but do nothing about crime, being tougher would only trivially solve the problem of crime near the limit point where everyone is executed. However, being hostile towards such a court system seems quite appropriate.
Likewise, I don't think Theranos is sufficient evidence that the FDA needs to simply be stricter, nor is the difficulty of getting approval for pig hearts sufficient evidence that the FDA needs to be more lenient. Instead, taken together the two imply that the FDA needs to be more specific at blocking the bad therapies and allowing the good ones - in other words, it simply needs to get better at its job. Is this not something we can demand of the government?
Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly
#373Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, but if I were a cat I wouldn't lick my own anus and yet cats happily do that - my opinion on what I would or wouldn't like as a cat is not really relevant. My point is - we are not cats, and cats aren't humans. They deserve good treatment, respect and all the love they can get - but at the end of the day they are not humans and should not be treated as such.
How would you clean your anus if you were a cat? Suppose a cat had fingers, and basic language ability. Would you still feel the same way? Suppose we didn't slaughter the other five proto-human species (Neanderthals et al). Would you still feel the same way? The line gets blurrier the more you think it over.
I reject the notion that you can clean anything by licking it.
Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly
#374Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems almost like you didn't make any effort to understand what I wrote. Sigh. My interpretation is not uncharitable, it's precisely the same argument you are making, and, to me, it makes no sense - as shown by my examples. Clearly, you have no problem with fines for thieves and prison for kidnappers, and why should you - so you agree with me. I think the resolution to the problem of 'punishment' is exactly the one y…
Really? But I just said this: > But at the same time, I get your point of view. I mean, what that means we can't punish anyone? Because we don't want to seem bad, by pushing back against the bad people? Are you saying we just turn the other cheek? That's crazy. > Yeah, I get that...But I think it's important...You do some crime, and I say, "I have to get back at you". But no, I'm the one that has to be moral. Individ…
Ah, I see where you're confused by your own writing, but I'd be happy to spell it out slower, so that you can understand [0]: you write "I get your point of view", and you mistake making that statement with the factuality of it.
And let me help you with another thing you are confused about [0]. So, in essence your argument is that I am wrong because I am answering to what you wrote rather than what you thought you wrote or wish you wrote, and that's what you call 'uncharitable'.
The main problem with your 'argument' is that you make absolute statements, but then are not able to back them up, getting upset when someone points that out. It's simple engineering practice to check how things hold up at the limits. Not 'punishing' someone with the same thing they did does not hold up in the limits of simple wrongdoings, e.g. taking away some property. What this should tell you is not that you require a more charitable interpretation and special rules for the fringes to rescue your argument, but maybe that the overall logic is flawed. And it is: as I wrote in the other comment, the simple truth is that the death penalty is a different beast altogether.
[0] What's with that condescending tone with all your replies? Can you not simply make a statement that stands on its own two feet?
Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly
#375Earlier quoted context omitted.
> regulate diagnostic tests If only there hadn't been a major high profile collapse of a fraudulent diagnostic test company recently.
The hostility towards FDA on HN is incredible. I wouldn't trust some VC funded startup bros with anything related to medicine at all without having passed every single regulatory board tangentially related to whatever they are doing, even more so after Theranos.
On the other hand, countless lives would have been saved had we started using the Covid vaccine before the FDA got around to authorizing it. Those VC-funded startup bros at Moderna really could have moved a lot faster without the government’s interference.
Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly
#376Earlier quoted context omitted.
So, thieves cannot be fined for their crimes (take their money after they took someone else's), kidnappers cannot go to jail (take their freedom after they took someone else's) - because it would undermine, what exactly? That makes no sense.
Note that graderjs is not saying that there could not be other morally justifiable reasons for calling for the death of someone. What they were saying is specifically that arguing that someone who takes a life should be punished in a life ending way because of the severity of taking a life is undermining that argument's own central claim of the severity of taking a life by at the same time arguing for ending a life.…
The analogy is not flawed because the comments you made are precisely my point: it's not a general, fundamental, moral conundrum -- it's that the death penalty is its own special beast. Graderjs argues from a general perspective using the example, but not limiting his arguments to, the death penalty. And then, as you and I point out, it simply does not hold up. It's the severity that makes it stand out, not the overall act of 'are we moral if we do the same thing'.
Graderjs also makes no argument about other justifications of 'punishment', and, again, I'm with you. Note that I often write 'punishment' in quotation marks. I don't believe (and the numbers between countries support that) that revenge is a productive reaction from a society.
Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly
#377I'm a full on speciesist. let's do more of this. since we're already eating them I feel like this even a more reasonable usage of their lives. can we do kidneys next please? we can basically shut down most dialysis clinics after that.
I'm vegetarian and have no issue with using animals for medical purposes like this. It's one thing to kill for pleasure as in fur, cosmetics and food, but quite another to kill an animal to save a human life. I am pretty sure even most vegans would be happy to accept an animal death to save their own life, even a pet. Similarly, I guess, I was vegan but I had to stop that diet as it caused severe health problems for…
Once you kill the pig for its heart and kidneys, you might as well eat it. Better than letting the nutritional value of the meat go to waste.
That wouldn't be a lot of pigs, true, and a pork chop of that origin would be pretty expensive.
Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly
#378Earlier 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.
The problems of aging would creep on them later, but it isn't as if happy, stress free and well fed people stay healthy forever.
Aging is a process that affects everyone, the only thing that you can influence a bit is speed thereof.
Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly
#379Earlier quoted context omitted.
> regulate diagnostic tests If only there hadn't been a major high profile collapse of a fraudulent diagnostic test company recently.
The hostility towards FDA on HN is incredible. I wouldn't trust some VC funded startup bros with anything related to medicine at all without having passed every single regulatory board tangentially related to whatever they are doing, even more so after Theranos.
Getting regulation "just right" is a complicated process, people differ in their risk tolerance, and it isn't clear to me at all that "more powers to X" is always the right answer.
Re: Two weeks later David Bennett is alive, his pig’s heart beating soundly
#380I've said this before here and got downvoted for it, but bioethicists as a profession are responsible for more death than pretty much anything else I can quickly think of. People are dying from heart disease all the time, very often in predictable conditions. Literally millions every year. Statistically this means we should hear about such failed procedures many many more times than we do now - there is literally no…
> only one failed (harmlessly!)
They (CureVac) failed because they started trials too late, and by then the Delta variant was going around and caused the numbers to not look as good as Pfizer and Moderna's. v If you look back, it's a real shame, because Pfizer's and Moderna's Delta numbers are no better than CureVac's.
[Also, speaking completely anecdotally, but I'm in that clinical trial and thus a recipient of 2 CureVac shots and 2 Moderna shots. I have yet to catch Covid despite taking nearly zero precautions and a lot of high risk contacts. And yes, I get tested constantly. There might be something more interesting yet to discover about this.]