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

431–440 of 731 posts

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

#431

Post by metta2uall »

deltaonefour wrote: post #392
_nothing wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chasing an animal down, killing it, and eating it is in my opinion a significantly different activity than subjecting it to thirty likely-invasive procedures over the course of its life and then continuing to perform experiments on its dead body. Not saying it's more or less morally questionable, but significantly different. Evolutionary biology is overused as justification for human behavior. We were not "designed"…

>Evolutionary biology is overused as justification for human behavior. Let me get one thing straight. I am not justifying anything. My angle is, what's the point? Don't justify anything at all. We're evil for killing, so be it. I am looking at it from a completely dispassionate angle. I do not need to somehow merge and mutate my moral framework to make it work with the existing reality. >We were not "designed" to eat…

I think a more accurate phrasing is that we're "designed" by natural section to _optionally_ eat meat. Large numbers of people like many Hindus, Mahayana Buddhists, and now vegans don't eat meat and can live healthily. By the way, most meat-eaters utilise fire when processing the meat - something that was invented - rather similarly to how Vitamin B12 supplements have been invented and now help vegans.

Re. empathy - I very much doubt it's to our detriment when one of the main threats to our survival is lack of empathy leading to extinction-causing wars - something that may have already destroyed previous intelligent civilisations around the universe. Even with medical experiments on animals - if they were much reduced I think this would likely lead to more effort & subsequent innovations in replacement technologies like cell cultures & simulations - which could lead to faster medical breakthroughs than if we continue on the current animal-testing business-as-usual trajectory.

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

#432

Post by weregiraffe »

jorvi wrote: post #422
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…

> The number of experiments may sound barbaric on the surface, but it was to reduce the overall number of pigs used in trials. You should read ‘ The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas’.

‘The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas into a different Omelas with a lot more suffering children’

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

#434

Post by Scarblac »

deltaonefour wrote: post #401
_nothing wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I already said this in a different comment, but the difference is that we were not designed while a Swiss army knife was. Design implies intent— it implies that something was developed for a purpose, that it's supposed to be used in a certain way. Whether or not I use the corkscrew on my Swiss army knife doesn't change the fact that someone built the corkscrew for the purpose of opening corked bottles. The enzymes/fe…

> 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…

It means that our ancestors happened to survive by eating meat, among other things, and produced us. Nothing more.

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

#435

Post by conductr »

arcticbull wrote: post #206
version_five wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People have co-evolved with dogs as companions for a long time. And many people have fond memories of dogs and experience with them as part of a family. This is not generally true of pigs even if their hearts are closer to ours. Even as someone who doesn't like dogs, I find the idea of harming one (even with a good reason) worse than harming a pig.

Pigs are more intelligent and equally social. Humane society says they're as smart as 3 year old children. [1] Apparently tests show they've got about the same problem solving skills as chimps. [1] https://www.humanesociety.org/animals/pigs

I believe GP post still holds up since it was regarding companionship and human emotions. It said nothing of pig intelligence.

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

#436

Post by bendbro »

graderjs wrote: post #425
scoopertrooper wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can accept humans can eat helpless intelligent creatures, then the fact we perform ethics-reviewed anesthetised procedures and later dissect the same animals really shouldn't keep you up at night.

Quoted post unavailable.

You suggest someone can't "understand", "reduce", or "invalidate" another's morals, but these quotes below from you contradict that.

> ... I really think we need to revise ...

> ... I'm not saying we need to be vegans ...

> ... improving how we talk think and act about ...

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

#437

Post by conductr »

tombert wrote: post #131
lupire wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weird to have a a scientist behaving so irrationally regarding pigs vs dogs, especially because the pig was chosen for its likeness to a human.

I was about to say, aren't pigs smarter than dogs generally? Seems like a strange line to draw.

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.

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

#438

Post by xwdv »

MikeTheGreat wrote: post #354
xwdv wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can live indefinitely with animal valves though they may need to be replaced every 15 years or so. It’a a fairly straightforward minimally invasive procedure though.

Wait, what? Are you saying that replacing a valve in your heart is "a fairly straightforward minimally invasive procedure"?

Yes, you can probably be in and out same day or maybe the next day.

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

#439

Post by radu_floricica »

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.

If this happens, I hope it happens decades after we switch to factory produced meat.

There is a multiple orders of magnitude more benefit from using animals for medical research and medical care than from using them as food. I realize our psychology makes us empathize with whatever case we have in front of us right now, but when it comes to orders of magnitude difference and human lives, I'd much prefer we better control our empathy.

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

#440

Post by robotresearcher »

deltaonefour wrote: post #389
codebolt wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human beings are also designed for aggression towards each other, yet we generally try to control those parts of our 'savage nature' in modern society. Torturing defenseless animals is not an inescapable facet of human nature. It's something we choose to do and be OK with.

>Human beings are also designed for aggression towards each other, yet we generally try to control those parts of our 'savage nature' in modern society. No. There is no evolutionary benefit for raw aggression. Raw aggression appears during times of limited resources where aggression contributes to survival. Humans as all living things, are designed to survive and use any means to achieve it. Given minimal resources w…

> There is no evolutionary benefit for raw aggression. Raw aggression appears during times of limited resources where aggression contributes to survival.

Those sentences seem to contradict each other very directly.

Post reply on HN