A month after a pig heart transplant, man works to regain strength with no rejection so far::It’s been a month since a Maryland man became the second person to receive a transplanted heart from a pig — and hospital video released Friday shows he’s working hard to recover.
Growing genetically modified pigs with human-like hearts to save human lives? The ethics of that are a bit complicated, but from a STEM perspective it’s a really fascinating idea. What a time to be alive.
There’s nothing ethically wrong with this until we consider eating meat unethical. As a society, we’re nowhere near that.
If you personally don’t want to use this, you can opt out.
You’re breeding and killing an animal for its organs, and some would find that unethical. But you are doing it to save a human life, so it’s a bit of a trolley problem I suppose.
It’s not less ethical than doing it for meat, is my point.
Especially since a pig raised for organ transplant probably has way better living conditions than a pig raised for meat in an industrial farm.
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I’d argue it’s more ethical than meat. You can live a healthy life without meat (provided you’re still getting your protein and B12). You’re kinda dead without a heart.
I agree, while we’re eating meat, feels strange to call the ethics of pig heart harvesting into question.
Except eating meat doesn’t save lives
That’s literally what the meat industry is though. I guess in americanized cultures more of the animal is seen as waste parts rather than food, but those probably become hot dogs anyways.
Anyways, the way I see it meat for eating, and even pig organ transplants are both raising a pig to put parts of its body into a human’s body.
Is it different from breeding and killing an animal to eat it?
I would argue it’s more ethically defendable. There are lots of meatless alternatives to eat. A viable hearts for transplant are scarce and if you need one then you NEED one.
eating meat is unethical
capitalism doesnt care for ethics if government banned meat and news articles said moderately disparaging things about it for a week the entirety of the US would likely change their stance
because everyone is an AI that parrots what (they think) smarter people say
if you think im wrong lets talk about how people feel about drugs or literally any problem thats sensationalized. you idiots will believe anything if the news says it.
Ethics are not an absolute and are defined by the society in which they occur.
YOU think it’s unethical. I happen to agree. We are in the minority.
And all of that is irrelevant to my point, which is that growing animals for organs is not LESS ethical than growing them for meat, and everyone seems fine with that.
As much as I love animals (more than most people I meet), as a species we must value human life over animal life to some extent. Suffering for corporate exploitation? No, that’s cruel and evil. Minimal suffering in an organism to save a human life? I wish there was a way to keep it from being sentient (so no suffering is felt), but I believe it’s a fair trade for a human life. But yes, we must always strive to minimize the suffering we cause.
Are you vegan?
Edit: ahh the sweet sweet cognitive dissonance lol
I’m not vegan, though I do recognize the issues. I have reduced my meat intake, but I’m not at zero. I’m perfectly aware I’m a hypocrite, but it doesn’t make the claim above (which I agree with but did not author) any less accurate.
So what is true of the pig that if it was also true of the human would make it morally okay to kill the human for their organs?
this is the"name the trait" line of argument and it suffers from the line-drawing fallacy.
So you can’t answer the question, got it.
there are many stops on the spectrum from pig to human, and an inability to draw a specific distinguishing line doesn’t change the fact that there is a big difference between humans and pigs.
It’s mostly about how cruely we treat food animals normally that I have an issue with. Hunting, for example, I view as a morally acceptable method to get meat. It’s natural and the animal is living a life as a natural animal should. If the pig isn’t raised cruely, I think raising them to help a person live a life is a moral good. That person took a lot of resources to get where they are, and they have the potential to do a lot of good. The pig did not take nearly as many resources to raise and does not have much, if any, capacity to do good besides by dying. Whether they should exist at all is the real question, and I’d say probably yes, again if it isn’t cruel.
Is your answer to my previous question “Potential to do good”?
If a human person was sufficiently mentally disabled to have as much or less potential to do good as the pig, would it then be morally ok to kill that person and harvest their organs?
don’t compare the mentally disabled to animals
Yeah, probably, or at least similarly equally moral. For example if they’re born without a brain, which does happen, they don’t meet the definition most people use for personhood. I don’t see what the difference would be other than they have human DNA and look similar to us, but why should that matter?
I definitely don’t value humans enough to use an animal as an incubator for a heart. It’s cruel and extremely unethical. Nothing will ever convince me otherwise that animals don’t also deserve life just the same as humans.
All animals under all circumstances?
If I’m driving down the road, and a squirrel runs out of nowhere, and I can either hit it or jerk the wheel and fly off the road, I risk that my car will save me, because it will for sure kill the squirrel?
What if you have a child born with a heart issue that will kill it, and there is an option to euthanize a pig that will likely save your child child life, you would let your child die in lieu of the pig?
Yea, I’ma call bullshit on that one. It’s good that you value the lives of all creatures, and you think that you value them equally to humans, but you’re lying to yourself.
Honestly that’s kinda the problem I have with a lot of animal activities you have some that try their best like sheltering stray cats and dogs then you have pita activists that seem to think we must kill humans to make way for our animal overlords
You can say whatever you want. I never said it was a popular opinion. Every single time it comes up people say the same things, make the same arguments.
I know it’s hard to believe, but not everyone shares your belief system.
So you’re saying you’d sacrifice your vehicle and life for a squirrel in the road?
I’ve slammed on my brakes before to avoid hitting an animal. What’s so controversial about that?
In this hypothetical situation, you don’t have enough time to stop. 65 mph down the hwy, 30 yards in front of you. One of you has to go. Who’s it gonna be?
Or we can go back to the other example… You would let your child suffer and die from a heart condition instead of giving them a chance to survive, and all that’s needed is the life of a single pig. Keep in mind, pigs live about 15-20 and people live generally 65+ years. So point blank, would you trade your kid’s life for that of a pig’s?
That’s good for your beliefs, but a useless argument for anyone who eats meat. Raising and slaughtering a pig to provide a human a heart is even more useful than raising one for its meat, and chances are that the one raised for its heart was taken much better care of before being killed.
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This only really tracks if you’re vegan, which you may be. But if we slaughter a million pigs for meat is that really any different? We already incubate them for bacon, are you really so against this that you’d let a family member die than slaughter a pig for its heart?
Even as a vegan, it’s pretty up in the air imo. It’s well established that if your life saving medication contains animal products, you take the medication. This is more complicated for sure, but an argument can probably be made. I’m not sure what I feel about it.
He’s not that against it. He’s just posturing online. Very few people, maybe 0.1%, would choose a pig’s life over their grandmother’s. (No I don’t care if your grandma was a dick. Pick another beloved family member or friend.)
I hope we get to mass manufacturing lab grown hearts quickly. No need to harm sentients.
1 Star Trek replicator please!
Easy just grow cabbages with human-like hearts to appease the vegans.
See ? show this to the next person who says ‘ACAB’
I doubt this pig opted-in to the donation. If it wasn’t a choice, it doesn’t make them good.
It’s a joke, the OP is implying that the pig that “donated” the heart was a cop.
I’m aware.
Real life zombie pigman
We all know he has a gold sword somewhere in his house.
Same guy gonna rush to the doctor after his heart rate hits 200 while staring at some mud
Has he gained any pig-like superpowers so far?
“Spider Pig, Spider Pig, Does whatever a Spider Pig does…”
I’m surprised and mildly disappointed no one else commented this.
Why pig hearts? Is it just a size issue?
Pig organs are approximately the same size and configuration as human ones. They also share a very similar immune system and biochemistry. We also have experience breeding and genetically modifying them. This makes them the easiest option to modify for human use. Still not easy, but easiest.
Oh so animal farm was literal?
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The pig is the result of a lot of selective breeding. It’s pure fluke that it matches well enough to use their organs. The wild boar is the ancestor of the pig, and it’s less suited to organ use.
Technically the wild boar and the pig have the same ancestors but we changed the environment for the pig and bread selectively while the environment of the wild boar only changed slightly so natural selection probably didn’t need to change as much as we did to the pig to be adapted to the environmental changes of today.
Bird hearts are too fowl.
Unexpected Lol. Well done.
Dammit Dad. Fine, take my angry upvote.
Skill issue, actually
I WAWNT DAYT ONE!
South Park certainly didn’t hold back on that episode 😂
Man, and I thought I had bacon in my heart
Jim haggerty? You survived?
The Maryland team last year performed the world’s first transplant of a heart from a genetically altered pig into another dying man.
What is this sentence? The word “another” implies either this man wasn’t the first or that a “genetically altered pig” is legally considered dying man.
The man in the first four paragraphs of the article, Lawrence Faucette, is the second dying man to receive a genetically modified pig heart. The first dying man, referred to in your quote, only survived two months but the heart failed, possibly due to a virus in the heart that came from the pig.
Thank you for your explanation. I did not follow correctly.
