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Scientists attempting to harvest human organs in pigs create human-pig embryo

The Englanderish

The Englanderish

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Article:
Researchers in California have been trying to grow human organs inside pigs in attempt to tackle donor shortage.

Scientists trying to grow human organs inside pigs in an attempt to tackle a shortage of donors have successfully created part-human, part-pig embryos.

Researchers at the University of California, Davis combined human stem cells and pig DNA and allowed the embryos to mature for 28 days, before terminating the experiment and analysing the tissue.

They believe the animals, which if they had been carried to term would have developed a human internal organ, but would have looked and behaved like any other pig. The goal is that in the future, similar animals could potentially act as a ready source of organs for life-saving transplants.


The Rani would salivate over this.

I feel this could provoke some good discussion, so here we are.

This... is... amazing! Just... just... wow. From both a scientific standpoint and a lifesaving standpoint this is incredible news!

Excuse me while I geek out over this.
 
Pigs enhanced with human DNA to get donor organs?

Wasn't there a horror story about monkeys with human organs and brains who were held captive and slaughtered for the benefit of mankind? Pretty sure I heard someone talking about it once, but never read myself...
 
Vindictus said:
Pigs enhanced with human DNA to get donor organs?

Wasn't there a horror story about monkeys with human organs and brains who were held captive and slaughtered for the benefit of mankind? Pretty sure I heard someone talking about it once, but never read myself...
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It was also in the plot of a GiTS episode.

Android Waifu's when?
 
As long as they are super careful about avoiding changes to the brain, this could be useful.


Stem cells migrate in weird ways during prenatal development so that is something to watch out for.
 
Actually I remember a Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex standalone episode that had this tech in the background... and surprisingly enough the entire episode was essentially good minded medical interns wanting to help people who require organs[/quote]. Hell the man who ran the company sold his body and put his brain in a Jason type 'bot.
 
Novus Ordo Mundi said:
What are the naturalist again?
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Essentially, people who advocate the naturalist fallacy - "it's natural, therefore automatically good. It's 'unnatural' therefore automatically bad" - nevermind that people right now are already living in very unnatural circumstances. 'Natural' is whatever you grow up with, of course, but they don't realize that.

Bioconservative is in fact the established term for it, but really, as far as I'm concerned there is nothing to bioconservatism than the naturalist fallacy.
 
I want animal human hybrids. What are we scared of? Create them and wait for them to fight for their rights. If they'll even fight, of course.
 
Kolper said:
I want animal human hybrids. What are we scared of? Create them and wait for them to fight for their rights. If they'll even fight, of course.
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Dude, what? :wtf:

You shouldn't have rights because you fought for them. You should have rights, period. It's just that sometimes the fight is an unfortunate necessity. That's the point of rights: They aren't given out because you deserved them or earned them. They are considered intrinsic to people.
 
Susano said:
Dude, what? :wtf:

You shouldn't have rights because you fought for them. You should have rights, period. It's just that sometimes the fight is an unfortunate necessity. That's the point of rights: They aren't given out because you deserved them or earned them. They are considered intrinsic to people.
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In a fantasy world, yes. But every right enjoyed by humans in this period has been reached through bloody fights or protests, which is still fighting, if peacefully. In truth, rights are something that are given to us, they are not intrinsic to us. You'll not find areas of the brain dedicated to having rights, nor will you find a natural law written behind a waterfall. You have to fight to carve what you want into society so that people will think it's actually intrinsic.
 
Kolper said:
In a fantasy world, yes. But every right enjoyed by humans in this period has been reached through bloody fights or protests, which is still fighting, if peacefully. In truth, rights are something that are given to us, they are not intrinsic to us. You'll not find areas of the brain dedicated to having rights, nor will you find a natural law written behind a waterfall. You have to fight to carve what you want into society so that people will think it's actually intrinsic.
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That's not the point, though. You're conflating "is" with "ought". What you say is how the world is, and that is why I wrote "are considered intrinsic", but that says nothing about how it ought to be - and ethics are all about "ought". People should have rights, period. Fights for those are merely sometimes unfortunately necessary practical requierements, not tests or achievements or something for which we dole out rewards. They shouldn't be idealized. Ideally, there should be no such fights necessary.

So an "ethical" logic of "We can exploit them, as long as they are not fighting" is faulty and simply immoral.
 
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Huh. There was actually a fiction book we had to read as part of A-Level English Language; Pig-Heart Boy or something like that. Featured a kid who got a heart transplant where said replacement heart was grown in a pig by exactly this method.

So er... I may or may not have gone 'wait we weren't already doing this?' when I heard the news <_<

(for the curious, the book was mostly about people's reactions to him being "pig heart boy" - aka "people are dicks, the obligatory literary lesson" - rather than the medical side of things)
 
Susano said:
That's not the point, though. You're conflating "is" with "ought". What you say is how the world is, and that is why I wrote "are considered intrinsic", but that says nothing about how it ought to be - and ethics are all about "ought". People should have rights, period. Fights for those are merely sometimes unfortunately necessary practical requierements, not tests or achievements or something for which we dole out rewards. They shouldn't be idealized. Ideally, there should be no such fights necessary.

So an "ethical" logic of "We can exploit them, as long as they are not fighting" is faulty and simply immoral.
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I'm not saying it's not immoral, I'm saying morality itself is something we have created, and it's not something that actually touches anything if not theorerically.
 
Susano said:
You said it would be okay. So, yes, you are actually saying it would not be immoral. That is kinda what morality means.
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Not really. I don't believe morality is anything but a quality people give to reality, a theory which is build on the reflection of reality and blah blah blah. Point is, even if it is immoral, that's how it is. Is it right that we have to fight for our rights? No. But do we have to fight for them? Yes.

I'm not advocating an amoral system of values, to be clear. But I don't think it's realistic to expect change without fights.
 
Kolper said:
But I'm not arguing that humans have to stop fighting for animal rights if they become human-like. I don't see what's immoral here?
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The very fact that you are, essentially, arguing for creating sapient slaves, or at least a sapient class of disenfranchised people (otherwise there'd be nothing to fight for). If they're sapient, they should have human and civil rights, of course. From the beginning. With no "fights" required.
 
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