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Pigs with Human Genes
LGRiske writes "In a step toward creating herds of pigs that could provide organs for transplanting into humans, Italian researchers manipulated swine sperm to make an animal strain that carries human genes in the heart, liver and kidneys."
I believe its acceptable to harvest pigs for organs, since we already harvest them for food. Since we're willing to butcher them and eat them, there shouldn't be any ethical objection to butchering them for parts.
On the other hand, we don't eat humans. And somehow, I don't think it would be economically viable to start breeding humans with pig organs, so we could eat them. Thus, you've run into a mental block that people will associate with the progress of growing humans for parts.
Now if you suggested breeding pigs with human organs simply for consumption, you'd probably be forbidden by law, on the grounds that its too much like cannibalism.
Basically, if most people would consider eating it, its acceptable to farm and butcher it for whatever purpose you like, especially if it helps humans. On the other hand, if you don't normally eat the thing, I wouldn't suggest trying to use it as a host for organs.
Wouldnt it be "easier" to just have a replacement human with say, no brain (so its not "really" a clone) living assisted by machines waiting for its parts to be harvested?
That's pretty much what this is, but instead of using expensive, complicated machines to keep the organs alive we use cheap, simple pigs.
I am a Karma Library.
All cells in the body carry on their outer membranes molecules that identify them as being part of the body. now finding all these genes, cloning them all into pig cells AND removing all native pig recognition molecules would be the way to go, WERE IT NOT that the pig itself would not be viable 'cause its own cells are not recognized anymore. any slight amount of alien molecules left causes a massive attack of the host immunologic system (white blood cells etc). it is possible to overcome this _PARTIALLY_ by weakening the immunosystem with chemicals.
I reseached the possibilities of pig organ usage for transplantation.. believe me, it might be possible some day, but that day is WAY ahead of us.
the alternative of growing new organs from stem cells (ie programming from the ground up) is up to now a much more promising than modifying pigs (ie patch core components of a massive _unknown_ project while porting it to another OS)
my 2 eurocents
Pigs, like many species, have a large number of resident viruses, particularly retroviruses. They and the pigs are well-adapted for each other, and the pigs show little to no ill effect. Some of them are likely so benign to the pigs that we have no idea that they're there. (Indeed, many of these are revealed only by genetic analysis.)
But then what do we want to do? Stick a pig organ in Grandma to save her life, or at least prolong it for a while? So, we've got a person who was unhealthy to begin with, we introduce dozens of foreign viruses directly into the body, and, to top it all off, we completely suppress the immune system so that the organ isn't rejected. I'm not sure that I can even imagine a a scenario more favorable for a virus to make the species jump. And if one did, you can bet that we wouldn't have much natural resistance to it...