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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."
To genetically modify humans so we have pig organs?
AFAIK rejection rates from human-human transplants are quite high, and the search for compatible donors quite hard.
What did they do to surpass these two ? did they made them 100% compatible with everyone ? are they only compatible with the original human dna-donor for the pigs?
Should we start saving now to have a pig with our replacement liver (for beer) and heart (fried chicken & ribs) ?
One step closer to animal farm...
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
This is no medicine issue, these are the voters that will ensure Silvio Berlusconi another term as president.
be sued for patent infringement?
This can't be Kosher.. How about Dolly spare parts?
R4NT.com - A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
If a living being has a human heart, a human liver, and human kidneys ... is it closer to pig or human ? i mean, when do we stop ? 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 ?
I am having a kind of matrixy vison rite now, only its humans that own the storage facility.
Scary
A guy with a heart problem caused by cholestrol getting a heart that came from a fat pig!
Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
Does this mean that a doctor can extract stem cells from me, clone a genetically designed pig with a suitable spare part for my body and then make a transplant without any complications and added toxins to prevent my body from rejecting the organ. In that case it sounds great
How do they address the issue that most cloned animals turn out sick, I don't want a sick organ in replacement for my allready sick organ!
Wait ... there is NO WAY all that glorious foods come from the same animal ... who do you take me for ?
Why genetically alter these helpless swine? Poor people are a perfectly good source of human organs, and the rejection rates are much lower. Lets try and save the pigs to make the bacon that necessitates the heart transplant that makes me strangle that bum down on 2nd Avenue. It's called the Circle of Life, folks.
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
Well, we use to get insulin straight from pigs so why not a whole pancreas?
Now if they harvest organs from these pigs with human DNA, does that mean we can't eat the leftovers without being cannibals?
Losing faith in humanity one person at a time.
4) Pigs are not kosher, and Jewish or Moslems would not be able to benefit from these advances. That's alienting 1/5 of the planet right there from being able to benefit from this.
If they don't want to benefit, they don't have to. It's not their decision what other people do, though. We don't ban the use of antibiotics for bacterial infections just because a few people might have religious beliefs against them.
5) We are tampering with God's work. Pigs were created perfect the way they are, as are we. Toying with genes is tampering with God's perfect work and SHOULD not be done under any sane principals.
We are God's work as well. If He did not want us to do this, he should not have made us capable. That's assuming He exists, but we'll stay away from that argument for today. Also, I don't think you can describe a pig as perfect. They do, as you mentioned earlier, roll around in their own feces.
I can't believe this story was reported here, let alone even on MSN.
Essentially, what these guys did was find a way to add a gene into a pig by messing with the sperm. This technique can't be used for removing genes, and can't replace genes. They can only add genes.
So they added DAF, because they say it helps fight rejection. Great. That is still a pig heart/liver/kidneys that you would be getting. There are lots of reasons that you can't transplant organs, including but not limited to:
1) Marker proteins. Your body won't even take organs from other people, let alone pigs. You'd have to replace pig markers with your own, which they cannot do.
2) Other surface proteins. They think they can ADD genes to do stuff to combat the sugars that pigs have on the surfaces of their cells. No removal, just throwing some gene for creating a suppressing chemical into the mix.
3) Cell morphology/DNA. Pig DNA is not human DNA. Pig cells are not human cells. Pig cells expressing "human genes" are closer, but when these cells replicate, when you get a virus, when something goes wrong.. what's gonna fix it? How do we know what will happen? Your body isn't built to have weird cells throw into it - that's why it destroys them. They have a long way to go before they even understand just membrane/cell surface reactions, and yet they wanna throw them into people.
To quote: "Lavitrano said that five to seven other pig genes will need to be silenced or replaced by human genes before useful organs could be harvested from the animals."
So tell me, how is this really news? The headline should have read "Scientists develop new but limited method for gene implantation." It's been done.
Quite an interesting article, despite the usual newscientist hyperbole: "The technique is very easy - you could do it on the farm." Umm yeah whatever.
Beggars can't be choosers!!! If you're on your deathbed, choose religion or choose science. Why must religion always try to impede progress?
"Ask me about Loom"
If you think the above comment is just a bad joke, you should have a quick read of this article...
I am a Karma Library.
Question at this point is... having pigs so close to human DNA does it constitute canibalisim if you have bacon at breakfast? let alone the crap McDonalds sells for breakfast...well I guess that may as well be.
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
1) the book "The Island of Doctor Moreau" comes to mind
2) I've seen people with less cleanliness than these pigs
3) so the suffering of the human who knows that another human MUST die for them to get better.
4) so are flu shots Kosher? they are based on egg protiens...and I doubt they are blessed.
5) so throw away your glasses, contacts, pacemakers, heart bypass surgery, vaccinations...I don't see in the bible (or any other religious text) where it says: "Thou shalt not genetically modify pigs so you can make replacement parts for humans"
I'm religious, and I've been taught that these animals have been put here to help mankind. even in genesis it talks about man having dominion over the animals. I'd have a problem if they said, "sorry we need to make a Mini-me of you and then kill him so you can live".
There comes a point when you just have to get off the pulpit.
THE WORLD IS GOING TO END!!!! eventually.
In the future we transplant horse and rabit genes into the human race...
No more need for vacuum pumps or viagra... Isn't the human race
heading for eternal happiness?
My girlfriend has been telling me for years that I'm a pig with human genes!
Dave
After reading this story, I noticed that this was the current /. qotd:
"It's interesting to think that many quite distinguished people have bodies similar to yours. "
ah.
"Teachers leave us kids alone
Pigs are not kosher, and Jewish or Moslems would not be able to benefit from these advances. That's alienting 1/5 of the planet right there from being able to benefit from this.
;), and I don't have a clue to boot.
IANAJ (first time I've ever used that particular acronym!), but I believe there is a doctrine which states that the importance of a human life far outweighs any of the kosher requirements -- for instance, it would be okay to eat pork if you were starving and that was the last item of food you had left. I imagine that a pig organ transplant would fall into the same classification.
As for muslims, IANAM
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
So.. Anyone care to wager how long it takes for a clerical error to allow one of these pigs to interbreed with a normal one, and produce offspring that ends up in your hotdog?
Oink!
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Besides, I'm a vegetarian.
Newsflash --
In other news today, scientists have created an artificial tofu-based organ, utilizing genetically engineered soybeans. The resulting organs are said to be whitish in color, and quote -- "rather soft and squishy, but low in fat and cholesterol free."
However, not all are pleased with the development. Vegetable rights activists have condemned the move as a violation of leguminous rights, pointing out that the modifications could inflict pain and suffering to the bushy crops, while Environmentalists and Anti-GMO protestors brought up the danger that the genetically engineered plants could spread out of control, leading to giant mutant soybeans roaming the streets, ravishing our daughters, and voting republican.
Other critics have more practical concerns. Said one scientist, "We haven't fully researched the possibility that vegitransplantation may introduce foreign viruses into the human population. My god, what would happen if the soybean leaf-spot virus were to break into the human population? What's more, the synthetic organs are bland and tasteless."
The research team countered, however, that most humans don't have leaves. "Besides, the organs will adsorb flavors from whoever they're transplanted into."
It is unknown when the organs will be suitable for use in humans. However, scientists believe they are already suitable for use in Spicy Ma-po Bean Curd and Buddha Delight Combo #6, pending approval by the FDA and Ming's Peking Imperial Inn.
--by Jesse Chang
What of the breeding of dogs, cattle, etc. that humans have been doing for centuries? A poodle
is a result of genetic engineering too.
Considered harmful.
Couple that with people's attitudes towards cloning, and what kind of chance do half-human pigs have?
Probably, although it wouldn't involve machines. One way this might work is as follows. A doctor would take a sample of your DNA and place it into an egg, creating a clone. That egg can be carried by a surrogate mother, or possibly implanted back into you (eggs can develop pretty much anywhere). When the organ that is needed has started to form, the embryo is removed, the developing organ is removed from the embryo, transplanted into you, and the rest of the embryo destroyed. When the transplanted organ has matured, your original defective organ is removed.
Some organs might need to develop long enough that it becomes a concern whether the developing embryo has some kind of higher brain activity. In that case, the doctor could make sure that the embryo develops without higher brain functions--it would start out ``brain dead'', roughly the same way at which we already harvest organs.
Where does one draw the line ethically? Hard to say. I find it difficult to see why human cloning should raise significant ethical problems as long as the clone does not develop higher brain functions.
Check this article in New Scientist. The researchers have found a way of increasing the effectiveness by a factor of 25 , and it is so easy that the technique could be done on a farm. Incredible. Smells like a revolution to me.
Bitter and proud of it.
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...
While there are justafiable fears about GM pigs, you missed them all. Here are the fears that actually have some basis in reality.
- GM pigs have both pig and human organs in them. This means that pig diseases will "learn" to infect human organs. This will result in pig diseases crossing the gap into the human world, possibly bringing new and dangerous plagues to us. I don't want hoof and mouth disease.
- Humans carrying GM organs can do the same thing. Any human carrying a GM pig organ should not eat pig mean - from a biological perspective, it is very close to cannibalism. While cannibalism is morally wrong for a variety of good reasons, there are good biological reasons it is wrong to. Mainly, eating food of your own biology sets you at risk for every disease that is festering in that corpse - diseases that would not be able to infect you if you were eating a more alien animal (like a chicken). The fact that pigs are already close to human biology is both why the research is possible, and why pork is never served rare (or at all to some religions). Being that much closer raises the risk even higher.
I think they should create a pig that creates O+ and every other type human compatible blood. Then we could have farms of blood donor pigs. The red cross could setup this ultra sterile facility just for harvesting blood.
As for the organs, I think this is a great step forward in being able to save peoples lives. However, my preferred method would be to grow cloned organs in vats. I think it would be cool if you could pay a company and they would take a blood sample from you and make a whole bunch of organs and put them in the deep freeze so when you need them, all the doctor has todo is make a phone call and ta-da, a copy of your existing heart shows up in 3 hours.
In a more far fetched idea...keeping with the idea that you could in the future transfer your brain to a computer, you could start cloning a copy of yourself and when the clones ready, transfer your essence into the new body! Though, how you could go the other direction really isn't clear.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
1) Nobody knows what might happen if these pigs somehow were released into the wild. A new species of 'super-pig' could potentionally cause wisespread damage if they escaped captivity
No.
2) Pigs are dirty, they typically roll in their own feces. This is not an appropriate animal to use for 'human' organs.
No. Having a dirty skin does not have any impact of the quality of the organ.
3) Using Pigs in such a fasion is inhumane. Nobody knows the pain these pigs could live with because we have set off certain gene sequences we should not have
Pigs that are used for food are treated very poorly, and go through great pains. If this really is a concern of yours, start by balking at that problem, which affects many orders of magnitude more pigs.
4) Pigs are not kosher, and Jewish or Moslems would not be able to benefit from these advances. That's alienting 1/5 of the planet right there from being able to benefit from this.
Is this a representative attitude of yours? If something cannot benefit everyone, then it should not be done? If such logic had been widely practiced we would still live in caves.
5) We are tampering with God's work. Pigs were created perfect the way they are, as are we. Toying with genes is tampering with God's perfect work and SHOULD not be done under any sane principals.
Pigs, the way they are, were created by man, through millenia of genetic manipulation (specifically, selective breeding). Sorry, the harm has already been done.
Tor