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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...
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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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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Quite an interesting article, despite the usual newscientist hyperbole: "The technique is very easy - you could do it on the farm." Umm yeah whatever.
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.
I don't normally eat pork, though.
I can't see them harvesting a chicken or turkey for human body parts, though.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
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?
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
I'm a vegetarian
Well, then I guess they're going to have to grow your organs on trees and bushes, huh?
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I can't see them harvesting a chicken or turkey for human body parts, though.
Well, one could be of some use if you ever needed a replacement cock.
(Sorry.)
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
Pig. Even if you managed to have a pig brain in an otherwise human body somehow, the result would still not be human. We don't know exactly what makes us human, but we do know that most of whatever it is resides in the brain.
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.
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...
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