National Review
Wesley
J. Smith

The human organ shortage is one of the great bioethical dilemmas of our time. Expanding the organ supply is a matter of life and death. But some proposed remedies — such as harvesting vital organs from the cognitively disabled as a form of euthanasia — are monstrous and would break every solemn promise made to the public about transplant medicine.

But there are ethical proposals too, such as making organs from one’s own stem cells. A big advance in this regard was recently achieved with pigs. From the ScienceNews story:

For the first time, researchers have created lungs in the lab and successfully transplanted them into pigs.

These bioengineered lungs . . . developed healthy blood vessels that allowed pigs to live for several weeks after surgery without medical complications. That’s a significant improvement from previous efforts: Lab-grown lungs implanted in rodents failed within hours, before the lungs could develop the complex blood vessel network necessary for long-term survival.

If the new procedure can be adapted for humans, with bioengineered lungs grown from a patient’s own cells, that could reduce the risk of organ rejection and slash wait times for organ transplants. In the United States, where about 1,500 people currently are on a waiting list for a lung transplant, the average wait is a few months.

The same kind of research efforts are being made with kidneys, hearts, and other organs. It’s still a long road ahead, but if this research proceeds to clinical practice, countless lives could be saved without compromising transplant ethics.

During the stem-cell controversy, President George W. Bush told us to never underestimate the imagination and skill of scientists. This experiment demonstrates his point precisely.

To which I would add, contrary to the lies of the animal-rights movement, never doubt the importance and efficacy of animal experiments in developing medicines and new life-saving techniques. This “grim good” research could not be accomplished on computers or cell lines. It requires living research subjects.

That leaves three choices: Sacrifice humans in the research; use pigs and other animals; or, don’t do the research.

The first choice would be unthinkable and the third would be derelict. I choose door No. 2.

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I choose door No. 2.

Indeed.

My neighbor (and my high-school friend from back in 1971 from South Cobb HS 125 miles south in Austell GA (who would have thunk it that we would be neighbors here in the Land Of Cleve Tennessee 20 years after we graduated ) just had a cow heart valve installed (he is still in Memorial Hospital in Chattanooga...having some issues, but he will hopefully be OK)...his wife is saying he is making Mooo sounds whenever she comes in the room

Cow and pig heart parts save a shit load of folks...at one time, these were that things dreams were made of...I think choosing "door #2" will be a winner, at least until things progress for more doors to open with technology advancements...

But, as Lewis Grizzard summed it up..."I always have a tough time passing a BBQ joint without a heavy feeling in my heart since that pig valve was installed"...

I would be pleased for the medical sciences to advance to a point that more animal parts or lab-grown parts can be used to lengthen human lives...

Remember..."parts is parts".

About two decades ago, I took a college course about bioethics and law. Anthropology, don’tcha know?

My professor was nick-named “The Devil Himself” by faculty, because he didn’t need to pick a side, he could strongly advocate for anything and twist up any student’s argument: the guy knew things he couldn’t talk about, law professor and whatnot. He flatly assured us we would see human organs grown in an organic matrix harvested from cells of the host patient within thirty years. He also told us, the day Dolly the cloned sheep was announced to the world, that human beings were already being cloned, but since it was illegal pretty much across the globe and considered one of the deepest, darkest taboos in science, that it would be several decades before we’d ever hear about it. I honestly had no reason to disbelieve him then, or now. The guy was a logician, not a liar. At least, as best I could tell.

I showed this to my wife. My lungs are failing, and I will soon die of it.

She believes in reincarnation, so now she wants me to be reincarnated as a pig so I can get in on the lung transplant. I don’t believe in reincarnation, and I didn’t last time, either.

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I don’t believe in reincarnation, and I didn’t last time, either.

Third time's the charm.

JALLEN- Are you on the transplant list or eligible?
It would be great to have you around for another couple of decades.

Bruce

JALLEN is a true mensch....I'm praying for many, many more decades...

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Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
He also told us, the day Dolly the cloned sheep was announced to the world, that human beings were already being cloned, but since it was illegal pretty much across the globe and considered one of the deepest, darkest taboos in science, that it would be several decades before we’d ever hear about it.

I think one would need to be pretty naive to believe that it has not been done...or at least tried with varying success.

There are many areas of research involving human health and genetics that have been inhibited by various “ethical” concerns in the West, and which are mostly grounded in religious tenets and beliefs, such as the whole embryonic stem cell thing in the U.S. If, however, anyone believes that the controlling powers in places like the twentieth century Soviet Union (or Russia today, for that matter) or China care a rat turd about such inhibitions is incredibly naïve. Regimes that had—and have—no qualms about enslaving and murdering their own actual people are hardly going to fret about the fate of a handful of human cells in a petri dish, regardless of where they came from.

Sooner or later anything that can be explored and exploited will be, and the only questions are where it will happen and who will benefit from such advances.

I would actually support using certain criminals for experimental purposes. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles would be possible candidates. Though not truly human, they would not generate a sympathy response in people like pigs and rodents do.

I hear the Norks are making a clone army of Little Kims.

Volunteer humans should be used in such studies. There would not be a shortage.

If it's OK to get food from pigs, why not spare parts as well? (This is assuming the spares work, of course.)

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Originally posted by RNshooter:
JALLEN- Are you on the transplant list or eligible?
It would be great to have you around for another couple of decades.

Bruce

No, I’m too old.

Moreover, my youngest sister went that route, and it really is not that attractive. Average life afterwards is about 5 years. Lots of medication, lots of discomfort. She was younger, our mom was still alive, her grandkids weren’t born yet. She spent a fair amount of time in the hospital while they fiddled with meds, or cured her of some condition, avoided rejection, etc.

Sounds all hunky dory until the repo men come knocking on your door...

Pig valves have been used for years .... I've never heard of cow valves ...

I've got man made parts in my lower torso. Life would Really be miserable without them.

The new thing is that these are grown from some sort of cultures.

The picture of a human ear growing out the back of a lab mouse is at least a couple of decades old.

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Originally posted by sigfreund:
There are many areas of research involving human health and genetics that have been inhibited by various “ethical” concerns in the West, and which are mostly grounded in religious tenets and beliefs, such as the whole embryonic stem cell thing in the U.S. If, however, anyone believes that the controlling powers in places like the twentieth century Soviet Union (or Russia today, for that matter) or China care a rat turd about such inhibitions is incredibly naïve. Regimes that had—and have—no qualms about enslaving and murdering their own actual people are hardly going to fret about the fate of a handful of human cells in a petri dish, regardless of where they came from.

Sooner or later anything that can be explored and exploited will be, and the only questions are where it will happen and who will benefit from such advances.

That's immediately where my mind went to when I was in the lecture. I had just read through a thread on a now-defunct forum where someone posted many, many pictures and documents from some Russian surgical experiments in the immediate post-war era. Dog parts surgically grafted onto people, and the whole process photographed in detail from pre-op, through the surgery to post-op, recovery and then rejection. Horrific stuff. There was simply no way that what I was seeing was fake, Photoshop was good back then, but it was very clearly not Photoshopped. It was the real deal. I've tried a few times in the succeeding years to find that stuff when discussions like this have come up, but it's completely scrubbed from the internet as far as I can tell.

I'm sure Russia and China are a lot further along with cloning than many people would want to believe.