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posted by janrinok on Thursday August 13 2015, @11:53PM   Printer-friendly
from the with-free-curly-tail dept.

Donated human organs are in such short supply that thousands of people die waiting for one every year. U.S. researchers have been shattering records in xenotransplantation, or between-species organ transplants.

The researchers say they have kept a pig heart alive in a baboon for 945 days and also reported the longest-ever kidney swap between these species, lasting 136 days. The experiments used organs from pigs "humanized" with the addition of as many as five human genes, a strategy designed to stop organ rejection.

The GM pigs are being produced in Blacksburg, Virginia, by Revivicor, a division of the biotechnology company United Therapeutics. That company's founder and co-CEO, Martine Rothblatt, is a noted futurist who four years ago began spending millions to supply researchers with pig organs and has quickly become the largest commercial backer of xenotransplantation research.

Rothblatt says her goal is to create "an unlimited supply of transplantable organs" and to carry out the first successful pig-to-human lung transplant within a few years. One of her daughters has a usually fatal lung condition called pulmonary arterial hypertension. In addition to GM pigs, her company is carrying out research on tissue-engineered lungs and cryopreservation of organs. "We're turning xenotransplantation from what looked like a kind of Apollo-level problem into just an engineering task," she says.


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  • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday August 14 2015, @08:52PM

    by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Friday August 14 2015, @08:52PM (#223000) Homepage Journal

    Even flies have been shown to know fear. It would seem that for any animal no matter what kind, fear and some measure of sentience is necessary for survival.

    My grandparents had a small farm with a large garden, pigs, chickens, cows, a mule, a dog... I forget what else. Grandpa had no problem slaughtering a pig, except for the stench -- he had a meat plant butcher them after that. Pigs stink even worse cut open than they do when they're alive.

    But the first cow he butchered was his last; he cried as he put the .22 into its brain. "It was the way she looked at me," he said.

    All animals have feelings, and all animals have some degree of sentience. Sentience is a chemical phenomenon, as is everything else about life.

    Like pigs, humans are omnivores. We need to eat both plants and animals, unlike cows and wolves. And everything dies. And who's to say plants have no feelings? How could you even test a hypothesis like that?

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  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:42AM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday August 15 2015, @01:42AM (#223100) Journal

    It's surprising to hear your grandfather was attached to his farm animals. My friends from farming families were punished for treating the food animals like pets, and their friends were highly discouraged from doing so as well when they came over. It seemed hard to me to differentiate the animals like that, because I love animals. But it was a very bright line in their minds. On the one side, love and affection, on the other cold, clinical detachment.

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    • (Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday August 16 2015, @10:37PM

      by mcgrew (701) <publish@mcgrewbooks.com> on Sunday August 16 2015, @10:37PM (#223657) Homepage Journal

      It wasn't that he was attached to the cow, it was just a cow. It was the way it looked at him.

      OTOH a friend of mine used to raise hogs, and one bit both him and his son. He says that pig was the best tasting pork he ever ate.

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