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A new approach to generating human organs is to grow them inside pigs or sheep
- cargo54 11y agoLike we didn't have enough sheep and pig headed people around...
- bayesianhorse 11y agoIt's not exactly a new approach, but it may finally get off the ground...
- gozur88 11y agoMy first thought when I read the title was "I'm pretty sure this idea made a big splash about twenty years ago."
- zardo 11y agoRetroviruses were the major showstopper, now they can identify them and remove them from the genome. Maybe they run into another roadblock, but... Maybe it works this time.
- cowpig 11y agoPigoons!
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoA small step to growing intelligent pigs? Put a human brain in one?
- ohyes 11y agoPigs are already intelligent.
- theworstshill 11y agoDuke Nukem - how Pig Cops came to be.
- Procrastes 11y agoThat's the origin story for the pigoons in Oryx and Crake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake
- rasur 11y agoNot trying to troll, but I can see the idea of organs grown in pigs not going down particularly well with the members of at least 2 world religions.
- justin66 11y agoBeing given the option of dying or not dying is the sort of thing that causes people to rethink dogma.
- rasur 11y agoHmm, I'd like to agree with you, but there are plenty of examples where this kind of situation has occurred and the dogma won :( EDIT: To clarify; I mean dying vs not dying, rather than specifically having an animal-grown organ inserted.
- CaptSpify 11y agoPersonally, I think people should have a choice. But I'm guessing we'll see both: Some will rethink their dogma, and others will put their money where their mouth is.
- rasur 11y agoI couldn't agree more that people should have a choice. Whether they exercise that freedom of choice though...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- rfreytag 11y agoOne problem with human-animal tissue contact is the enhanced opportunity for zoonosis (cross-species diseases). In the early 1990's there was a proposal to enclose pig Islets of Langerhans (insulin and glucagon producing) tissue in capsules with sub-cellular pores and implant them in diabetics. The idea was that rejection was less likely without direct cellular contact and the diabetics would gain something resembling natural blood-sugar regulation. There were two problems that persist over the three decades of subsequent research: 1. rejection does still prove to be a problem, and 2. the problem was that pig viruses emitted by the transplanted capsules might eventually find an "error" that would infect the human host resulting in a brand new zoonosis shared by pigs and humans. The FDA refused trials as a result (see the last paragraph of this section in wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancreatic_islets#Transplantation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancreatic_islets#Transplantat... - that article leaves out is the distinct possibility of other porcine viruses that might cross-species given the persistent opportunity this therapy might provide). If one is being conservative - always a good idea when the prospect of new diseases are in the offing - the process of putting human tissues in pigs and then back in humans is at least as risky as merely putting live pig tissue directly into humans.
- swasheck 11y agothanks for posting this. i wrote a paper on porcine endogenous retro-viruses and their effects back in the late 90s for a basic biology class. these methods, and accompanying concerns, have been around for a while.
- logfromblammo 11y agoThat might be addressed by modifying the animal to produce the dsired organ at the correct size, scrubbing out all livestock cells with strong detergents, then seeding the organ extracellular matrix with progenitor cells from the intended recipient. There would be no livestock cells left, so no worry about zoonotic pathogens.
- stcredzero 11y agoIf you're leaving behind a protein scaffolding, wouldn't you still have to worry about prion diseases? What about viruses?