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I’m equal parts fascinated and concerned about this sort of thing. It’s incredible what science is capable of while, at the same time, I wonder if there are ade

I’m equal parts fascinated and concerned about this sort of thing. It’s incredible what science is capable of while, at the same time, I wonder if there are adequate limits on such advances. These researchers seem to be responsible (limiting the growth to a certain number of days, applying for permission to extend that limit in the future etc.) but I have a feeling that somewhere there is a scientist whose professional ethics are a little less robust.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
It's a good point although if you are really worried about the ethics then the way we rear animals for food dwarfs this.
- roryisok 9y ago
  And the ethical concern that often goes unmentioned is hope the rearing of animals for food has left barely any room on earth for wild animals. If anyone can find that biomass breakdown chart it's pretty scary. Something like 90% of the biomass on earth is human food
  - RobertoG 9y ago
    Do you mean animal biomass? Even so, I thought that the winners there are insects.
  - oldcynic 9y ago
    It may not be the one you were thinking of, but there's an xkcd for that: https://www.xkcd.com/1338/ https://www.xkcd.com/1338/
    - roryisok 9y ago
      It actually was that I was thinking of. And now I feel slightly silly for not only getting a key detail wrong but also using a comic as a source of facts. I'm sure Randall Munroe did his research but still.
      - DennisP 9y ago
        His main source is a book by Vaclav Smil, he cites it at the bottom of the comic.
adrianN 9y ago
What are your ethical concerns about this experiment? I don't think sheep with a human pancreas need to be treated differently from sheep with a normal pancreas, ethically speaking. We're not talking about fiddling with the sheep's brains.
- docdeek 9y ago
  I guess it is more a feeling that it'll start with a pancreas and then we'll figure out a way to make other organs, and maybe some human life after that. Perhaps it shouldn't concern me - if I would be fine with a pancreas or a kidney grown in an animal, why not (eventually) a human life in an animal? - but it is still a worry for me right now.
  - ldp01 9y ago
    Are you suggesting humanity will create real life furries? I guess it's the sort of thing you can count on someone doing the moment it's possible...
  - matte_black 9y ago
    It would be amazing to generate entirely new organs that don’t exist, to give humans capabilities they never had. I’m all for it.
    - Piskvorrr 9y ago
      Building hardware is the easy part. Making it play nice with the firmware (and, um, writing the firmware) is the hard part - we haven't been able to do that well with silicon, so far.
  - shanusmagnus 9y ago
    I think your worries could more profitably be directed to the industrial farming complex as it exists right now.
  - jessaustin 9y ago
    ...why not (eventually) a human life in an animal? That's an interesting idea. If it's OK to hire humans as surrogates, why couldn't we create an animal to do the job? Especially if an animal with a wider pelvis (e.g. a small cow) were used, it could eventually be made safer than regular human pregnancy.
konart 9y ago
>limits Humanity is just a infant. It's way too early to talk about limits, really.
Cw67NTN8F 9y ago
>>but I have a feeling that somewhere there is a scientist whose professional ethics are a little less robust. Butchers seem to have made peace with a few things. The same with their clients, lamb eaters. Let's be honest, at some point we cut corners; diabetes is the new epidemic. Most people, at least in the developed world, can stuff their faces with cheap (and poorer you are, more empty) calories.
- wombatpm 9y ago
  This would be a cure for TYPE I diabetes, not TYPE II. The difference? TYPE I aka juvenile diabetes is an autoimmune disease where the islet cells of the pancreas are targeted and you no longer produce insulin. TYPE II is where the cells in you body become insulin insensitive. TYPE II can be reversed with diet and exercise in its early stages. Why are they both called diabetes? The consequences are the same, high blood sugar levels causing damage to eyes, kidneys, and peripheral blood flow in limbs. This can cause blindness, kidney failure, and limb amputation and eventually death.
  - arkades 9y ago
    Type II diabetes also proceeds over time to a loss of insulin production, but as a consequence of the illness rather than as its core trait.
- lawlessone 9y ago
  I don't think these are the same kinds of diabetes. With the kind you get from over indulgence your pancreas is still functional, you just have insulin resistance. I believe this is to help the other kind of diabetes where you produce no insulin.
walshemj 9y ago
Try asking some one whos on the list for a transplant a large number of which die every year because of lack of donors.
- antisocial 9y ago
  Spot on, I just needed a toe fracture to rethink morals and ethics. I am all for humane treatment of animals, am an almost vegan myself, if you can just raise the cute animals in a humane way, I won't object the progress on this development.
bertil 9y ago
The main non-theoretical concern over such chimeras is that they could host disease variants and transmit them to humans. You don’t want to catch foot & month disease. They typically should not leave sterile conditions because of that potential threat. Therefore, having cell-bundles grown in petri dishes and vats is probably preferable than an autonomous live animal. That takes off a bit of the moral conundrum of having cute animals raised to be sacrificed. Vegetarianism and veganism are getting traction fast, so that could become more controversial. SciFi has explored the possibility of having conscious humans raised for their organs, so you could see an increased awareness in the next decades.
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  Alastair Reynolds introduced us to hyper pigs, beating up humans for a dark past. On the other hand Uplift made it our duty to raise as many creatures to full awareness as possible. Which author are you referring to exactly?
  - bertil 9y ago
    Nothing very specific in mind, probably www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/ which I believe is a remake, or was remade, and is also an adaptation. I can’t remember if Orphan Black is about that. More recently, Altered Carbon or shorter format I saw on Dust toyed with similar ideas.
Pigo 9y ago
I have to agree. Of course, I've never had a child dying from organ failure, so I don't think I'd be quick to judge. But there is also a part of me that thinks humans are meant to die, and this kind of science is fueled a lot by fear of the inevitable. The powerful are trying to stave off death until the singularity they believe will happen, and the lengths those kind of people are willing to go scare me. But maybe I'm just thinking that because I watched Altered Carbon.
- bobthechef 9y ago
  While we sympathize with people who have dying children or are dying themselves, being in that position can in fact cause desperation and desperation can warp moral reasoning. In other words, being in a particular position does not necessarily put you in the best position for making the right decision, hence why we often value honest, appropriately competent, impartial advice. W.r.t. to the moral dimension, there doesn't seems to be enough information in the article to make an assessment either way. If we're destroying fertilized human embryos to obtain stem cells to produce organs, then we are committing something categorically gravely immoral. If we're obtaining cells from the person needing the transplant and coaxing those cells into producing organ tissue, then the moral analysis will depend on contingent factors.
  - Pigo 9y ago
    I think I wholeheartedly agree with you. I guess my worry, which some people apparently don't think was worth bringing up, is that there are lots of people in this world with no moral analysis going on. I have no doubt there will be scientist following the code determined by society. But there are resourceful people of means who will just go about the business of doing whatever is best for them. The further this science goes, the easier it will be for them. I think of stem cells as this ground-breaking therapy that will one day be put to good use, for Joe Rogan it's something he had done several years ago to fix his shoulder (old news). I'm not saying he did anything questionable, just pointing out that the rich fly abroad to get treatments that are still being debated in the land they live in. I guess I just hope we find a way to toe a moral line that gets followed by peoplekind. Thanks Trudeau
  - 9y ago

tonyedgecombe 9y ago

It's a good point although if you are really worried about the ethics then the way we rear animals for food dwarfs this.

roryisok 9y ago
And the ethical concern that often goes unmentioned is hope the rearing of animals for food has left barely any room on earth for wild animals. If anyone can find that biomass breakdown chart it's pretty scary. Something like 90% of the biomass on earth is human food
- RobertoG 9y ago
  Do you mean animal biomass? Even so, I thought that the winners there are insects.
- oldcynic 9y ago
  It may not be the one you were thinking of, but there's an xkcd for that: https://www.xkcd.com/1338/ https://www.xkcd.com/1338/
  - roryisok 9y ago
    It actually was that I was thinking of. And now I feel slightly silly for not only getting a key detail wrong but also using a comic as a source of facts. I'm sure Randall Munroe did his research but still.
    - DennisP 9y ago
      His main source is a book by Vaclav Smil, he cites it at the bottom of the comic.

adrianN 9y ago

What are your ethical concerns about this experiment? I don't think sheep with a human pancreas need to be treated differently from sheep with a normal pancreas, ethically speaking. We're not talking about fiddling with the sheep's brains.

docdeek 9y ago
I guess it is more a feeling that it'll start with a pancreas and then we'll figure out a way to make other organs, and maybe some human life after that. Perhaps it shouldn't concern me - if I would be fine with a pancreas or a kidney grown in an animal, why not (eventually) a human life in an animal? - but it is still a worry for me right now.
- ldp01 9y ago
  Are you suggesting humanity will create real life furries? I guess it's the sort of thing you can count on someone doing the moment it's possible...
- matte_black 9y ago
  It would be amazing to generate entirely new organs that don’t exist, to give humans capabilities they never had. I’m all for it.
  - Piskvorrr 9y ago
    Building hardware is the easy part. Making it play nice with the firmware (and, um, writing the firmware) is the hard part - we haven't been able to do that well with silicon, so far.
- shanusmagnus 9y ago
  I think your worries could more profitably be directed to the industrial farming complex as it exists right now.
- jessaustin 9y ago
  ...why not (eventually) a human life in an animal? That's an interesting idea. If it's OK to hire humans as surrogates, why couldn't we create an animal to do the job? Especially if an animal with a wider pelvis (e.g. a small cow) were used, it could eventually be made safer than regular human pregnancy.

konart 9y ago

>limits Humanity is just a infant. It's way too early to talk about limits, really.

Cw67NTN8F 9y ago

>>but I have a feeling that somewhere there is a scientist whose professional ethics are a little less robust. Butchers seem to have made peace with a few things. The same with their clients, lamb eaters. Let's be honest, at some point we cut corners; diabetes is the new epidemic. Most people, at least in the developed world, can stuff their faces with cheap (and poorer you are, more empty) calories.

wombatpm 9y ago
This would be a cure for TYPE I diabetes, not TYPE II. The difference? TYPE I aka juvenile diabetes is an autoimmune disease where the islet cells of the pancreas are targeted and you no longer produce insulin. TYPE II is where the cells in you body become insulin insensitive. TYPE II can be reversed with diet and exercise in its early stages. Why are they both called diabetes? The consequences are the same, high blood sugar levels causing damage to eyes, kidneys, and peripheral blood flow in limbs. This can cause blindness, kidney failure, and limb amputation and eventually death.
- arkades 9y ago
  Type II diabetes also proceeds over time to a loss of insulin production, but as a consequence of the illness rather than as its core trait.
lawlessone 9y ago
I don't think these are the same kinds of diabetes. With the kind you get from over indulgence your pancreas is still functional, you just have insulin resistance. I believe this is to help the other kind of diabetes where you produce no insulin.

walshemj 9y ago

Try asking some one whos on the list for a transplant a large number of which die every year because of lack of donors.

antisocial 9y ago
Spot on, I just needed a toe fracture to rethink morals and ethics. I am all for humane treatment of animals, am an almost vegan myself, if you can just raise the cute animals in a humane way, I won't object the progress on this development.

bertil 9y ago

The main non-theoretical concern over such chimeras is that they could host disease variants and transmit them to humans. You don’t want to catch foot & month disease. They typically should not leave sterile conditions because of that potential threat. Therefore, having cell-bundles grown in petri dishes and vats is probably preferable than an autonomous live animal. That takes off a bit of the moral conundrum of having cute animals raised to be sacrificed. Vegetarianism and veganism are getting traction fast, so that could become more controversial. SciFi has explored the possibility of having conscious humans raised for their organs, so you could see an increased awareness in the next decades.

Pica_soO 9y ago
Alastair Reynolds introduced us to hyper pigs, beating up humans for a dark past. On the other hand Uplift made it our duty to raise as many creatures to full awareness as possible. Which author are you referring to exactly?
- bertil 9y ago
  Nothing very specific in mind, probably www.imdb.com/title/tt0399201/ which I believe is a remake, or was remade, and is also an adaptation. I can’t remember if Orphan Black is about that. More recently, Altered Carbon or shorter format I saw on Dust toyed with similar ideas.

Pigo 9y ago

I have to agree. Of course, I've never had a child dying from organ failure, so I don't think I'd be quick to judge. But there is also a part of me that thinks humans are meant to die, and this kind of science is fueled a lot by fear of the inevitable. The powerful are trying to stave off death until the singularity they believe will happen, and the lengths those kind of people are willing to go scare me. But maybe I'm just thinking that because I watched Altered Carbon.

bobthechef 9y ago
While we sympathize with people who have dying children or are dying themselves, being in that position can in fact cause desperation and desperation can warp moral reasoning. In other words, being in a particular position does not necessarily put you in the best position for making the right decision, hence why we often value honest, appropriately competent, impartial advice. W.r.t. to the moral dimension, there doesn't seems to be enough information in the article to make an assessment either way. If we're destroying fertilized human embryos to obtain stem cells to produce organs, then we are committing something categorically gravely immoral. If we're obtaining cells from the person needing the transplant and coaxing those cells into producing organ tissue, then the moral analysis will depend on contingent factors.
- Pigo 9y ago
  I think I wholeheartedly agree with you. I guess my worry, which some people apparently don't think was worth bringing up, is that there are lots of people in this world with no moral analysis going on. I have no doubt there will be scientist following the code determined by society. But there are resourceful people of means who will just go about the business of doing whatever is best for them. The further this science goes, the easier it will be for them. I think of stem cells as this ground-breaking therapy that will one day be put to good use, for Joe Rogan it's something he had done several years ago to fix his shoulder (old news). I'm not saying he did anything questionable, just pointing out that the rich fly abroad to get treatments that are still being debated in the land they live in. I guess I just hope we find a way to toe a moral line that gets followed by peoplekind. Thanks Trudeau
- 9y ago