33 ms·

You might be asking, why a pig? I don't know, but forever ago I wrote software for a cardiovascular imaging lab and pigs were their primary test subjects. I was

by tricky 5y ago

You might be asking, why a pig? I don't know, but forever ago I wrote software for a cardiovascular imaging lab and pigs were their primary test subjects. I was like, "why pigs?" and the PI was like, "Imaging-wise, pig hearts aren't too different from humans. Plus, we can give them a heart attack in the scanner and not go to jail. Some labs use dogs. I just can't do that."

Blikkentrekker 5y ago
I was only recently acquainted with the idea that there are many people on the internet who become very angry that some people eat dog meat, but do not with say cow meat or pig meat. — I find this rather strange and do not understand this.
- hungryforcodes 5y ago
  It's typically a North American - or sometimes Western European problem. As people become more lonely, they rely more on their companion pets. But ignore the obvious contradiction that they eat pigs, chickens or cows each day. I'm not sure anyone else really worries about it from what I've seen, having traveled around.
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  it’s just a lifetime of conditioning really
  - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    I also remember reading about a criminal defence attorney who did not handle cases involving sex crimes. Apparently he was fine with defending murder suspects, but not suspects charged with even street groping. Or Gerard Spong's statement of being willing to defend anyone charged with anything, except Dési Bouterse; there are certainly worse military dictators on the planet.
    - micromacrofoot 5y ago
      Yeah we're not really physically different from humans who thought sacrificing people to the sun was the sensible thing to do... we've got an infinite amount of things to believe
    - staticautomatic 5y ago
      Regrettably, the situation is more complex than simply having personal moral qualms about representing an alleged sexual assailant. In a jurisdiction without a shield law, the attorney rules of professional conduct may effectively require you to argue that the victim was asking for it.
    - wruza 5y ago
      An attorney? I've had a hard time finding any attorney (not in US) for my grand-uncle who groped an underage girl on the street. Almost everyone refused, despite my request was only to get any information about the case^ and where it may possibly go, not the actual defense. The person who agreed to help said they wouldn't do it too, but they were asked by people they couldn't say no to. (Uncle ended up in an asylum deemed mentally unfit, freeing my family from making hard decisions about his action.) ^ e.g. checking whether that could be a setup, a misunderstanding or an overreaction to an innocent/unconscious action; it wasn't any of that.
      - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
        And these people would defend murder suspects? How very strange. — In many jurisdictions defence attorneys do not have a right to refuse any case they are competent in and timewise available for, something I approve of.
        wruza 5y ago
        In my country, default defense attorneys work ~together with a prosecution side, they basically fill in process-required papers and read the characterization aloud, that's it. No one of them would help me to understand the situation until it's potentially too late, in case of some sort of fabrication or pressure, which I suspected. They wouldn't refuse, they are just useless. I had to look for a lawyer on the "market" side of it, who brought me right to the investigation office head. Through that I learned the facts and future options to discuss them with my family. Yes, they hesitate to take these cases without even trying to hear details, but are happy to defense murderers. It's unfair legal-wise, because many such allegations recently became unfair and tv-popular, so no one is insured from it.
- XorNot 5y ago
  Dogs are carnivores. It is incredibly inefficient to raise dogs for meat, because you have to feed them meat to do so. This pretty obviously isn't what people are principally reacting too, but it is massively understated when people get into "why do we eat A and not B?"
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    This doesn't seem to explain the reaction to even the smallest amount. I don't believe for a second that even 1% of the anger is because the consumer has wasted resources on their food. Or people would be furious about beef when chicken is massively more efficient.
    - jpamata 5y ago
      Perhaps it plays a part on conditioning folks through generations on what is viewed as livestock. Dogs for a long time are not, except perhaps in China, which has only started looking into reclassifying dogs from "livestock" to "pets" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-dogs-idUSKCN21R1VI https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-... >even 1% of the anger is because the consumer has wasted resources on their food Mao Zedong used that reasoning during China's cultural revolution for banning dog ownership
  - screamingninja 5y ago
    > Dogs are carnivores. Omnivores, not carnivores. Ref: https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Canis_lupus_familiaris/ https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Canis_lupus_familiaris/
- Gigachad 5y ago
  It's all cognitive dissonance in the end. People are quite happy to have illogical and inconsistent beliefs because it lets them remain entirely ethical in their heads. They will even become hostile when you challenge this because you are threatening the foundation of their ethics and mental health.
  - wruza 5y ago
    Otoh, relating to something is based on itself. It's a choice, not an obligation. In one ethical framework you're right, it's irrational to treat dogs better than pigs. In another, both lives are unimportant, but one picks dogs one level up for their utility. Inanimate objects also "experience" that. When you're sawing a plank, it's woodwork. When you're sawing a hammer, it's disrespect to the tool.
    - Gigachad 5y ago
      I’m pretty confident if someone filmed themselves sawing a hammer in half and filmed eating a dog. I know which one of these would receive hate and probably be taken off YouTube.
      - wruza 5y ago
        I didn't intend to make these look comparable, in part due to the fact that these two cultural sets are different in size and vocality. If the point of this comparison is to provide a non-selection based counter argument, it pretty much cannot.
- wraptile 5y ago
  I think dog meat anger is mostly the result of Yulin Dog Meat Festival in China. [1] It's completely unregulated and the animals (dogs, cats etc) would often be tortured and killed by amateurs because properly killing an animal is harder than it looks. Dogs are also not eaten for meat or taste and mostly done for superstition. 1 - https://www.animalsasia.org/us/media/news/news-archive/chinas-yulin-dog-meat-festival-what-we-know.html https://www.animalsasia.org/us/media/news/news-archive/china...
  - bayesian_horse 5y ago
    I haven't read that article yet, but from what I know, dog meat is eaten all over China all of the time, just not very much of it. But it is mostly a thing poorer people do, indeed for the superstition that it somehow warms the body or something. And then the northerners say it is only done in the south and vice versa. And I've personally seen a veterinary student from china get very angry every time someone mentioned Chinese eating dogs...
- postalrat 5y ago
  We owe dogs a great debt for helping humanity for many thousands of years.
  - bayesian_horse 5y ago
    So did all the other animals.
  - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    I have never personally been helped by any dog. Collective responsibility is such a strange philosophy. I owe an entity because a member of it's helped a member of my species in the past?
  - johnisgood 5y ago
    What does this even mean... care to elaborate?
- odiroot 5y ago
  Some cultures still eat monkeys and it's not really a taboo.
- TinkersW 5y ago
  Dog = carnivore domesticated as ally(superior smell/high speed etc) Cow = herbivore domesticated for milk/meat Eating dogs is terribly inefficient since they are carnivores. Seems fairly obvious that hunter gathers wouldn't have typically done this, and that it is a recent thing in regions that had famines & excess stray dogs.
  - williamdclt 5y ago
    Inefficiency wouldn't matter for hunter-gatherers, as they're not the ones that feed the animal (they hunt, don't farm). Also pretty sure that dog-eating isn't a recent things, I don't see why people "back then" wouldn't eat stray dogs in periods of low resource. More importantly, inefficiency most definitely isn't the reason for which people on the internet "become very angry" at the idea of eating dog.
    - pharke 5y ago
      It most certainly would matter for hunter gatherers. They hunt and they would be hunting the same prey as the dogs. They are feeding the dogs by giving up some of their potential prey as food whether thats by giving it to the dogs after they kill it or allowing the dogs to kill it and eat it instead of them.
- OrangeMusic 5y ago
  Please let's not pretend to ignore that some species are more "human like" than others. - Plants are less "human like" than insects - Insects are less "human like" than sharks - Sharks are less "human like" than pigs - Pigs are less "human like" than dogs - Dogs are less "human like" than primates - Primates are less "human like" than humans Pretending that this is is irrelevant doesn't help discourse. And yes of course this sorting is subjective, some people may find pigs and cows "just as" "human like" as dogs - but most people won't. Since dogs have been specifically bred to be very close to humans (being companions, living in the home, etc.) whereas pigs and cows have been bred to be eaten, this shouldn't be surprising.
  - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
    > And yes of course this sorting is subjective, some people may find pigs and cows "just as" "human like" as dogs - but most people won't. I honestly find it a very strange idea to say dogs are more human like than pigs. Have you ever socialized with a pig? It is immediately clear to me that they display intelligence and emotional awareness of a far higher level than dogs. With pigs, it almost feels as though they are mute humans, trying to communicate in some way but being unable to do so due to an inability to speak, similar to dolphins and nonhuman apes. — They are also inquisitive creatures that inspect their environment and seem to apply some level of cognition to it that I never saw in dogs.
Victerius 5y ago
What ... happens to the pigs who get accidental heart attacks? Are they ...? Do they ...?
- ricc 5y ago
  Yes
- valachio 5y ago
  They end up on my dinner plate as a delicious high-protein meal.
  - hellbannedguy 5y ago
    No reason to gloat. Yea, I eat them too, but not proud of my actions.
    - valachio 5y ago
      Not gloating. I genuinely enjoy eating pork and meat in general. It's the most nutritious food a human can eat in my humble opinion. I hold no shame in eating and enjoying meat. If I was a scientist and a piggie died as part of an experiment or whatever. I would do my best to eat the piggie and not let any part of it end up in the trash and going to waste.
      - arcticbull 5y ago
        > It's the most nutritious food a human can eat in my humble opinion. Citation needed on this one. I'm curious.
        deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
        kaba0 5y ago
        If parent means nutritious as rich in energy than it has plenty of calories indeed (though sugary drinks will easily beat it) If they mean as in provides many kind of nutrition, it is still false as it is mostly fat and protein. It is quite homogenous to be called nutritious.
dexwiz 5y ago
Pigs are really common in biomedical testing. They are physically a similar size and weight to humans. They also reach maturity in about 6 months. Much cheaper to raise than primates, and more likely to get approval for testing. My friends in biomed grad school named one of theirs cyber pig because it has about 30 different experiments ran on it before it was killed, and afterwards it was portioned out for further tests.
- polishdude20 5y ago
  How do you make sure all those experiments don't interfere with eachother?
  - DrAwdeOccarim 5y ago
    You can’t really. You test in naive animals when critical, but repeating an experiment or needing a quick binary read-out, you can use non-naive successfully.
  - dexwiz 5y ago
    From what I remember most of the experiments where more material based like healing a bone, or replacing a joint, or some sort of implant. So you could have things interfere, but it wasn’t like drug trials which would effect the entire body.
    - cpdean 5y ago
      the image here got so much more visceral now i guess i shouldn't be surprised what a medical experiment is but breaking a pig foot?? ouch
      - dexwiz 5y ago
        Orthopedic surgeons break bones all the time. It sounds cruel, but when done in a medical context, it's not so strange. It was a surgical procedure, it's not like someone dropped a rock on an awake pig.
- 5y ago
ardit33 5y ago
I heard they are humanized 'pigs'. Ie. engineered so their organs don't trigger our immune system. Not sure how true is this, or it is just a myth.
- Finnucane 5y ago
  The article states they changed a sugar that triggered rejection.
  - pazimzadeh 5y ago
    Exactly: "More than 95% of human anti-pig antibodies are directed against 3 pig carbohydrates: Gal 1 to 3αGal (≈80%–90%), Neu5Gc (≈5%–15%), and β4Gal (1%–5%)" "To reduce anti-pig antibody binding to the xenograft, the 3 principal carbohydrate antigen targets have each been successfully removed from pigs by gene knockout (KO) (Figure 3)" Progress Toward Cardiac Xenotransplantation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7990044/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7990044/
- decebalus1 5y ago
  Careful with that. You might end up with pigoons [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake
  - foobiekr 5y ago
    a great series, at least the first two books I think O&C and The Year of the Flood represent the most likely near-future world, maybe 2035 or so, of any science fiction I can name.
- shagie 5y ago
  The Alpha Gal sugar. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/alpha-gal https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/alpha... and https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/return-alpha-gal https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/retur... are good listens on the subject. In particular from the second one: > SOREN: Which brings me back to that little part of the article that piqued my interest in the beginning, because the pig that they got the kidney from to do this was a very special pig. Normally, pigs and other mammals that aren't primates have a sugar in their body that our bodies don't have, and so we don't like it or see it as foreign. And that's why usually an organ from another animal would get rejected. But this pig had been genetically modified. It had had the gene that makes that sugar removed, so it didn't have that sugar. Which is part of the reason this worked. And that sugar just so happens to be called "alpha-gal."
lupire 5y ago
Weird to have a a scientist behaving so irrationally regarding pigs vs dogs, especially because the pig was chosen for its likeness to a human.
- version_five 5y ago
  People have co-evolved with dogs as companions for a long time. And many people have fond memories of dogs and experience with them as part of a family. This is not generally true of pigs even if their hearts are closer to ours. Even as someone who doesn't like dogs, I find the idea of harming one (even with a good reason) worse than harming a pig.
  - arcticbull 5y ago
    Pigs are more intelligent and equally social. Humane society says they're as smart as 3 year old children. [1] Apparently tests show they've got about the same problem solving skills as chimps. [1] https://www.humanesociety.org/animals/pigs https://www.humanesociety.org/animals/pigs
    - conductr 5y ago
      I believe GP post still holds up since it was regarding companionship and human emotions. It said nothing of pig intelligence.
- tombert 5y ago
  I was about to say, aren't pigs smarter than dogs generally? Seems like a strange line to draw.
  - aspaviento 5y ago
    As many aspects in our society, appearance matters the most.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
actually_a_dog 5y ago
> "Imaging-wise, pig hearts aren't too different from humans. Plus, we can give them a heart attack in the scanner and not go to jail. Some labs use dogs. I just can't do that." I wonder if they'd feel differently if they thought about how pigs are more intelligent than dogs.
- Gigachad 5y ago
  Basically all of society is about conveniently ignoring ethics in illogical ways because it provides immense inconvenience and reward. I'm sure they could convince themselves that giving a pig a heart attack is just as evil as giving one to a dog, but then they wouldn't be able to perform studies which will save millions of lives in the future.
light_hue_1 5y ago
There are important advantages to pigs over non-human primates. Originally, research was centered around non-human primates (NHPs). But it didn't work out all. Sure, they're a bit closer to us genetically, but we still reject their tissues, so we would need to genetically engineer them. Humans are also much bigger than the non-human primates we can grow in the lab with ease and that have a fast enough reproductive cycle to make genetic engineering work out. So the organs would all be undersized. Ease of breeding is a big issue too, litter sizes for NPHs are very small compared to pigs. It gets even worse though. Because NHPs are so close to us, they easily catch infections from us. So they're much more likely to catch diseases from us and to give us their diseases. There are also ethical concerns with primates being so close to us, which don't exist with pigs given that they're primarily food animals. It took around a dozen or so genetic changes to knock out markers that allow our immune system to recognize that pig organs are foreign. In particular, primates (including us) are sort of strange in that Alpha-gal, a sugar that's all over all other animal bodies, doesn't exist in us and our immune system violently rejects anything that contains it. Understanding this took a long time, but then we eventually figured out how to prevent pigs from expressing Alpha-gal. That's basically the story here. Figure out why rejection is happening, knock it out, repeat. There are also many forms of rejection and it happens differently in different tissues. But, we're getting there. If you want to read more, here's an awesome recent review of the history and state of the field: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2019.03060/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2019.0306...
- pabs3 5y ago
  There is a pretty funny yet horrifying novel about NHPs for xenotransplants. It didn't cover the disease aspect though. https://farragobooks.com/book/the-organ-grinders/ https://farragobooks.com/book/the-organ-grinders/
throwaway14356 5y ago
Humans are pig ape hybrids.
VeninVidiaVicii 5y ago
I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. - Winston S. Churchill
- shmde 5y ago
  I am be responsible for purposefully creating a famine in India killing 3 million people and still be quoted as a badass in the future - Winston S. Churchill
  - mutatio 5y ago
    I don't think the Bengal famine is that simple, certainly not to say "purposefully creating"...
    - shmde 5y ago
      Time and time again it has been proved and backed by research that it was indeed purposefully created. I don't understand why people aren't able to swallow that Churchill was responsible for the devastating famine. Its the same everywhere, even in r/history subreddit people just straight away deny Churchill was responsible for the famine. I understand that he is hailed as a hero for WW2 but he definitely has 3 million Indian's blood in his hand. https://theprint.in/science/proved-by-science-winston-churchill-not-nature-caused-1943-bengal-famine/214942/ https://theprint.in/science/proved-by-science-winston-church...
      - mutatio 5y ago
        Let's not hijack the thread with politics. I will say this, there was no motive for it to be "purposefully created" - that is nonsense, try and think about it objectively for a second. It's far more nuanced than that. The issue here is the motivation for your post, do you interject any mention of Gandhi with critiques of his character / behaviour?
        mrguyorama 5y ago
emersonrsantos 5y ago
I don't get it that dogs/cats/horses/etc are sentient but pigs/cows/chicken and other animals are not.
- ehnto 5y ago
  It's a social construct like any, a partition or compartmentalization we put up to allow us to behave certain ways. Some cultures have different outlooks, some individuals have different outlooks. I think the only logic to glean here, is that we're able to get more resources out of a cow, so it was useful for us to compartmentalize and abstract away farming them as different somehow, so we did.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  Neither of any of the above. All of these animals are used and killed for research all the time. The issue for many of them is the personal connection and memories individuals have developed with one species or the other. Then it does matter more if it is a pig or a dog that you are doing harm to. For that matter I have known researchers who are excessively fond of pigs, chicken or cows ...
lostlogin 5y ago
> Some labs use dogs. I just can't do that." A dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way.
- bckr 5y ago
  Is this a quote from something? Because I'm certain pigs have personality. I'm even somewhat confident they have as much personality as dogs.
  - lostlogin 5y ago
    Yes. Pulp Fiction. I completely agree with you, and left a job in part because they tested on animals.
  - kahrl 5y ago
    Well, we'd have to be talkin' 'bout one charmin' motherfuckin' pig.
- Azek 5y ago
  Harder to digest in the climate of how we treat them, but pigs have personalities too.
ikiris 5y ago
the short answer: because we can legally grow them for parts, unlike humans at the moment
MathMonkeyMan 5y ago
My grandfather had a pig's heart valve in his chest, worked great.
hulitu 5y ago
Because, as George Orwell said: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.".
osrec 5y ago
What does PI stand for here?
- ndr 5y ago
  Principal Investigator, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_investigator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_investigator
jakuboboza 5y ago
pigs are also used for vaccine testing. Maybe because their immune system is similar to humans. I wonder if man-bear-pig could happen if pigs would develop bigger more folded brains.
PickledHotdog 5y ago
Think that's the same reason they were used in nuclear testing, at least in the USSR.
llarsson 5y ago
Humans and pigs famously share approximately 98% DNA, so we are very similar. Aside from weight and size. Non-scientific: - https://thednatests.com/how-much-dna-do-humans-share-with-other-animals/ https://thednatests.com/how-much-dna-do-humans-share-with-ot... Scientific: - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25689318/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25689318/ - https://aces.illinois.edu/news/human-pig-genome-comparison-complete https://aces.illinois.edu/news/human-pig-genome-comparison-c...

by tricky 5y ago

Blikkentrekker 5y ago

I was only recently acquainted with the idea that there are many people on the internet who become very angry that some people eat dog meat, but do not with say cow meat or pig meat. — I find this rather strange and do not understand this.

hungryforcodes 5y ago
It's typically a North American - or sometimes Western European problem. As people become more lonely, they rely more on their companion pets. But ignore the obvious contradiction that they eat pigs, chickens or cows each day. I'm not sure anyone else really worries about it from what I've seen, having traveled around.
micromacrofoot 5y ago
it’s just a lifetime of conditioning really
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  I also remember reading about a criminal defence attorney who did not handle cases involving sex crimes. Apparently he was fine with defending murder suspects, but not suspects charged with even street groping. Or Gerard Spong's statement of being willing to defend anyone charged with anything, except Dési Bouterse; there are certainly worse military dictators on the planet.
  - micromacrofoot 5y ago
    Yeah we're not really physically different from humans who thought sacrificing people to the sun was the sensible thing to do... we've got an infinite amount of things to believe
  - staticautomatic 5y ago
    Regrettably, the situation is more complex than simply having personal moral qualms about representing an alleged sexual assailant. In a jurisdiction without a shield law, the attorney rules of professional conduct may effectively require you to argue that the victim was asking for it.
  - wruza 5y ago
    An attorney? I've had a hard time finding any attorney (not in US) for my grand-uncle who groped an underage girl on the street. Almost everyone refused, despite my request was only to get any information about the case^ and where it may possibly go, not the actual defense. The person who agreed to help said they wouldn't do it too, but they were asked by people they couldn't say no to. (Uncle ended up in an asylum deemed mentally unfit, freeing my family from making hard decisions about his action.) ^ e.g. checking whether that could be a setup, a misunderstanding or an overreaction to an innocent/unconscious action; it wasn't any of that.
    - Blikkentrekker 5y ago
      And these people would defend murder suspects? How very strange. — In many jurisdictions defence attorneys do not have a right to refuse any case they are competent in and timewise available for, something I approve of.
      - wruza 5y ago
        In my country, default defense attorneys work ~together with a prosecution side, they basically fill in process-required papers and read the characterization aloud, that's it. No one of them would help me to understand the situation until it's potentially too late, in case of some sort of fabrication or pressure, which I suspected. They wouldn't refuse, they are just useless. I had to look for a lawyer on the "market" side of it, who brought me right to the investigation office head. Through that I learned the facts and future options to discuss them with my family. Yes, they hesitate to take these cases without even trying to hear details, but are happy to defense murderers. It's unfair legal-wise, because many such allegations recently became unfair and tv-popular, so no one is insured from it.
XorNot 5y ago
Dogs are carnivores. It is incredibly inefficient to raise dogs for meat, because you have to feed them meat to do so. This pretty obviously isn't what people are principally reacting too, but it is massively understated when people get into "why do we eat A and not B?"
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Gigachad 5y ago
  This doesn't seem to explain the reaction to even the smallest amount. I don't believe for a second that even 1% of the anger is because the consumer has wasted resources on their food. Or people would be furious about beef when chicken is massively more efficient.
  - jpamata 5y ago
    Perhaps it plays a part on conditioning folks through generations on what is viewed as livestock. Dogs for a long time are not, except perhaps in China, which has only started looking into reclassifying dogs from "livestock" to "pets" https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-dogs-idUSKCN21R1VI https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-... >even 1% of the anger is because the consumer has wasted resources on their food Mao Zedong used that reasoning during China's cultural revolution for banning dog ownership
- screamingninja 5y ago
  > Dogs are carnivores. Omnivores, not carnivores. Ref: https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Canis_lupus_familiaris/ https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Canis_lupus_familiaris/
Gigachad 5y ago
It's all cognitive dissonance in the end. People are quite happy to have illogical and inconsistent beliefs because it lets them remain entirely ethical in their heads. They will even become hostile when you challenge this because you are threatening the foundation of their ethics and mental health.
- wruza 5y ago
  Otoh, relating to something is based on itself. It's a choice, not an obligation. In one ethical framework you're right, it's irrational to treat dogs better than pigs. In another, both lives are unimportant, but one picks dogs one level up for their utility. Inanimate objects also "experience" that. When you're sawing a plank, it's woodwork. When you're sawing a hammer, it's disrespect to the tool.
  - Gigachad 5y ago
    I’m pretty confident if someone filmed themselves sawing a hammer in half and filmed eating a dog. I know which one of these would receive hate and probably be taken off YouTube.
    - wruza 5y ago
      I didn't intend to make these look comparable, in part due to the fact that these two cultural sets are different in size and vocality. If the point of this comparison is to provide a non-selection based counter argument, it pretty much cannot.
wraptile 5y ago
I think dog meat anger is mostly the result of Yulin Dog Meat Festival in China. [1] It's completely unregulated and the animals (dogs, cats etc) would often be tortured and killed by amateurs because properly killing an animal is harder than it looks. Dogs are also not eaten for meat or taste and mostly done for superstition. 1 - https://www.animalsasia.org/us/media/news/news-archive/chinas-yulin-dog-meat-festival-what-we-know.html https://www.animalsasia.org/us/media/news/news-archive/china...
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  I haven't read that article yet, but from what I know, dog meat is eaten all over China all of the time, just not very much of it. But it is mostly a thing poorer people do, indeed for the superstition that it somehow warms the body or something. And then the northerners say it is only done in the south and vice versa. And I've personally seen a veterinary student from china get very angry every time someone mentioned Chinese eating dogs...
postalrat 5y ago
We owe dogs a great debt for helping humanity for many thousands of years.
- bayesian_horse 5y ago
  So did all the other animals.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  I have never personally been helped by any dog. Collective responsibility is such a strange philosophy. I owe an entity because a member of it's helped a member of my species in the past?
- johnisgood 5y ago
  What does this even mean... care to elaborate?
odiroot 5y ago
Some cultures still eat monkeys and it's not really a taboo.
TinkersW 5y ago
Dog = carnivore domesticated as ally(superior smell/high speed etc) Cow = herbivore domesticated for milk/meat Eating dogs is terribly inefficient since they are carnivores. Seems fairly obvious that hunter gathers wouldn't have typically done this, and that it is a recent thing in regions that had famines & excess stray dogs.
- williamdclt 5y ago
  Inefficiency wouldn't matter for hunter-gatherers, as they're not the ones that feed the animal (they hunt, don't farm). Also pretty sure that dog-eating isn't a recent things, I don't see why people "back then" wouldn't eat stray dogs in periods of low resource. More importantly, inefficiency most definitely isn't the reason for which people on the internet "become very angry" at the idea of eating dog.
  - pharke 5y ago
    It most certainly would matter for hunter gatherers. They hunt and they would be hunting the same prey as the dogs. They are feeding the dogs by giving up some of their potential prey as food whether thats by giving it to the dogs after they kill it or allowing the dogs to kill it and eat it instead of them.
OrangeMusic 5y ago
Please let's not pretend to ignore that some species are more "human like" than others. - Plants are less "human like" than insects - Insects are less "human like" than sharks - Sharks are less "human like" than pigs - Pigs are less "human like" than dogs - Dogs are less "human like" than primates - Primates are less "human like" than humans Pretending that this is is irrelevant doesn't help discourse. And yes of course this sorting is subjective, some people may find pigs and cows "just as" "human like" as dogs - but most people won't. Since dogs have been specifically bred to be very close to humans (being companions, living in the home, etc.) whereas pigs and cows have been bred to be eaten, this shouldn't be surprising.
- Blikkentrekker 5y ago
  > And yes of course this sorting is subjective, some people may find pigs and cows "just as" "human like" as dogs - but most people won't. I honestly find it a very strange idea to say dogs are more human like than pigs. Have you ever socialized with a pig? It is immediately clear to me that they display intelligence and emotional awareness of a far higher level than dogs. With pigs, it almost feels as though they are mute humans, trying to communicate in some way but being unable to do so due to an inability to speak, similar to dolphins and nonhuman apes. — They are also inquisitive creatures that inspect their environment and seem to apply some level of cognition to it that I never saw in dogs.

Victerius 5y ago

What ... happens to the pigs who get accidental heart attacks? Are they ...? Do they ...?

ricc 5y ago
Yes
valachio 5y ago
They end up on my dinner plate as a delicious high-protein meal.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  No reason to gloat. Yea, I eat them too, but not proud of my actions.
  - valachio 5y ago
    Not gloating. I genuinely enjoy eating pork and meat in general. It's the most nutritious food a human can eat in my humble opinion. I hold no shame in eating and enjoying meat. If I was a scientist and a piggie died as part of an experiment or whatever. I would do my best to eat the piggie and not let any part of it end up in the trash and going to waste.
    - arcticbull 5y ago
      > It's the most nutritious food a human can eat in my humble opinion. Citation needed on this one. I'm curious.
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - kaba0 5y ago
        If parent means nutritious as rich in energy than it has plenty of calories indeed (though sugary drinks will easily beat it) If they mean as in provides many kind of nutrition, it is still false as it is mostly fat and protein. It is quite homogenous to be called nutritious.

dexwiz 5y ago

Pigs are really common in biomedical testing. They are physically a similar size and weight to humans. They also reach maturity in about 6 months. Much cheaper to raise than primates, and more likely to get approval for testing. My friends in biomed grad school named one of theirs cyber pig because it has about 30 different experiments ran on it before it was killed, and afterwards it was portioned out for further tests.

polishdude20 5y ago
How do you make sure all those experiments don't interfere with eachother?
- DrAwdeOccarim 5y ago
  You can’t really. You test in naive animals when critical, but repeating an experiment or needing a quick binary read-out, you can use non-naive successfully.
- dexwiz 5y ago
  From what I remember most of the experiments where more material based like healing a bone, or replacing a joint, or some sort of implant. So you could have things interfere, but it wasn’t like drug trials which would effect the entire body.
  - cpdean 5y ago
    the image here got so much more visceral now i guess i shouldn't be surprised what a medical experiment is but breaking a pig foot?? ouch
    - dexwiz 5y ago
      Orthopedic surgeons break bones all the time. It sounds cruel, but when done in a medical context, it's not so strange. It was a surgical procedure, it's not like someone dropped a rock on an awake pig.
5y ago

ardit33 5y ago

I heard they are humanized 'pigs'. Ie. engineered so their organs don't trigger our immune system. Not sure how true is this, or it is just a myth.

Finnucane 5y ago
The article states they changed a sugar that triggered rejection.
- pazimzadeh 5y ago
  Exactly: "More than 95% of human anti-pig antibodies are directed against 3 pig carbohydrates: Gal 1 to 3αGal (≈80%–90%), Neu5Gc (≈5%–15%), and β4Gal (1%–5%)" "To reduce anti-pig antibody binding to the xenograft, the 3 principal carbohydrate antigen targets have each been successfully removed from pigs by gene knockout (KO) (Figure 3)" Progress Toward Cardiac Xenotransplantation https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7990044/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/labs/pmc/articles/PMC7990044/
decebalus1 5y ago
Careful with that. You might end up with pigoons [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake
- foobiekr 5y ago
  a great series, at least the first two books I think O&C and The Year of the Flood represent the most likely near-future world, maybe 2035 or so, of any science fiction I can name.
shagie 5y ago
The Alpha Gal sugar. https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/alpha-gal https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/alpha... and https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/return-alpha-gal https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/articles/retur... are good listens on the subject. In particular from the second one: > SOREN: Which brings me back to that little part of the article that piqued my interest in the beginning, because the pig that they got the kidney from to do this was a very special pig. Normally, pigs and other mammals that aren't primates have a sugar in their body that our bodies don't have, and so we don't like it or see it as foreign. And that's why usually an organ from another animal would get rejected. But this pig had been genetically modified. It had had the gene that makes that sugar removed, so it didn't have that sugar. Which is part of the reason this worked. And that sugar just so happens to be called "alpha-gal."

lupire 5y ago

Weird to have a a scientist behaving so irrationally regarding pigs vs dogs, especially because the pig was chosen for its likeness to a human.

version_five 5y ago
People have co-evolved with dogs as companions for a long time. And many people have fond memories of dogs and experience with them as part of a family. This is not generally true of pigs even if their hearts are closer to ours. Even as someone who doesn't like dogs, I find the idea of harming one (even with a good reason) worse than harming a pig.
- arcticbull 5y ago
  Pigs are more intelligent and equally social. Humane society says they're as smart as 3 year old children. [1] Apparently tests show they've got about the same problem solving skills as chimps. [1] https://www.humanesociety.org/animals/pigs https://www.humanesociety.org/animals/pigs
  - conductr 5y ago
    I believe GP post still holds up since it was regarding companionship and human emotions. It said nothing of pig intelligence.
tombert 5y ago
I was about to say, aren't pigs smarter than dogs generally? Seems like a strange line to draw.
- aspaviento 5y ago
  As many aspects in our society, appearance matters the most.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

actually_a_dog 5y ago

> "Imaging-wise, pig hearts aren't too different from humans. Plus, we can give them a heart attack in the scanner and not go to jail. Some labs use dogs. I just can't do that." I wonder if they'd feel differently if they thought about how pigs are more intelligent than dogs.

Gigachad 5y ago
Basically all of society is about conveniently ignoring ethics in illogical ways because it provides immense inconvenience and reward. I'm sure they could convince themselves that giving a pig a heart attack is just as evil as giving one to a dog, but then they wouldn't be able to perform studies which will save millions of lives in the future.

light_hue_1 5y ago

There are important advantages to pigs over non-human primates. Originally, research was centered around non-human primates (NHPs). But it didn't work out all. Sure, they're a bit closer to us genetically, but we still reject their tissues, so we would need to genetically engineer them. Humans are also much bigger than the non-human primates we can grow in the lab with ease and that have a fast enough reproductive cycle to make genetic engineering work out. So the organs would all be undersized. Ease of breeding is a big issue too, litter sizes for NPHs are very small compared to pigs. It gets even worse though. Because NHPs are so close to us, they easily catch infections from us. So they're much more likely to catch diseases from us and to give us their diseases. There are also ethical concerns with primates being so close to us, which don't exist with pigs given that they're primarily food animals. It took around a dozen or so genetic changes to knock out markers that allow our immune system to recognize that pig organs are foreign. In particular, primates (including us) are sort of strange in that Alpha-gal, a sugar that's all over all other animal bodies, doesn't exist in us and our immune system violently rejects anything that contains it. Understanding this took a long time, but then we eventually figured out how to prevent pigs from expressing Alpha-gal. That's basically the story here. Figure out why rejection is happening, knock it out, repeat. There are also many forms of rejection and it happens differently in different tissues. But, we're getting there. If you want to read more, here's an awesome recent review of the history and state of the field: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2019.03060/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2019.0306...

pabs3 5y ago
There is a pretty funny yet horrifying novel about NHPs for xenotransplants. It didn't cover the disease aspect though. https://farragobooks.com/book/the-organ-grinders/ https://farragobooks.com/book/the-organ-grinders/

throwaway14356 5y ago

Humans are pig ape hybrids.

VeninVidiaVicii 5y ago

I am fond of pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals. - Winston S. Churchill

shmde 5y ago
I am be responsible for purposefully creating a famine in India killing 3 million people and still be quoted as a badass in the future - Winston S. Churchill
- mutatio 5y ago
  I don't think the Bengal famine is that simple, certainly not to say "purposefully creating"...
  - shmde 5y ago
    Time and time again it has been proved and backed by research that it was indeed purposefully created. I don't understand why people aren't able to swallow that Churchill was responsible for the devastating famine. Its the same everywhere, even in r/history subreddit people just straight away deny Churchill was responsible for the famine. I understand that he is hailed as a hero for WW2 but he definitely has 3 million Indian's blood in his hand. https://theprint.in/science/proved-by-science-winston-churchill-not-nature-caused-1943-bengal-famine/214942/ https://theprint.in/science/proved-by-science-winston-church...
    - mutatio 5y ago
      Let's not hijack the thread with politics. I will say this, there was no motive for it to be "purposefully created" - that is nonsense, try and think about it objectively for a second. It's far more nuanced than that. The issue here is the motivation for your post, do you interject any mention of Gandhi with critiques of his character / behaviour?
      - mrguyorama 5y ago

emersonrsantos 5y ago

I don't get it that dogs/cats/horses/etc are sentient but pigs/cows/chicken and other animals are not.

ehnto 5y ago
It's a social construct like any, a partition or compartmentalization we put up to allow us to behave certain ways. Some cultures have different outlooks, some individuals have different outlooks. I think the only logic to glean here, is that we're able to get more resources out of a cow, so it was useful for us to compartmentalize and abstract away farming them as different somehow, so we did.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bayesian_horse 5y ago
Neither of any of the above. All of these animals are used and killed for research all the time. The issue for many of them is the personal connection and memories individuals have developed with one species or the other. Then it does matter more if it is a pig or a dog that you are doing harm to. For that matter I have known researchers who are excessively fond of pigs, chicken or cows ...

lostlogin 5y ago

> Some labs use dogs. I just can't do that." A dog's got personality. Personality goes a long way.

bckr 5y ago
Is this a quote from something? Because I'm certain pigs have personality. I'm even somewhat confident they have as much personality as dogs.
- lostlogin 5y ago
  Yes. Pulp Fiction. I completely agree with you, and left a job in part because they tested on animals.
- kahrl 5y ago
  Well, we'd have to be talkin' 'bout one charmin' motherfuckin' pig.
Azek 5y ago
Harder to digest in the climate of how we treat them, but pigs have personalities too.

ikiris 5y ago

the short answer: because we can legally grow them for parts, unlike humans at the moment

MathMonkeyMan 5y ago

My grandfather had a pig's heart valve in his chest, worked great.

hulitu 5y ago

Because, as George Orwell said: "The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.".

osrec 5y ago

What does PI stand for here?

ndr 5y ago
Principal Investigator, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_investigator https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_investigator

jakuboboza 5y ago

pigs are also used for vaccine testing. Maybe because their immune system is similar to humans. I wonder if man-bear-pig could happen if pigs would develop bigger more folded brains.

PickledHotdog 5y ago

Think that's the same reason they were used in nuclear testing, at least in the USSR.

llarsson 5y ago

Humans and pigs famously share approximately 98% DNA, so we are very similar. Aside from weight and size. Non-scientific: - https://thednatests.com/how-much-dna-do-humans-share-with-other-animals/ https://thednatests.com/how-much-dna-do-humans-share-with-ot... Scientific: - https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25689318/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25689318/ - https://aces.illinois.edu/news/human-pig-genome-comparison-complete https://aces.illinois.edu/news/human-pig-genome-comparison-c...