Human-sheep hybrids pave way for diabetes cure and mass organ transplants | Hacker News Reader

Human-sheep hybrids pave way for diabetes cure and mass organ transplants

telegraph.co.uk

81 pointsevo_961 comments

Other than the 'yuck' factor, what's the real objection to all this? Have folks read too much Science Fiction where it all goes terribly wrong? Maybe it'll be fine. Grow organs in sheep, use them on ill people, folks get better, have a mutton dinner to celebrate!

Seriously, we wear sheep's wool and skin, crack chicken embryos into our batter to make it bake up nice and firm, rub animal oils into our skin and armpits to smell and look better. But use them for real medicine and suddenly "Whoa there! Lets think about this some more?"

I'm all for continuing until there's a problem, which probably won't ever happen.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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

Do you mean animal biomass? Even so, I thought that the winners there are insects.

It may not be the one you were thinking of, but there's an xkcd for that: https://www.xkcd.com/1338/

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.

His main source is a book by Vaclav Smil, he cites it at the bottom of the comic.

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.

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.

...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.

I think your worries could more profitably be directed to the industrial farming complex as it exists right now.

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...

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.

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.

>>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.

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.

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.

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.

>limits

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

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.

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.

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

Most fertilized human eggs don't result in a pregnancy, they either don't implant in the uterus or they spontaneously abort early on. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Spontaneous_abortion_in_humans

Humans aren't "meant" for anything.

Well that's a bleak view

Depends whether you read that as "...therefore useless," or "...therefore must forge their own purpose."

It absolutely can seem that way, depending on the worldview you grew up with.

There exists a future where you could conceivably eat a delicious lamb shank, while wearing a supple lambskin jacket, while your implanted pancreas and kidney process the meal, and all are sourced from the same animal.

The same individual animal? Because that seems kind of weird for reasons I can't quite put my finger on.

I guess it would be less wasteful though. If you're going to butcher a man-pig to steal his pancreas you might as well use the leftovers. Would save hospitals money on catering too.

You know what, I've thought about it and I'm all for it

Even today, very little is wasted when animals are slaughtered. And products made from animals find their way into a surprising number of end products. Here's some indication of whats going on from the Daily Mail (2009): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1217794/From-...

I was joking, but joking aside, please don't use the daily mail as a source of data. People in the US might not realise it but The Daily Mail is like a tabloid version of fox news but with more racism.

> [...] that seems kind of weird for reasons I can't quite put my finger on.

The meat wouldn't stay fresh while you recovered from surgery. You could always freeze it, but then it's not quite as delicious.

> Go to hospital for pancreas transplant

> Go home with a packed meal

> A large dairy animal approached Zaphod Beeblebrox's table, a large fat meaty quadruped of the bovine type with large watery eyes, small horns and what might almost have been an ingratiating smile on its lips. 'Good evening', it lowed and sat back heavily on its haunches, 'I am the main Dish of the Day. May I interest you in the parts of my body?' It harrumphed and gurgled a bit, wriggled its hind quarters in to a more comfortable position and gazed peacefully at them.

And some time after that a future where all of these are produced in the same factory from cell culture, and real sheep are rare.

But surely by that time we can have, say, electric sheeps, right?

We can dream.

Dreaming of electric sheep is something a Dick would come up with.

You have apparently committed comedy homicide. May VALIS have mercy on your soul.

If you take away the whole "nuclear war" aspect that future doesn't sound all too bad.

sure, but status-wise you would be sort of a loser if you didn't have a real one.

Unless people walk up to it and check they’ll never be able to tell the difference anyway.

That's all before you go to bed with your wife(male) who has a sheep-implant vagina.

Wondering... and if the cells also replace the brain and create a human-like intelligent sheep..

We've had talk of sheeple for decades now. Nothing new, methinks.

It's a major ethical concern.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4928294/

Scientists/ethicists have been pondering whether stem cells and creating chimeras could lead to unintended consequences of affecting the brains of animals. Maybe even making them more conscious/intelligent.

I just can't help but think of the MaddAddam trilogy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MaddAddam

Sheepoons.

Chimeras rather than hybrids, surely?

You know, or just start eating Whole Foods and plant based. Mayb a little cardio too.

Type 1 diabetes is a genetic, autoimmune disease in which the the pancreas' ability to produce insulin is destroyed. Sadly, a little cardio won't help.

Wake up Sheeple (Sorry, I had to)

OHGODOHGODOHGOD why did you do that?

https://xkcd.com/1013/

swap your carbs for fat and see what happens when you're diabetic already :|

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