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Comment by mytailorisrich | Hacker News Reader

For human organs the most likely host species is pig.

Pigs are big enough and apparently quite similar to us. And also the slaughter of hundreds of millions of them every year is already well accepted...

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...and for something far less exalted than curing people of diabetes.

Well exactly. If we are fine breeding so many for meat, breeding a few more to cure serious illnesses or even to save lives should not raise problems in public opinion.

Perhaps even further than that! It may make humanity realize that, just as oil is too valuable to burn, pigs are too valuable to use for bacon instead of life saving medical treatments.

I hope you're right.

There isn't a meaning limit on the number of pigs that can be raised, unfortunately.

Well, if you have to slaughter the pig to remove its human pancreas for transplant anyway, the ethical thing to do is extract as much value as you can by also using its delicious, delicious meat. (Which hopefully does not contain too many migrated human cells.)

This, but honestly I think to avoid any chance of something like prions we should just avoid genetically altered pigs for edible consumption altogether and stick to naturally bred pigs.

Yeah dog owners are on a real meat kick now so the meat will still have an important use. Dogs don't mind eating something that's 1% (or any other percentage, really) human.

That’s getting close to cannabalism. Especially if some Human cells start circulating around its bloodstream.

Nothing is too valuable for bacon.

> And also the slaughter of hundreds of millions of them every year is already well accepted...

I hope this changes eventually. It is one of humans archaic traditions that is highly unethical.

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