Humanised kidneys grown inside pigs for the first time
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Human-animal barriers are hard to pass for infections (bacteria or virus) because there’s very little material shared between organisms: occasional spittle of saliva, maybe blood drops during butchering, but not much. Therefore, there’s hardly ever an opportunity to mutate in an environment that would select for human compatibility. In a chimera, there’s a life-long tissue-sized opportunity. Even for one individual, hat’s enormous.
If pigs routinely carry a pathogen to which they are immune or that has no apparent symptoms, we wouldn’t know. We know it happens, but we have no more way of knowing than Christopher Columbus did. If any pathogen proves easily transmittable but deadly to humans, it’s over. Every bridging case tells us such infections are likely, numerous even.
Chimeras are the perfect ground to mutate those until it’s too late — not for the individual recipient, but potentially for the entire human population. This is a very easy-to-imagine and, overall, quite likely extinction event.
We don’t know what pigs have that could be it. We could and do raise chimeras in total isolation, hoping they would not catch anything like that. Still, every step of the process, from the circumstances of the pigs’ birth to where the food comes from, is an opportunity for such contamination.
Philosophically, we know, but we don‘t know: we know what it would look like, so if nasty things happen, we would understand; however, we have no sure way to prevent it until it happens. The closest equivalent in fiction would be the opening chapter of _The Last Of Us_ (spoilers): tell every epidemiologist this is it, set yourself on fire, and beg a foreign country to immediately nuke your country out of existence, hoping that will be enough.
I find that new conception of risk interesting, but have been pondering that scenario for decades (one of my professors was the first to suggest that path). I realize that it sounds a lot grimmer than vegans and Muslim people finding the practice “revolting” without nearly as dark a shadow over the practice.
Many of those pigs were completely isolated for over a hundred years and entirely missed out on the globalization of tons of infectious diseases.
A while ago a group of them were picked up and brought to a special protected refuge in New Zealand, where they are being used for artificial organ research (https://nzeno.nz/) basically for the reasons you highlight.
Am I just crazy? Do others not wonder that if pigs and humans have remarkably similar biology, then this increases the chance that pigs and humans might also have similar mental features? (I'm not claiming we're equally intelligent, just that it's well known that pigs are [quite intelligent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig#Behavior):
> Pigs are highly intelligent animals,[64] on par with dogs,[65] and according to David DiSalvo's writing in Forbes, they are "widely considered the smartest domesticated animal in the world. Pigs have demonstrated the ability to move a cursor on a video screen with their snouts and understand what is happening onscreen, and have learned to distinguish between the scribbles they had seen before and those they were seeing for the first time."[66][a][70]
But forget about the capacity to process information. How do we expect to improve as a society, in terms of treating other humans in a non-disposable fashion, if we regularly treat animals in a disposable fashion, given that a standard tactic in feeling okay about mistreating humans involves reducing ("de-anthropomorphizing") humans (via comparisons, propaganda, statistics, etc.) to be like "other animals"?
Suppose aliens were to visit us one day, and sci-fi-magically were to give certain animals a voice and a say, and those animals advocated for giving humans what they got from them: putting humans on little islands, where they multiply, and then a few years later, animals/aliens/etc. come by to use them as transplant sources. Clearly, the chances of that happening are next to zero. However, equally clearly, if this were to happen, the fact that humanity is reduced to such a state would be horrific. Yet the animals are giving us tit-for-tat: does it only become horrific for party A, when party B is able to do the same in return?
Damn. My heart goes out to those pigs. Sleep peacefully, this world isn't a nice place anyway.
https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/05/04/1051725/xenotran...
Source: I know people "close to the matter" since my mom started the collaboration with Revivicor while she was at the University of Maryland, Baltimore.
is by far the worst possible response to a thread detailing an extinction event, with the closest equivalent being the mycologist self-immolation in _The Last Of Us_. But… thank you for the reference. I missed that. I'm happy we are not dead.
That said, total extinction of the human race is unlikely since there are small isolated populations in various places around the world. The end of civilization though is a real possibility.
I do not get how you are arriving at that conclusion. Would the huge genetic variance in humanity not make an extinction event quiet unlikely, for any kind of transmissible disease?
However all of that is irrelevant since the GP was musing on the “huge genetic diversity of humans” being a barrier to xenomutation of animal viruses to humans.
Thats not the case, because humans are pretty much genetically identical to near a 1000th of a percent - so a particularly virulent virus that mutated from an animal to a human because of an organ transplant has a pretty good chance of causing a major pandemic.
You don’t even have to take my word for it, Covid, swine flu, h1n1 are all examples of animal infections jumping - and that’s without the added long term exposure / selection pressure a transplanted organ would provide.
Caveat: I’m all for this kind of research and development given the lack of transplantable organs in many health departments, but I’m also in favor of r&d for artificial replacements too.
"It kills between 25% and 90% of those infected – about 50% on average."
Even if it was airborne and very infectious it would not render an extinction event. It could possibly destroy civilization, though.
> However all of that is irrelevant since the GP was musing on the “huge genetic diversity of humans” being a barrier to xenomutation of animal viruses to humans.
No, you misunderstood. This was only meant regarding the ability of any virus to cause an extinction event. This was not applied to crossing the human-animal barrier.
I thik just the % number is pretty meaningless
How do you go from a very bad flu to an extinction? Well, we haven’t tried to do that at scale yet [That was a dark joke], but presumably with a very low percentage of death, Covid was able to disable our ability to obtain toilet paper, sail the Suez Canal, not drink bleach and horse dewormer, and enrich commercial real estate owners [I’ll stop with the jokes]. More seriously, our logistics were in the ditch for a while, and we realized we had very few factories for a lot of stuff that is essential for critical things—the plastic cap for the tiny glass vials that we put vaccines in? the tiny cardboard sticks used to hold the test to check if meat processing chains are clean? We had a lot of “I never thought that was a thing” moments. There’s a lot more to be had.
More deaths, especially through a slower mechanism, could block our ability to distribute some essential medicine, disinfectant, food, or even water. If some parents believe that their kids could be dying unless they obtain a compound that is in a protected facility, that facility could be breached—even if it’s all a hoax and that’s actually an insufficiently protected bio-security lab with live samples of a worse infection.
If you’ve seen any pandemic horror story, you’ve seen countless errors in judgment, from the billionaire fleeing to the last uninfected island, carrying the virus on board, to the scientist who missed an assumption, etc.
I’m praying that you are right, but *we don’t know* because (back to the sincerity behind that first joke) we have no idea if our genetic diversity protects us against any zoonotic infection. It’s a domain we understand in principle but have no way to acquire relevant scientific knowledge. Hence why this is a *new type of risk*.
Oppenheimer was able to say that the atomic bomb wouldn’t ignite N2 and the whole atmosphere. Imagine they knew this was a risk but couldn’t run the math because of uncertainty in quantum physics. Would the project be threatening in a completely new way?
To answer your question:
> I do not get how you are arriving at that conclusion.
You indeed can’t because I’m not reaching that conclusion, not formally. There are obvious gaps in my speculative reasoning. But those gaps are known unknowables. They currently seem impossible to disprove clearly.
This is why this was explained to me in a class about the philosophy of science, not microbiology.
If they can make pig organs be accepted by the body without compromising the immune system that's a big breakthrough right there.
> The first hurdle to overcome in xenotransplants is preventing so-called hyperacute rejection, which typically occurs just minutes after an animal organ is connected to the human circulatory system. By “knocking out” the gene that encodes the biomolecule known as alpha-gal—which has been identified as responsible for a rapid antibody-mediated rejection of pig organs by humans—immediate rejection has been avoided in all five xenotransplants at NYU Langone. Additionally, the pig’s thymus gland, which is responsible for educating the immune system, was embedded underneath the outer layer of the kidney to stave off novel, delayed immune responses. The combination of modifications has been shown to prevent rejection of the organ while preserving kidney function.
https://nyulangone.org/news/pig-kidney-xenotransplantation-p...
To be able to have a 'manufactured' supply seems much better, not least or especially if it is ultimately possible to remove all immunity problems.
The current system, whether opt-in or opt-out, is because we simply don't know how to do better. On demand grown organs using the recipient's own DNA seems to be the holy grail. I reckon we'll get there someday.
"Why I gave my kidney to a stranger — and why you should consider doing it too"
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/4/11/12716978/ki...
An ex-colleague of mine got a kidney transplant in China, most kidneys are from either volunteer donors or prisoners that have given their consent.
Although it is not impossible for this type of system to be gamed, having proper governance around it might be a good way forward.
> The U.S., with only five per cent of the world’s population, provides more than 70 per cent of all the plasma used to make plasma therapies for the whole world.
> If you add plasma obtained from Germany, Austria, Hungary and the Czech Republic — the other countries where compensation is offered — compensated plasma accounts for 89 per cent of all the world’s plasma for plasma therapies.
> This is worth emphasizing: There is no country in the world that manages to collect all the plasma needed for plasma therapies using non-compensated plasma collections. Every country in the world that uses plasma therapies depends on compensated plasma collections.
https://theconversation.com/not-compensating-canadian-blood-...
- Wikipedia
This is obvious and egregious animal abuse. What is it that puts our wants above those pigs' right to a peaceful life without growing others' (another species'!) organs in their bodies. Presumably to be slaughtered once our organs have developed enough to be harvested? What gives us the right to even attempt that procedure on another living being?
Where ethics come into play is how the animal is kept during its life. And whether we prevent suffering when its time to remove the kidneys and kill the donor in the process. I would speculate that in the interest of good donor organ function, we would make sure the animal does not experience any stress.
I wonder If you knew they were already vegan - would you have provided the same reply.
I personally think this view is problematic and it's why we're ruining the environment. We have a false sense of importance which shouldn't exist and it might send us extinct if we're not careful.'
For example, give me one single reason why we think we have the right to pollute the environment, fill the water ways with tyre dust, chop down the amazon, factory farm?
It's a lack of respect for other things which is the issue.
Where do we draw the line? As a human, I have to go on walks to live a healthy, long life. Every time I go on a walk I am crushing many bugs, and occasionally reptiles or their eggs beneath my feet. When I eat food, even plant based, many bugs and worms are necessarily killed in the process. At some fundamental level, human existence is competitive and destructive to other life. Personally, I just do my best to minimize this impact.
I think all life is important.
Honestly, I think we're overall pretty doomed. But hey, round and round it goes.
Personally I'd much prefer that we enforced more ethical treatment of livestock over being forced to veganism.
This doesn't mean I am unaware of the counter-arguments; disregarding the ones which are essentially just an appeal to tradition, there is still one more I know. To play devil's advocate:
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We have no idea at all what sentience is, and it's entirely conceivable that we're the only ones who really truly have the experience of suffering, rather than just a non-conscious stimulus-response mechanism.
By way of comparison, larger current generation AI are of similar complexity to the brains of many of these animals — are those AI sentient?
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Back to my own voice: I often find myself using the {animal brain complexity} ≈ {AI complexity} for the exact opposite purpose, to demonstrate why current AI might well be sentient.
We're not even talking about killing animals for science or the "greater good" when discussing meat consumption.
Animals feel pain and can experience suffering just like humans can.
I think the fact that the suffering in the supply chain is hidden is the main reason it's not a consideration for most consumers.
We can trivially make a machine with the former, and that acts to minimise that sensory input. Does it have the qualia? How might we even be able to prove it either way?
That subjective experience, qualia or whatever you call it, what I meant here by sentience. Given that the term pretty much always leads to discussion like this, I have only myself to blame for forgetting to mention an any of this in the previous comment.
As I understand it, several hog farmers are eaten by their charges every year. Hogs have also been used as a convenient method of disposing of murder victims on numerous occasions over the centuries.
Turnabout is fair play.
I think a big part of the cultural and historical justification of being able to slaughter and exploit animals comes from Noah's covenant in Genesis.
Prior to industrialisation and mass production people ate far less meat in their diets.
Being able to see ourselves, our humanity, in animals seems like a rare and precious quality.
"60% of all mammals on Earth are livestock, mostly cattle and pigs, 36% are human and just 4% are wild animals."
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/may/21/human-ra...
I fail to see any more obstacles in sacrificing a pig’s life to give a person in end stage kidney disease a chance to live.
Oh and besides: the numbers would not justify moral outrage either: it is true that there are many people waiting for an organ transplant. However, that number still pales when compared to how many pigs are slaughtered for meat production. It is all but guaranteed that genetically modified pigs bred for organ harvesting would be treated well - unlike their meat producing cousins.
Not to mention that there are perfectly viable alternatives to consuming meat. By contrast, people suffering from end-stage kidney failure have little choice, other than dialysis and waiting for their turn to receive a donor organ (i.e. many years in declining health on the waiting list).
So can we stop the blubber about meat consumption and animal abuse in this context please? We should rather celebrate the apparent progress in addressing a major challenge in caring for people whose organs fail.
Yeah, but chickens outnumber them.
Imagine being pig and realizing your entire existence has been shaped by thousands of years of selection. Unfortunately the sentiment of animal justice is a few thousand years too late. We have literally evolved farm animals into their current form. These creatures have no other purpose than what they have been artificially selected for - human consumption. They have been molded into a bastardization of their former ancestors, their new purpose at the whim of humanity.
I'm mostly rambling, but the main point is that it's not very straight forward. Would it be better if pigs never existed? If we stopped all animal farming tomorrow, how will they survive, where will they go? And I'm not even mentioning morality, which would complicate things even more, especially if one does not believe in a higher power, a.k.a. God.
A pig’s lifespan is shorter than that to begin with. So even if you were to equate a pig’s life with that of a human: the added lifespan of the human is more than what the pig’s entire life expectancy is.
But frankly, it bothers me that we are even having a debate about this: a pig is vastly less valuable than a human life. Whoever disagrees with this fundamental premise has his priorities completely wrong.
give just one single concrete argument that this is the case which isn't "because it just is".
That's really how this world works. Except for plants, all other beings are consuming other beings.
Carnivorous plants aside, I've heard trees will extract and use calcium if planted close enough to bones (or vice versa.)
Maybe a robot will raise its voice and they become conscious of their wrong doing and they will decide that the best course of action to minimize suffering in their human pet is to end them completely as other solution would always come with a non zero amount of pain
(Have you seen human living in the wild ? So much suffering)
Or maybe you should buy this new breed of human born without nociceptors ? (Its not like the evolutionary need for it is anymore relevant in our robotics world)
In that sense, I wonder if it may be fair to preserve the DNA of victimised animals and clone them somewhere in the future when resources allow, to have a peaceful life.
profit over and over again.
Evolution.
As I noted below, pigs enjoy eating human beings very much. It's their tough luck that we're smarter than them.
Pigs will also eat mice, snakes, birds, and cute little bunny rabbits.
Only because they can't.
> it makes the holocaust look like a joke.
Umm... okay.
Pig heart valves, bovine collagen in grafts, on and on. You just don't know about it.
Presumably, reason and society
Life isn't fair.
Applying one's non-universal (even accros its own specy) moral system to other species seems odd to me.
Pain is just the evolutionnary response to avoid self-life threatening situation, nothing else. So at most i would say it makes me root for bio-engineered pig without nociceptors.
My point of view is my moral system apply to my specy only, i dont see a point on applying to other specy (as i already dont apply 100% of my moral system to other human from different culture for which their moral system contradict some point of mine). And i do as such because applying empathy to pig would have for final conclusion that we should bio engineer pig without pain receptors as its the path that for me minimize change (the genus of domesticated pig still get to exists, their suffering is now out of the question, i still get to eat bacon , my neighbor working in a farm still get a job etc. And science get to progress) and it does not need the modern-man-centric "dying is bad" . So being pragmatic , i think that the current status quo is enough waiting for that.
Not doing that is the easy path, not the noble one.
Dr. Frederick Fronkenstein: Hearts and kidneys are Tinker Toys! I am talking about the central nervous system! — Dr. Frederick Fronkenstein, Young Frankenstein