Very good post, Catherine. I agree with what you have written.
Put simply, what has given us the right to use animals as disposables, used to grow our organs and then be sacrificed? We just don't have that right.
Even if we look at this from a narrower ethical viewpoint than ours, there are serious problems. If the pig is part human - growing in the future perhaps not just one but maybe several human organs - then even those who have the warped belief that "humans are superior" will begin to wonder at what point an animal has the right not to be "used". When the percentage is 5%, 10%, 15%? What is the limit for these people?
I'm not a scientist, but I read somewhere that scientists do a lot of stem cell research (including for cancer) in the laboratory without the need for animal hosts. See, for example:
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/features/new-ste...imal-cells
and
https://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/85/8503cover1a.html
There are also possible hidden dangers in the "human stem cells in a pig" idea, apart from the ethical objections. It is quite possible that such organs, "farmed" in a "disposable" pig, might result in some DNA intermingling imperceptably, perhaps at first without consequence but over generations of repeated procedures resulting in a hybrid, maybe even with malformations.
Put simply, what has given us the right to use animals as disposables, used to grow our organs and then be sacrificed? We just don't have that right.
Even if we look at this from a narrower ethical viewpoint than ours, there are serious problems. If the pig is part human - growing in the future perhaps not just one but maybe several human organs - then even those who have the warped belief that "humans are superior" will begin to wonder at what point an animal has the right not to be "used". When the percentage is 5%, 10%, 15%? What is the limit for these people?
I'm not a scientist, but I read somewhere that scientists do a lot of stem cell research (including for cancer) in the laboratory without the need for animal hosts. See, for example:
http://www.surrey.ac.uk/features/new-ste...imal-cells
and
https://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/85/8503cover1a.html
There are also possible hidden dangers in the "human stem cells in a pig" idea, apart from the ethical objections. It is quite possible that such organs, "farmed" in a "disposable" pig, might result in some DNA intermingling imperceptably, perhaps at first without consequence but over generations of repeated procedures resulting in a hybrid, maybe even with malformations.
