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From the New York Times news section earlier this year:
In a First, Man Receives a Heart From a Genetically Altered Pig
The breakthrough may lead one day to new supplies of animal organs for transplant into human patients.
By Roni Caryn Rabin
Jan. 10, 2022A 57-year-old man with life-threatening heart disease has received a heart from a genetically modified pig, a groundbreaking procedure that offers hope to hundreds of thousands of patients with failing organs.
It is the first successful transplant of a pig’s heart into a human being.
… But there is an acute shortage of organs, and about a dozen people on the lists die each day. Some 3,817 Americans received human donor hearts last year as replacements, more than ever before, but the potential demand is still higher.
Scientists have worked feverishly to develop pigs whose organs would not be rejected by the human body, research accelerated in the past decade by new gene editing and cloning technologies. …
The heart transplanted into Mr. Bennett came from a genetically altered pig provided by Revivicor, a regenerative medicine company based in Blacksburg, Va.
Revivicor is a subsidiary of United Therapeutics, which was founded by that guy I went to MBA school (after he’d more or less invented satellite radio) who is now “America’s highest paid female CEO.”
Lately he’s gotten bored with transgenderism and is into transhumanist stuff like uploading your brain to a computer to live forever.
From Wikipedia:
United Therapeutics was founded in 1996 by Martine Rothblatt, an American lawyer, author, and entrepreneur, who created Sirius XM. In 1994, Rothblatt’s young daughter was diagnosed with a fatal orphan disease, pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). Rothblatt sold her telecom stock and started the PPH Cure Foundation to fund PAH research.
In 2002, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved United Therapeutics’ drug Remodulin, a prostacyclin vasodilator used to treat PAH. Remodulin provided PAH patients an alternative to GlaxoSmithKline’s Flolan. By 2003, Remodulin annual sales had reached $50 million. By 2010, annual sales were $300 million and United Therapeutics’ share price had increased 800 percent from the 1999 initial public offering price.
In 2011, United Therapeutics acquired Revivicor, a company focused on developing genetic biotechnology platforms to provide alternative tissue sources for treatment. In March 2021, United Therapeutics’ market capitalization was $7.1 billion.
On January 7, 2022, a porcine heart provided by United Therapeutics in conjunction with Kiniksa Pharmaceuticals and University of Maryland Medical Center was used in the first pig-to-human transplant operation. The recipient subsequently passed away on Tuesday, March 8, 2022.
So the living forever thing didn’t work out so well for the patient. But still …
As I may have mentioned once or twice, he was the most arrogant man at the UCLA MBA school. On the other hand, he had a lot to be arrogant about. When he told me he was going to make a fortune in outer space, I didn’t believe anybody could. But he did it.
Basically, he’s lived the life of a hero from a Robert Heinlein science fiction story: make a fortune in outer space, make a second fortune saving a child you fathered by inventing the cure for her disease, change sex, start a cult, live forever, etc. From Tablet:
[Colonel Jennifer] Pritzker also created the first chair in transgender studies at the University of Victoria in British Columbia. The current chair, Aaron Devor, founded an annual conference called Moving Trans History Forward, whose keynote speaker in 2016 was the renowned transhumanist, Martine Rothblatt, who was mentored by the transhumanist Ray Kurzweil of Google. Rothblatt lectured there on the value of creating an organization such as WPATH to serve “tech transgenders” in the cultivation of “tech transhumanists.” (Rothblatt’s ideology of disembodiment and technological religion seems to be having nearly as much influence on American culture as Sirius satellite radio, which Rothblatt co-founded.) Rothblatt is an integral presence at Out Leadership, a business networking arm of the LGBTQ+ movement, and appears to believe that “we are making God as we are implementing technology that is ever more all-knowing, ever-present, all-powerful, and beneficent.”
And the Heinlein connection is not a coincidence either. I looked up the transcript from an interview he did with Tim Ferris:
Tim Ferriss: When you were growing up, who were your role models or inspirations? … Did anyone really stick out for you?
Martine Rothblatt: I think that in terms of authors, I was very influenced by Robert Heinlein, the science fiction author.
Tim Ferriss: Oh, sure. Yeah. Stranger in a Strange Land.
Martine Rothblatt: Absolutely. It was so brilliant. And then a few years ago, when his widow released the uncensored, unedited version of Stranger in a Strange Land, it’s like three times larger and like no holds barred. I just savored every page of that. I think my favorite book of all of his is Time Enough for Love in which he covers almost every topic under the sun. So Heinlein’s characters were somewhat of role models for me, like Lazarus Long is a common character in some Heinlein books.
Heinlein was a combination of all-American regular guy and freakazoid. For example, ever since youth, he’d had solipsistic feelings that he was … well, God. Solipsisim tied into some of his other strange interests, like incest (the main subject of Time Enough For Love) because you don’t have to share your family tree with so many plebian ancestors.
Thus Heinlein’s jaw-dropping 1959 transgenderist short story All You Zombies posits that with the assistance of a time machine and a sex change operation, you, personally, could be all of your own ancestors (and descendants).
At the end, the time traveler sums up:
Then I glanced at the ring on my finger.
The Snake That Eats Its Own Tail, Forever and Ever. I know where I came from—but where did all you zombies come from?
I felt a headache coming on, but a headache powder is one thing I do not take. I did once—and you all went away.
So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.
You aren’t really there at all. There isn’t anybody but me—Jane—here alone in the dark.
I miss you dreadfully.
English
Arabic
Chinese (Simplified)
Dutch
French
German
Hebrew
Hindi
Italian
Japanese
Korean
Persian
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Portuguese
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Spanish
Swedish
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Vietnamese
What does its hair look like?
Not Bulgakov?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_a_Dog
The pig was unavailable for comment
That’s all folks!
Is it lost on these guys how ugly they are as women?
Guys like this cite Heinlein's stories as big influences. I wonder if there are others. Like The Picture of Dorian Gray.
That's normie-man thinking because that's what we value about women. In fact, I vaguely recall reading one Heinlein story in which there is a gender change (or mind-body switch, I don't remember) and the woman is of course beautiful because otherwise the story would be gross and uninteresting for straight males to read about.
Real-life transgenders must have something broken in their brain relating to genitalia. That is all.
In fact, this might be a way of distinguishing between different "trans" social phenomena. A pubescent boy who spends all his time looking at images on computer screens and decides he wants to be a "pretty" girl is probably an entirely different psychological phenomenon from an adult male who has experienced relationships, sex, family life, etc and decides to become an ugly older woman.
Yet another reminder that the pig-chimp hybrid hypothesis of homo sapiens is true.
http://www.macroevolution.net/hybrid-hypothesis-section-4.html
When the tricuspid valve of a human heart is diseased, currently accepted medical practice specifies its replacement with a pig tricuspid valve—not that of a dog or a baboon (Brit 1978, p. 406). In fact, according to Osther et al (1991), “Porcine products have been used extensively in many human therapeutic replacement regimens. Their use is primarily due to genetic similarity of humans and pigs at the amino acid level, which results in a high acceptance of grafted prosthetics and excellent tolerance of repeatedly administered biologicals.” For example, pig skin is used in treating human burn patients (Aronoff et al. 1976; Brit 1978, p. 406). Human diabetics are given pig insulin.
http://www.macroevolution.net/human-origins-2.html
See list of human traits not seen in other primates. All are explained by pig outcrossing
They seem to do that a lot nowadays. (except for those scientists prevented from working at all for reasons of: Hair. See iSteve’s passim)
If the scientists had a calmer more orderly approach perhaps progress might be faster. Someone from the NYT should have a word.
Impressive technology. Has the evil, insane PETA come out yet opposing this?
I mean, it didn’t work, but if we don’t try we’ll never know. There’s a shortage of organs for transplant.
Your acquaintance Rothblatt actually seems like a relatively benign example of the variety, starting businesses and promoting science.
Maybe someday in the distant future, mankind will have evolved enough to accept life and reality as it is. But don’t hold your breath.
I was at the Illinois Secretary of State yesterday to renew my CDL. The theme being pushed was organ donation. So there was a montage running on the flat screens showing donors and recipients of organs. All of the dead donors were white. All of the recipients were negroes. Pretty much tells you what they’re going for.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21415828/Disproportionally = more
Disparities = fewerReplies: @Mike Tre
Why? Doctors are only human, despite their oaths and vows.
If I'm severely injured and at risk of dying, I want to make sure there's no conflict between saving my organs and saving my life.Replies: @Mike Tre
I wonder if anybody has tried to maneuver a meeting between Rothblatt and Elon Musk. At least as fateful and worthy as that putative meeting between Elvis, Carl, Jerry Lee and Johnny.
Rothblatt and Musk are both doers, they are not bullshit*rs.
Did a Google image search for Mr Rothblatt, and he evidently hasn’t solved the problem of how to not look like John Wayne in drag.
https://nymag.com/nymag/rss/business/martine-rothblatt-transgender-ceo/index3.html
This took me a second to get because I was thinking about California techno-perverts, rather than the animal to human heart transplant:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_of_a_Dog
“Progress without perverts” is a slogan I just thought of while reading this. Conservatism conserved nothing and liberal-progressivism is in a death spiral of genitals, genders, races and slights. Elliot Page isn’t going to get us where we need to go.
He’s not exactly a shrinking violet.
So, the future is billionaires’ sexual fetishes being stamped into our faces … forever…?
Heinlein was very into men becoming women, even early in his career as that quote shows. In particular, men becoming sexy, slutty, young w0men.
“…Too many mistakes, and a general court–martial will exile you for a year in a nasty period, say 1974 with its strict rationing…”
Actually, they called it “stagflation” and the economy was just about that bad. Nice one, RAH.
Oink.
The evo-theologian in me is compelled to point out that humans, whether a man or a people, are due for a fall precisely when they begin to seriously think of themselves as God. The conquest of genetics might change that but I doubt it: my bet is firmly on nature retaining the element of surprise.
A complete freak.
https://nymag.com/nymag/rss/business/martine-rothblatt-transgender-ceo/index3.html
Vancouver Island is growing in importance on the Canadian stage, is something of a White flight destination and is located in a geopolitically sensitive location of global significance. Still, Victoria seems almost too small to be on Jewish radar. However, we know that’s impossible: no niche is too small.
It’s an odd place: my distinct impression is that Jewish influence on local media, politics, investment advising and real estate development is significantly lower than it was in Ottawa a full half-century ago – maybe it’s just better hidden and less controlled by a few local Jewish families. There is still a very major old-money WASP presence in Victoria, albeit with a growing Sikh and East Asian portion.
But of course, they are very progressive, homophilic WASPs, so there’s that.
The first heart transplant of many for all you Vax Covidian knuckleheads.
Heinlein was a right fascist. Remember the passage in Starship Troopers where the hero explains that no soldier has any business even wondering, let along asking out loud, why he is fighting? Difficult to spell it out more clearly than that.
I always thought the shortage of donated organs is because the donor gets no reward.
People should form an association that anyone can join by leaving their organs upon death to the association and the trustees of the association are instructed that upon receipt of an organ they offer it (1) to any member of the association in need of the organ who matches the organ and (2) if there is no such person to donate it to the normal organ allocation process.
Every member of the immediate family of the association member would also get preference on available association organs. In he event two people need an organ whoever was in the association longest (joined at the earliest age) got preference. When you turn 20 join the association and make sure your future spouse and children never die in need of a transplant for lack of an organ.
Backward-looking racist! In the very near future, the recipients will be Brahmins and Han. Bonus: why no Jews? Because they have the Ukraine.
If they had sufficiently overbearing mothers (Microsoft Helper: “Looks like you’re interested in ‘Early Life’”) then they are thoroughly aware of whether or not a man may say so out loud.
At some point, Martine’s transition entailed a nose job.
he contracted a pig virus, which doctors think he acquired from the pig heart. they’re not sure whether this virus is what lead to him dying though.
such a thing is supposed to be screened out in the setup process for the transplant surgery, so they’ve discovered a problem in their procedure if it turns out to be the case that the pig virus is what killed him. they’re still trying to figure it out.
he was an ex-con who had been denied an organ transplant in the past. i’m in favor of experimenting on these guys when it comes to this next level of medical technology. let those guys go first.
i have a friend with a PHD in this field, but he doesn’t have much information on this surgery, so details are tight even in the medical industry.
Their souls are already ugly. Changing their external appearance isn’t a big step.
Guys like this cite Heinlein’s stories as big influences. I wonder if there are others. Like The Picture of Dorian Gray.
The phrase “you can’t make this stuff up” is becoming a cliche.
almost all of us cryonicists were inspired by scifi books and in particular by heinlein…unfortunately, cryonics has failed to take off. If you read the terror management theory books, the reason why may have something to do with fear of death and the unconscious mind. Also, all of us cryos are way out on the end of bell curve in many ways and so it might be said that we are not really human in some important ways.
Calls to mind the Burgundian Chieftain, Pigheart The Salty.
This may cut into the PRC’s market of Uighur and Falung Gong body parts.
In 1959 Robert Heinlein wrote, in one of his science-fiction stories,
“So I crawled into bed and whistled out the light.”
Did Heinlein make much money from his acoustic-switch invention?
I would have thought that this Heinlein work was the influence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Fear_No_Evil
It’s not your grandfather’s Grandfather Paradox.
That doesn’t sound very kosher.
The who-whom data on organ donation is thought-provoking.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21415828/
Disproportionally = more
Disparities = fewer
https://i.postimg.cc/GtvqLn26/IMG-0742.jpg
https://i.postimg.cc/DZXc63qm/IMG-0619.jpg
I removed the organ donor designation from my driver license.
Why? Doctors are only human, despite their oaths and vows.
If I’m severely injured and at risk of dying, I want to make sure there’s no conflict between saving my organs and saving my life.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Fear_No_EvilReplies: @Cagey Beast, @Anon
Thanks. What a pervert Heinlein was.
not to mention “And I Will Fear No Evil”
There are many reasons why I am opposed to organ transplantation, and this disgusting story certainly highlights a smorgasbord of them.
But my fundamental opposition is entirely analytical in nature, at least as it concerns human-to-human organ transplants. The point is, the transplanted tissue is always unlawfully and immorally taken, and this is so by definition. Any tissue which is healthy enough to be viable in the body of another, is necessarily healthy enough to be viable in the body to which it properly belongs; thus, removing it therefrom is a case of vivisection and an adjunct to homicide. It does not do to say that the person is “dead already,” for if their tissue is viable then they are ipso facto not “dead already.” There is no other indicator that might be used—not a lack of brain activity or heart function or respiratory function or anything else—that can be reliably used to classify someone as “really” dead. The only such indicator is a gross and sensible state of corruption, which of course makes organ harvesting impossible. A body with viable tissue must be considered presumptively alive.
Nor does it do to say that the person willed to donate their organs while they were still competent to do so, thus no harm is done. The law and morality cannot recognize a will to abdicate from life in this manner. It amounts to the establishment of a permissible form of suicide.
These considerations do not apply to the donation of blood, blood fractions, cultured cells, or bilateral organs such as kidneys, one of which can be dispensed with without bringing about the necessary effect of death. All of these procedures should technically be considered grafts, not transplants, as indeed some of them already are. Grafting is a supplement to the nutritive faculty and is not essentially vivisection, despite some superficial similarities of technique.
Not sure I agree with your assessment of organ donation. Many cases of organ harvesting are from people whose lives are not viable without technological intervention--they are cases of imminent death in which the body is artificially kept alive just for the purpose of harvesting an organ, and without that motivation for medical intervention, the person would be allowed to die naturally. Can you expand on why this short-term medical intervention combined with removing an organ and followed by death is immoral?Replies: @Intelligent Dasein
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21415828/Disproportionally = more
Disparities = fewerReplies: @Mike Tre
Just a couple other examples of what they want the future to be:
ugh, yeah, promoting science. or is it promoting science fiction. saving people from heart disease by early dietary intervention. meh. cracking open the chest cavity to hook up pig plumbing. ooo. sexy.
People should form an association that anyone can join by leaving their organs upon death to the association and the trustees of the association are instructed that upon receipt of an organ they offer it (1) to any member of the association in need of the organ who matches the organ and (2) if there is no such person to donate it to the normal organ allocation process.
Every member of the immediate family of the association member would also get preference on available association organs. In he event two people need an organ whoever was in the association longest (joined at the earliest age) got preference. When you turn 20 join the association and make sure your future spouse and children never die in need of a transplant for lack of an organ.Replies: @Yevardian
Iran has had a policy of cash-for-donors for decades. No organ shortage. No flood of horror stories either.
So they OD’d on lipstick lesbian porn and wanted to join in as a woman but unlike the porn actresses they forgot, their ugly….lol
When you consider how most men would react to the idea of losing their penis and having it replaced by an organ that is designed to let your body be penetrated by other people, I think it is clear that being beautiful is not the driving factor.
That’s normie-man thinking because that’s what we value about women. In fact, I vaguely recall reading one Heinlein story in which there is a gender change (or mind-body switch, I don’t remember) and the woman is of course beautiful because otherwise the story would be gross and uninteresting for straight males to read about.
Real-life transgenders must have something broken in their brain relating to genitalia. That is all.
In fact, this might be a way of distinguishing between different “trans” social phenomena. A pubescent boy who spends all his time looking at images on computer screens and decides he wants to be a “pretty” girl is probably an entirely different psychological phenomenon from an adult male who has experienced relationships, sex, family life, etc and decides to become an ugly older woman.
But my fundamental opposition is entirely analytical in nature, at least as it concerns human-to-human organ transplants. The point is, the transplanted tissue is always unlawfully and immorally taken, and this is so by definition. Any tissue which is healthy enough to be viable in the body of another, is necessarily healthy enough to be viable in the body to which it properly belongs; thus, removing it therefrom is a case of vivisection and an adjunct to homicide. It does not do to say that the person is "dead already," for if their tissue is viable then they are ipso facto not "dead already." There is no other indicator that might be used---not a lack of brain activity or heart function or respiratory function or anything else---that can be reliably used to classify someone as "really" dead. The only such indicator is a gross and sensible state of corruption, which of course makes organ harvesting impossible. A body with viable tissue must be considered presumptively alive.
Nor does it do to say that the person willed to donate their organs while they were still competent to do so, thus no harm is done. The law and morality cannot recognize a will to abdicate from life in this manner. It amounts to the establishment of a permissible form of suicide.
These considerations do not apply to the donation of blood, blood fractions, cultured cells, or bilateral organs such as kidneys, one of which can be dispensed with without bringing about the necessary effect of death. All of these procedures should technically be considered grafts, not transplants, as indeed some of them already are. Grafting is a supplement to the nutritive faculty and is not essentially vivisection, despite some superficial similarities of technique.Replies: @Chrisnonymous
In the not-too-distant future, we will probably be able to 3D print organs using induced stem cells originating from the organ recipient. What’s your view on that?
Not sure I agree with your assessment of organ donation. Many cases of organ harvesting are from people whose lives are not viable without technological intervention–they are cases of imminent death in which the body is artificially kept alive just for the purpose of harvesting an organ, and without that motivation for medical intervention, the person would be allowed to die naturally. Can you expand on why this short-term medical intervention combined with removing an organ and followed by death is immoral?
In order to understand why, and hopefully answer your other questions, we can examine step by step what it means for a living being to lose and regenerate tissue.
Man, like any other living creature, is a substance, that is a union of body and soul where the body is the material principle and the soul is the formative principle. Only the union itself is the substance; neither the body by itself nor the soul by itself is a man, but the soul, being the formative principle, is the primary of the two and is the real and essential thing. It is the soul which makes the body and which gives it its nature. This definition has many implications which are dispositive for the body and for all medical considerations pertaining to it.
First of all, it defines the limits of the body. The body is that region of space in which the soul directly supervenes. Within that limit, no other power can exist without corrupting the body and causing pain to the soul. Disease can be defined as bodily corruption which attacks, interferes with, or otherwise prevents the soul from forming the body as it would. As the body is material, the corruption wrought by disease can be affected or reversed by other material means, and such is the practice of medicine. Medicine assists by art what the soul does by nature. When the soul is frustrated in its formative activity, medicine can assist by removing the impediment. Death ensues when the body is so degraded that it can no longer receive the formative power of the soul.
Now let's examine death in a little more detail.
As long as my body is healthy and intact, I can speak of such a thing as "my hand" without confusion. The hand moves how I will it to move; it obeys my command without mediation, and thus it is part of "my body," i.e. that region of space on which my soul supervenes as form. Now let's say that my hand is cleanly lopped off in a sword fight. It no longer obeys my will and therefore it cannot be considered part of my body. That much is uncontroversial. But furthermore (and this is the part that starts to confuse people), it is no longer actually a hand. Although it is in a shape like a hand, it is not informed by anything. It is already earth and dust and will shortly assume the accidents proper to such.
Now let's say that the swordsman who defeated me has a sadistic streak. Not yet satisfied in his victory, he drags me off to his dungeon to torture me to death. He cuts of my other arm and both my legs which, following the logic, are no longer either mine or arms and legs. He puts out both my eyes, plunging me into darkness and cutting me off from sensory contact with the world. Finally, he sinks his sword into my heart and I am no more.
We see what is going on here. By progressively depriving me of the possibility of motion and sensation, he was corrupting my body more and more, but as long as there was some region of space that my soul still informed, "I" was not yet dead. I was only dead once my soul informed nothing, and this provides an important insight in how to think about death. Death is full-body amputation; it is the amputation of the entire body from the soul.
So much for death. Now let's talk about regeneration.
Suppose the swordsman had not been so sadistic. Perhaps, after chopping off my hand, he is satisfied that he has made his point and, instead of pressing on to my destruction, he shows mercy on me. He sends me and my former hand to a great reconstructive surgeon in an attempt to restore me to health.
The surgeon pronounces the cut clean and gives a hopeful prognosis. He reattaches the bones, tendons, major blood vessels and nerves, and repairs as much damage as he can. After many months of rehabilitation and therapy, I am able to use "my hand" again.
What exactly do we say has happened here? We have already said that after the hand was removed from the supervenience of my soul, it was only dust and earth. Do we now say that dust and earth became "my hand" again? Yes it did, after the fashion of nutrition. The food that I eat (dead plants and animals, i.e. dust and earth) becomes "my body" by the power of the nutritive faculty via the process of digestion. The former hand becomes "my body" through the process of grafting, which is the medical art annexed to the power of digestion. Indeed, it is the new grown tissue, formed by the nutrifying blood, which is really "my hand." The dead hand was merely the scaffolding on which the new, living hand grew. The scaffolding was necessary because the complete removal of a limb is otherwise too great an impediment to the formative power of the soul.
And this, I believe provides a basis for answering your other questions. It is not possible to get viable tissue other than by taking it from the soul that informed it, which made it to be such. But as long as it exists as such, it belongs (either as "body" or as "scaffolding") to its own proper soul and not another's. It therefore cannot be harvested without inflicting harm on the donor, and it is not the business of medicine to do harm.Replies: @MGB, @Chrisnonymous
Sci-fi writer Alan E. Nourse wrote a short story about the evolutionary similarities between pigs and humans in “Family Resemblance” in 1953. It had me half believing it could be true when I read it when I was 13.
And then the guy with transplanted pig heart died two months later. However, he has not died because his new heart was rejected by the body! Nope, the sad truth is that the company responsible for the extensive genetic engineering of those pigs has screwed up royally in the most idiotic way:
The patient died because his heart was massively infected with porcine cytomegalovirus (PCMV) and his body was not able to fight the virus that is normally unable to set a foothold in humans.
The company was supposed to keep the pigs free of about ten different viruses, including PCMV. However, the story is supposedly that they were using a faulty kit for PCMV screening. This probably means that their entire pig stock is infected (but the company is mum about it).
All in all, pig and human physiology is surprisingly similar. Similar enough that in the future such engineered animals will solve the problem of never having enough human organ donors. Although there are more genes that probably need to be altered to further the chance of rejection.
I have read some Heinlein , not a lot – and my best guess is he is famous because of some weird kind of American ancestor worship —- what I mean is, obviously the guy would have been a good conversationalist if you wanted to talk about space travel, alternate societies, and other things at a not-quite-technical level —– but, just as obviously, he was nowhere near the best story-teller of his time, and it is difficult to see why anyone would claim that for him. I think the whole thing about going to the Naval Academy with a lot of navy officers who later died at sea, and the fact he managed to live a comfortable life off of – basically – selling novels with weird pictures of aliens and spaceships on the covers, at dime stores and soda shops ,in a time when many of us were young and penniless – makes him interesting as a cultural phenomenon for people who think the America of 50 years ago is worth thinking about. Nothing wrong with that, but ….
I have read some Heinlein , not a lot – and my best guess is he is famous because of some weird kind of American ancestor worship —- what I mean is, obviously the guy would have been a good conversationalist if you wanted to talk about space travel, alternate societies, and other things at a not-quite-technical level —– but, just as obviously, he was nowhere near the best story-teller of his time, and it is difficult to see why anyone would claim that for him. I think the whole thing about going to the Naval Academy with a lot of navy officers who later died at sea, and the fact he managed to live a comfortable life off of – basically – selling novels with weird pictures of aliens and spaceships on the covers, at dime stores and soda shops ,in a time when many of use were young and penniless – makes him interesting as a cultural phenomenon for people who think the America of 50 years ago is worth thinking about. Nothing wrong with that, but …. well, to be fair, maybe I did not read his best stories. There are like thousands of science fiction stories out there ….
Speaking of the rest I was downloading some music loosely categorized as 1940s pop, following a general and enthusiastic endorsement by Dennis Prager, and came across a name familiar yet opaque to all MSTies: Kay Kyser, who was apparently a big-band leader. Kyser appears as a comic foil in a traffic safety short riffed by the MST3K crew, but, so famous was he at the time of filming, the narrator does not explain who he is, leading to some jokes about how we're supposed to know but clearly do not.
That’s from Clausewitz. The job of the soldier is to fight well and leave politics to the politicians.
Heinlein’s not my cup of tea but he definitely deserves his position, both from his own works and his work past the typewriter in popularizing, organizing and encouraging the genre. Interestingly, his contemporary and peer Isaac Asimov also enjoyed a good dirty joke, but not in a self-destructive or obsessive manner like Heinlein (or for that matter their contemporary Hubbard, who was actually a pretty good writer, but not in their league, and who was obsessed with abortion).
Speaking of the rest I was downloading some music loosely categorized as 1940s pop, following a general and enthusiastic endorsement by Dennis Prager, and came across a name familiar yet opaque to all MSTies: Kay Kyser, who was apparently a big-band leader. Kyser appears as a comic foil in a traffic safety short riffed by the MST3K crew, but, so famous was he at the time of filming, the narrator does not explain who he is, leading to some jokes about how we’re supposed to know but clearly do not.
Not sure I agree with your assessment of organ donation. Many cases of organ harvesting are from people whose lives are not viable without technological intervention--they are cases of imminent death in which the body is artificially kept alive just for the purpose of harvesting an organ, and without that motivation for medical intervention, the person would be allowed to die naturally. Can you expand on why this short-term medical intervention combined with removing an organ and followed by death is immoral?Replies: @Intelligent Dasein
I would be very favorably inclined to such a thing, and I wish research would have been focused on that these last 50 or 60 years instead of the barbarity of organ transplantation. The idea of “3D-printing” is not how I would phrase it, but the general concept of using adult (not embryonic) stem cells to regenerate organs and tissues is, both medically and ethically, the correct path.
In order to understand why, and hopefully answer your other questions, we can examine step by step what it means for a living being to lose and regenerate tissue.
Man, like any other living creature, is a substance, that is a union of body and soul where the body is the material principle and the soul is the formative principle. Only the union itself is the substance; neither the body by itself nor the soul by itself is a man, but the soul, being the formative principle, is the primary of the two and is the real and essential thing. It is the soul which makes the body and which gives it its nature. This definition has many implications which are dispositive for the body and for all medical considerations pertaining to it.
First of all, it defines the limits of the body. The body is that region of space in which the soul directly supervenes. Within that limit, no other power can exist without corrupting the body and causing pain to the soul. Disease can be defined as bodily corruption which attacks, interferes with, or otherwise prevents the soul from forming the body as it would. As the body is material, the corruption wrought by disease can be affected or reversed by other material means, and such is the practice of medicine. Medicine assists by art what the soul does by nature. When the soul is frustrated in its formative activity, medicine can assist by removing the impediment. Death ensues when the body is so degraded that it can no longer receive the formative power of the soul.
Now let’s examine death in a little more detail.
As long as my body is healthy and intact, I can speak of such a thing as “my hand” without confusion. The hand moves how I will it to move; it obeys my command without mediation, and thus it is part of “my body,” i.e. that region of space on which my soul supervenes as form. Now let’s say that my hand is cleanly lopped off in a sword fight. It no longer obeys my will and therefore it cannot be considered part of my body. That much is uncontroversial. But furthermore (and this is the part that starts to confuse people), it is no longer actually a hand. Although it is in a shape like a hand, it is not informed by anything. It is already earth and dust and will shortly assume the accidents proper to such.
Now let’s say that the swordsman who defeated me has a sadistic streak. Not yet satisfied in his victory, he drags me off to his dungeon to torture me to death. He cuts of my other arm and both my legs which, following the logic, are no longer either mine or arms and legs. He puts out both my eyes, plunging me into darkness and cutting me off from sensory contact with the world. Finally, he sinks his sword into my heart and I am no more.
We see what is going on here. By progressively depriving me of the possibility of motion and sensation, he was corrupting my body more and more, but as long as there was some region of space that my soul still informed, “I” was not yet dead. I was only dead once my soul informed nothing, and this provides an important insight in how to think about death. Death is full-body amputation; it is the amputation of the entire body from the soul.
So much for death. Now let’s talk about regeneration.
Suppose the swordsman had not been so sadistic. Perhaps, after chopping off my hand, he is satisfied that he has made his point and, instead of pressing on to my destruction, he shows mercy on me. He sends me and my former hand to a great reconstructive surgeon in an attempt to restore me to health.
The surgeon pronounces the cut clean and gives a hopeful prognosis. He reattaches the bones, tendons, major blood vessels and nerves, and repairs as much damage as he can. After many months of rehabilitation and therapy, I am able to use “my hand” again.
What exactly do we say has happened here? We have already said that after the hand was removed from the supervenience of my soul, it was only dust and earth. Do we now say that dust and earth became “my hand” again? Yes it did, after the fashion of nutrition. The food that I eat (dead plants and animals, i.e. dust and earth) becomes “my body” by the power of the nutritive faculty via the process of digestion. The former hand becomes “my body” through the process of grafting, which is the medical art annexed to the power of digestion. Indeed, it is the new grown tissue, formed by the nutrifying blood, which is really “my hand.” The dead hand was merely the scaffolding on which the new, living hand grew. The scaffolding was necessary because the complete removal of a limb is otherwise too great an impediment to the formative power of the soul.
And this, I believe provides a basis for answering your other questions. It is not possible to get viable tissue other than by taking it from the soul that informed it, which made it to be such. But as long as it exists as such, it belongs (either as “body” or as “scaffolding”) to its own proper soul and not another’s. It therefore cannot be harvested without inflicting harm on the donor, and it is not the business of medicine to do harm.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Will_Fear_No_EvilReplies: @Cagey Beast, @Anon
That was one tedious book. The one thing I can remember about it is when the transplanted man takes his new woman-body out for a spin, gets drunk off his ass and gets gangbanged. (You see, after a while he realizes the head of the guy humping away changes between blackouts.) He doesn’t really mind though.
By chance, I recently read another Heinlein book, Friday, which was written post-stroke and could be said to be his SJW book. The titular character is an artificial human woman who lives the life of James Bond, except with lots more sexual partners. Nearly all the named characters she meets are bisexual polyamorists (of course), but some of them turn out to be (shudder) racists! Against artificial people, and for some reason Tongans. (Based!)
Anyway, early in the book Friday gets abducted by enemy forces, gangraped by at least four men and somewhat gruesomely tortured, then towards the end of the book she meets one of the rapists again and basically forgives him and helps him. The one rapist she can’t forgive, by the way, is the guy with bad breath. So I’m seeing a sort of recurring theme here.
I actually haven’t read any of Heinlein’s (1907-1988) post-stroke novels. From 1939-1966 he was really good and generally improving at his late-found profession, although he got more erratic as he got older and more liberated. Still, his 1966 novel The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress might have been his best yet. He might have continued hitting new peaks into his 60s, but he had a stroke and couldn’t write for 3 years. Finally, in 1969 he awoke to find himself famous and rich due to hippies making a cult novel out of his self-indulgent 1961 novel “Stranger in a Strange Land.” After that, he could indulge himself further.
Why? Doctors are only human, despite their oaths and vows.
If I'm severely injured and at risk of dying, I want to make sure there's no conflict between saving my organs and saving my life.Replies: @Mike Tre
That’s a fair point. I never thought about it. And, given the way the entire medical industry has beclowned itself the last 2 plus years, who can trust these people? Are there kickbacks to doctors who harvest organs?
The tail-eating snake will eventually get to its own anus. After that it will continuously fill up with snake shit. Seems like the point where your arch ex-fellow student is at now. Imagine spending all that time and money to put a patient through such agony, psychic as well as physical, to prolong a life by a few months. Why not concentrate that energy on a cure for cancer?
Robert Heinlein wrote many stories from a female view point, such as Podkayne of Mars and The Menace From Earth. There may be more. I suspect he was suffering from pronoun uncertainty even then. I liked most of his works but gave up on the later ones which includes the terminally dopey Stranger. I tried to delve into Time Enough for Live but was repelled.
In order to understand why, and hopefully answer your other questions, we can examine step by step what it means for a living being to lose and regenerate tissue.
Man, like any other living creature, is a substance, that is a union of body and soul where the body is the material principle and the soul is the formative principle. Only the union itself is the substance; neither the body by itself nor the soul by itself is a man, but the soul, being the formative principle, is the primary of the two and is the real and essential thing. It is the soul which makes the body and which gives it its nature. This definition has many implications which are dispositive for the body and for all medical considerations pertaining to it.
First of all, it defines the limits of the body. The body is that region of space in which the soul directly supervenes. Within that limit, no other power can exist without corrupting the body and causing pain to the soul. Disease can be defined as bodily corruption which attacks, interferes with, or otherwise prevents the soul from forming the body as it would. As the body is material, the corruption wrought by disease can be affected or reversed by other material means, and such is the practice of medicine. Medicine assists by art what the soul does by nature. When the soul is frustrated in its formative activity, medicine can assist by removing the impediment. Death ensues when the body is so degraded that it can no longer receive the formative power of the soul.
Now let's examine death in a little more detail.
As long as my body is healthy and intact, I can speak of such a thing as "my hand" without confusion. The hand moves how I will it to move; it obeys my command without mediation, and thus it is part of "my body," i.e. that region of space on which my soul supervenes as form. Now let's say that my hand is cleanly lopped off in a sword fight. It no longer obeys my will and therefore it cannot be considered part of my body. That much is uncontroversial. But furthermore (and this is the part that starts to confuse people), it is no longer actually a hand. Although it is in a shape like a hand, it is not informed by anything. It is already earth and dust and will shortly assume the accidents proper to such.
Now let's say that the swordsman who defeated me has a sadistic streak. Not yet satisfied in his victory, he drags me off to his dungeon to torture me to death. He cuts of my other arm and both my legs which, following the logic, are no longer either mine or arms and legs. He puts out both my eyes, plunging me into darkness and cutting me off from sensory contact with the world. Finally, he sinks his sword into my heart and I am no more.
We see what is going on here. By progressively depriving me of the possibility of motion and sensation, he was corrupting my body more and more, but as long as there was some region of space that my soul still informed, "I" was not yet dead. I was only dead once my soul informed nothing, and this provides an important insight in how to think about death. Death is full-body amputation; it is the amputation of the entire body from the soul.
So much for death. Now let's talk about regeneration.
Suppose the swordsman had not been so sadistic. Perhaps, after chopping off my hand, he is satisfied that he has made his point and, instead of pressing on to my destruction, he shows mercy on me. He sends me and my former hand to a great reconstructive surgeon in an attempt to restore me to health.
The surgeon pronounces the cut clean and gives a hopeful prognosis. He reattaches the bones, tendons, major blood vessels and nerves, and repairs as much damage as he can. After many months of rehabilitation and therapy, I am able to use "my hand" again.
What exactly do we say has happened here? We have already said that after the hand was removed from the supervenience of my soul, it was only dust and earth. Do we now say that dust and earth became "my hand" again? Yes it did, after the fashion of nutrition. The food that I eat (dead plants and animals, i.e. dust and earth) becomes "my body" by the power of the nutritive faculty via the process of digestion. The former hand becomes "my body" through the process of grafting, which is the medical art annexed to the power of digestion. Indeed, it is the new grown tissue, formed by the nutrifying blood, which is really "my hand." The dead hand was merely the scaffolding on which the new, living hand grew. The scaffolding was necessary because the complete removal of a limb is otherwise too great an impediment to the formative power of the soul.
And this, I believe provides a basis for answering your other questions. It is not possible to get viable tissue other than by taking it from the soul that informed it, which made it to be such. But as long as it exists as such, it belongs (either as "body" or as "scaffolding") to its own proper soul and not another's. It therefore cannot be harvested without inflicting harm on the donor, and it is not the business of medicine to do harm.Replies: @MGB, @Chrisnonymous
tell this to kurzweil and the others who intend to download their consciousness to a computer to become immortal.
Robert Heinlein wrote many stories from a female view point, such as Podkayne of Mars and The Menace From Earth. There may be more. I suspect he was suffering from pronoun uncertainty even then. I liked most of his works but gave up on the later ones which includes the terminally dopey Stranger. I tried to delve into Time Enough for Live but was repelled.Replies: @Steve Sailer
Heinlein’s short story “The Menace From Earth” is really good.
Friday seems slightly predictive in that it presents a post-USA divided into many independent sovereign states (e.g. Chicago Imperium) and massive acts of terrorism (such as the destruction of a space elevator rooted I think in Kenya) along with a Day of Terror where the globe is wracked with mass political disturbances, civil disorder, riots, coups and assassinations of leaders and the protagonist and her friends watch it all unfold on a giant tv screen speculating about what it means and who is behind it (several groups claim responsibility and issue manifestos and demands). And in the middle nineteen eighties (the book was published 1982) leftists and feminists loathed it. I know because I had fruitless conversations with them foolishly trying to defend this book. I discovered the basic leftist-feminist dismissal (‘You’re wrong,’ she explained). The rape scene was the primary evidence of Heinlein’s misogyny. Also Friday, the eponymous artificial woman agent, is implanted absent her agreement and foreknowledge with a fertilized ovum which she eventually discovers and carries to term (because she always, aww, wanted to be a mother never having had a mother of her own). Paeans to the joys of motherhood were not leftist-feminist approved, not in 1985 nor today.
I’ve never tried that myself; perhaps that was for the best.
In some senses the book felt modern or futuristic, in others you noticed some missing stuff, e.g., the total lack of mobile phones and internet; San Jose was apparently a complete backwater; the terrorists seem much more like 70s terrorists writ large rather than our modern versions. And were there any black people at all?
You could sense Heinlein had problems in writing this book. Stylistically, it veers between between strong independent bisexual women having non-judgemental erotic adventures in between cracking normie skulls and some rather paternalistic passages that seem thirty years older (“Yes, boss.”). The plot is, well, picaresque, to be kind. And the last chapter is basically Heinlein answering all the questions about loose threads that his despairing editors must have had, instead of, you know, fixing the text. (I think he pulls that one off though.)
But on the other hand, I did pretty much breeze through it, especially when compared to some other later Heinlein works.
Yeah, Moon is a Harsh Mistress was probably peak Heinlein. It did of course include polyamorous marriage of many men and one woman but I don’t recall him making a huge deal about it. The woman example was a pretty blonde rather tha the hulking, leering creatures we see today surrounded by three or four questionable male specimens — which indicates it was science fiction. Maybe I should re-read.
Personally, I prefer his juvies, because that’s how I got into SF, but there are quite a few other pre-stroke works worth reading.
I recognize the mindset of a member of the aristocracy. We’ll do the deciding; you persons of the Lower Orders are just the cannon fodder. Get used to it!
In order to understand why, and hopefully answer your other questions, we can examine step by step what it means for a living being to lose and regenerate tissue.
Man, like any other living creature, is a substance, that is a union of body and soul where the body is the material principle and the soul is the formative principle. Only the union itself is the substance; neither the body by itself nor the soul by itself is a man, but the soul, being the formative principle, is the primary of the two and is the real and essential thing. It is the soul which makes the body and which gives it its nature. This definition has many implications which are dispositive for the body and for all medical considerations pertaining to it.
First of all, it defines the limits of the body. The body is that region of space in which the soul directly supervenes. Within that limit, no other power can exist without corrupting the body and causing pain to the soul. Disease can be defined as bodily corruption which attacks, interferes with, or otherwise prevents the soul from forming the body as it would. As the body is material, the corruption wrought by disease can be affected or reversed by other material means, and such is the practice of medicine. Medicine assists by art what the soul does by nature. When the soul is frustrated in its formative activity, medicine can assist by removing the impediment. Death ensues when the body is so degraded that it can no longer receive the formative power of the soul.
Now let's examine death in a little more detail.
As long as my body is healthy and intact, I can speak of such a thing as "my hand" without confusion. The hand moves how I will it to move; it obeys my command without mediation, and thus it is part of "my body," i.e. that region of space on which my soul supervenes as form. Now let's say that my hand is cleanly lopped off in a sword fight. It no longer obeys my will and therefore it cannot be considered part of my body. That much is uncontroversial. But furthermore (and this is the part that starts to confuse people), it is no longer actually a hand. Although it is in a shape like a hand, it is not informed by anything. It is already earth and dust and will shortly assume the accidents proper to such.
Now let's say that the swordsman who defeated me has a sadistic streak. Not yet satisfied in his victory, he drags me off to his dungeon to torture me to death. He cuts of my other arm and both my legs which, following the logic, are no longer either mine or arms and legs. He puts out both my eyes, plunging me into darkness and cutting me off from sensory contact with the world. Finally, he sinks his sword into my heart and I am no more.
We see what is going on here. By progressively depriving me of the possibility of motion and sensation, he was corrupting my body more and more, but as long as there was some region of space that my soul still informed, "I" was not yet dead. I was only dead once my soul informed nothing, and this provides an important insight in how to think about death. Death is full-body amputation; it is the amputation of the entire body from the soul.
So much for death. Now let's talk about regeneration.
Suppose the swordsman had not been so sadistic. Perhaps, after chopping off my hand, he is satisfied that he has made his point and, instead of pressing on to my destruction, he shows mercy on me. He sends me and my former hand to a great reconstructive surgeon in an attempt to restore me to health.
The surgeon pronounces the cut clean and gives a hopeful prognosis. He reattaches the bones, tendons, major blood vessels and nerves, and repairs as much damage as he can. After many months of rehabilitation and therapy, I am able to use "my hand" again.
What exactly do we say has happened here? We have already said that after the hand was removed from the supervenience of my soul, it was only dust and earth. Do we now say that dust and earth became "my hand" again? Yes it did, after the fashion of nutrition. The food that I eat (dead plants and animals, i.e. dust and earth) becomes "my body" by the power of the nutritive faculty via the process of digestion. The former hand becomes "my body" through the process of grafting, which is the medical art annexed to the power of digestion. Indeed, it is the new grown tissue, formed by the nutrifying blood, which is really "my hand." The dead hand was merely the scaffolding on which the new, living hand grew. The scaffolding was necessary because the complete removal of a limb is otherwise too great an impediment to the formative power of the soul.
And this, I believe provides a basis for answering your other questions. It is not possible to get viable tissue other than by taking it from the soul that informed it, which made it to be such. But as long as it exists as such, it belongs (either as "body" or as "scaffolding") to its own proper soul and not another's. It therefore cannot be harvested without inflicting harm on the donor, and it is not the business of medicine to do harm.Replies: @MGB, @Chrisnonymous
By this logic, someone is technically dead when on a heart-lung machine. It doesn’t take account of the cases I mentioned in which the body’s tissues are kept viable with technology even though the patient’s recovery is not possible.
Look, I know you are smarter than this, so I can only conclude that you're just being stubborn here. You know I've said something that's going to cause you to change your entire worldview, and the light is hurting your eyes.
I realize now that long ago I wrote a book review of one of Rothblatt’s books. I think it concerned putting animal parts into human beings, but it was a long time ago.
Wikipedia has an entrance on Rothblatt, and true to its policy it does not tell us what Rothblatt’s given name was. This policy strikes me as a particularly ridiculous avoidance of “dead-naming”. An encyclopedia is supposed to inform, and in this instance Wikipedia obstinately refuses to do so.
I don’t know what you were reading, but it wasn’t what I wrote. That is precisely the opposite conclusion that follows from everything I said.
Again, yes it does. It does exactly that. It does very specifically, deliberately that. What is your problem?
Look, I know you are smarter than this, so I can only conclude that you’re just being stubborn here. You know I’ve said something that’s going to cause you to change your entire worldview, and the light is hurting your eyes.