
Soviet Scientists Made This Two-Headed Dog | Motherboard - deusclovis
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/soviet-scientists-made-this-two-headed-dog
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pavlov
I'm not sure I can agree with the article's claim that these experiments were
necessary:

 _" Without that terrifying two-headed dog, in other words, we’d all go down
with our failing kidneys."_

Eventually we would have found other ways to collect the data needed for safe
organ transplants than using live mammals. It probably would have delayed the
introduction of transplant procedures on humans, so in that sense there would
have been "people going down with failing kidneys" \-- but how much suffering
can you justify by saying that it might save human lives down the road?

I'm reminded of Kazuo Ishiguro's excellent novel _Never Let Me Go_.

(--- Major spoiler alert! ---)

It takes place in a sort of parallel-universe Britain of the '70s and '80s
where human cloning was invented just after WWII. Cloning has become the cure
for cancer: just grow a steady supply of live clones, take their organs and
transplant them to cancer-inflicted patients.... Of course it takes about 18
years to grow a clone, and you can't just keep these people in a vat
somewhere. So the clones are people without citizen rights, whose sole mission
in life is to be harvested eventually. Society sees this as justified because
clones are not "real people" anyway -- and more importantly, nobody wants to
turn the clock back to an era when people regularly died of cancer.

~~~
acqq
_Eventually we would have found other ways to collect the data needed for safe
organ transplants than using live mammals._

To start doing the transplants you have to actually do the transplants.
Insisting on avoiding doing it on mammals, wanting to do on humans gives only
one solution: would you really prefer to immediately experiment on humans
instead of mammals?

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VladRussian2
putting second heart into a dog may look like some transplant experimentation.
Butchering and sewing 2 dogs together - nope, it is 1959, it is for the "wow"
effect in the show of "the Soviet science under the wise leadership of the
Communist Party is the most advanced science in the world". No wonder that
they freely let the LIFE journalists in.

~~~
acqq
I suspect that you have no idea about surgery at all. Based on what do you
claim that heart transplants are valid experiments and head transplants
aren't? Only because of the shock effect?

Try reading about the history of medicine: after Galen (second century common
era), mostly thanks to different church/ideological dogmas, "doctors" (quotes
because they were quite unsurprisingly unaware of the scientific approach)
spent hundreds of years theorizing instead experimenting. Experiments of head
transplantations are absolutely valid experiments.

More recently and related, USSR had its own ideology-based suppression of
valid scientific approach in biology

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism)

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Spoygg
The conslusion of the article pictures the whole misery of false thinking. Two
headed dog was not the reason for successful kidney transplant. Kidney
transplant would be fine(r). Justifing this kind of lunacy is just lame.
Humans want it all and want it now no matter the cost. Why do we have failing
kidneys? I will not go into that direction, but just saying. Live healthy and
you will not need the two headed dog to save you. Also why not just experiment
on humans with their consent. "You have a failing kidney we have a new
transplantation procedure that might fail but if it succeed you will be hero
for future generations." \- hard to imagine, it would take a bit longer to
come to successful procedure.

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JanezStupar
This is sick.

The idea of two headed dog is not as sick in itself as is the clear misery
these animals are experiencing.

~~~
cdi
Come on people. What about thousands and thousands of disease model lab rats,
genetically engineered to suffer cancer and other horrible illnesses? Should
we stop biological and drug research? Misery is electrons flying in the brain.

Would you empathize with a computer program simulating pain model, when pain
level is increased, or when computer is powered off? Animal is a mechanism.

Canidae in nature have no problem with killing or inflicting suffering btw.

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StavrosK
Humans are animals too, and we empathize with them, so there has to be a line
somewhere. You either don't empathize with anyone, or you empathize with
everyone.

We currently believe that it's worth sacrificing mice to make people's lives
better, but we _would_ do that, we're people. Hopefully, in the future, no
living being will have to suffer for any reason.

> Canidae in nature have no problem with killing or inflicting suffering btw.

If you want to be held to the standards of dogs, nobody will stop you. I'd
like to think I know better.

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cdi
>so there has to be a line somewhere.

And that line is human consciousness.

I empathize with humans and animals too(especially mammalian), of course. But
I choose not to be swayed by feelings when I think about policy. Preservation
of nature doesn't require empathy, and justice among humans doesn't require it
after utilitarian principle is chosen.

Domesticated animals are born and live for our utility. As long as we don't
consider animal pet ownership as equal to slavery, I don't see how animal
experimentation is problematic.

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StavrosK
Human consciousness is entirely arbitrary. There's no definition that will
include all humans and only all humans.

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V-2
"And you my friend, how do you know I am not a fish — you are not I?" ;) It's
splitting hairs... Yes of course there is no absolutely precise definition of
human consciousness, but it does not mean that the term becomes useless. I
can't draw a precise line between a plain and a mountain (where does one start
and the other end?), but it does not mean I can never tell about anything that
it's not a mountain

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StavrosK
The term doesn't become useless, but it becomes non-usable where laws and
morality are concerned. Should we experiment on cognitively impaired people
because they are less intelligent than a dog or a dolphin? How about month-old
babies?

~~~
V-2
Or in another way. The fact that we do not differentiate (in terms of "life
value") between mentally handicapped, or otherwise helpless humans and the
rest, is a result of a separate ethical choice that regulates relations
between us as human individuals. This choice does not logically require
accepting the notion of any animal rights.

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rababababibo
This story is one the internet like to rediscover again and again, usually
it's not far from "Experiments in the Revival of Organisms" [1] by a certain
Doctor Brukhonenko at around the same period of time, which lead the way to
open heart surgery in Russia.

[1]:
[http://archive.org/details/Experime1940](http://archive.org/details/Experime1940)

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cLeEOGPw
I say that the ethics should be left out of the science. If ethics conflict
with research - priority should go to research, until alternative, more ethic
approach is found. And the ones responsible for alternative should be the ones
that claim the current method is unethical - do not let non-scientists to
forbid a research just because they think it is unethical.

~~~
arachnid92
What? Really? This argument is something I would expect someone like Josef
Mengele to say, not a modern human being in the 21st century.

You can't just leave ethics out of science. Doing so would pave the way for so
many atrocities against both humans and animals "in the name of science" (and
history is evidence of this).

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cLeEOGPw
If the experiments on monkeys would lead to a medicine that would improve life
of millions, would you still ban it "for the sake of humanity"? Ethics sure
have its place, but it must not hinder the vital progress. Today you save
monkey from being "treated unethically", tomorrow you die with the same monkey
from unstudied disease.

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userulluipeste
I call this experiment an exploration. What we explored in the past or might
come to explore in our future wasn't, isn't, and won't be always wonderful.
Sometimes it is horrendous and scares our inner animal but, at the end of the
day, I (for one) am glad to see this territory charted.

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patothon
Well I guess you should take a look at this video then :
[http://vimeo.com/jamesfields/headtransplant](http://vimeo.com/jamesfields/headtransplant)

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kunil
"or body transplantation, depending on your perspective"

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VladRussian2
this ability of humans to perpetrate horrendous things under the guise and in
the name of the greater good.

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victoriap
agree. but, the organic life is full of flesh and blood, where we eat and kill
each other. wish we were light-creatures....

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vjvj
You can compensate humans for what you do to them. We invented money for that.
Furthermore, humans can make decisions to weigh up the costs, benefits and
risks associated with any such offer.

Animals can neither be compensated nor communicate their preferences for such
decisions.

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nobodyshere
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731)
Please, tell us more about compensations and preferences.

~~~
vjvj
Yes of course humans can be forced just as animals are. However, under a
functioning legal system, they can be experimented on if and only if they
approve having viewed and understood the potential benefits and costs and the
risks associated.

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batemanesque
this is great. wasn't really expecting his research to have contributed
anything meaningful to science when i was halfway through the article

