
Editing of Pig DNA May Lead to More Organs for People - mhb
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/20/science/editing-of-pig-dna-may-lead-to-more-organs-for-people.html
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crusso
_To eradicate these viruses, Dr. Church and his team engineered a new set of
genes and inserted them into pig cells. The genes produced enzymes that hunted
for PERVs and snipped out bits of the viral DNA_

So the genes were put in some cells that then created the enzymes that
actually had the CRISPR/cas9 mechanisms? If so, that's clever. I had imagined
that the CRISPR was delivered more directly and I was wondering how you could
ensure delivery of CRISPR to all cells in the tissue. With a gene that
actually produces an enzyme that delivers CRISPR, the treatment would continue
in the cells until the gene was disabled.

What would really be interesting is to have the CRISPR edit include the gene
that created the enzyme so that it could recursively deliver the treatment. Of
course I wouldn't think that we'd want a recursive treatment like that in an
eventual solution... but it would be interesting.

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Faint
Pigs age about 5 times faster than humans. Wouldn't pig organs age 5 times
faster than humans also? That might be one more thing you needed to tinker in
pig DNA. Make pigs (or at least the target organs) long lived.

All this tinkering begs the question: Which is easier, tinker pig DNA to make
pigs compatible with humans, or tinker human DNA to make humans with pig-like-
brains that grow fast enough to be used as organ source? Does it ethically
make any difference?

What if we could grow human bodies with no consciousness what so ever (this
might not be even super hard, or require DNA tinkering, just damage the fetus
where appropriate brain parts are about to develop), wouldn't that be the most
humane option? Since we wouldn't be killing anything, but hunk of human meat
that never had a conscious thought...

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pazimzadeh
Considering how hard of a time Planned Parenthood is having right now
providing fetal tissue to researchers, the regulatory landscape doesn't look
good for anything that involves using humans as an organ source.

And modifying pig DNA to make them compatible with humans is indeed proving to
be very doable.

Source: my mother works in this field.
[http://medschool.umaryland.edu/facultyresearchprofile/viewpr...](http://medschool.umaryland.edu/facultyresearchprofile/viewprofile.aspx?id=7622).

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protomyth
How many year have we been talking about "donor pigs"? Is it real this time or
just another medical equivalent of the "in 5 years"?

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mikeash
Heart valves from pigs are a pretty standard thing and have been used for a
couple of decades. So that's something. There are clearly a lot of problems to
be worked out but I don't know that anything is really insurmountable, so it
ought to "just" be a matter of putting in lots of work.

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sitkack
Will everyone get their own clone pig at some point? Like at gestation,
extract fetus DNA and make donor pig.

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number_six
Pigoons!

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blackaspen
My thoughts exactly!

Last year I wrote a paper on Oryx and Crake and found a case of using slightly
modified pig membranes/ligaments to repair human ones...We're just getting
closer to OrganInc.

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hmhrex
These were my exact thoughts. So weird that this absurdity in a sci-fi novel
might be a reality.

I'm not sure if maybe Atwood already knew this to be the case, but it seems
like quite the coincidence.

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sogen
PR news

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jackgavigan
Backstory for a horror movie.

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roflc0ptic
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oryx_and_Crake)

~~~
maxerickson
Also hyperpigs:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Races_in_Revelation_Space#Pigs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Races_in_Revelation_Space#Pigs)

(not really horror)

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kbradero
maybe the could make the very first slig!

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NoWhiteHorse
I read that as orgasms ... now I am disappointed.

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jsudhams
Gunuine Question: Isn't our current life expectancy good enough? i.e. 65
years... Why cant we put more resources on quality life like eradicating cast,
relegion and create free world and target towards one country one world....
rather than miserable life for 120years?

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mikeash
No, current life expectancy is nowhere near good enough! Death is terrible,
and it's weird to me how accepting people are of it. I guess because we have
no choice, but even so. We go through our lives constantly losing friends and
loved ones for no reason aside from the fact that our bodies were designed by
a brainless process.

The other goals you mention don't strike me as the sort of thing which merely
need more resources to be solved.

