If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

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Scooter
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If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

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Surgeons perform first successful transplant of pig heart to human patient

A man is doing well after the first successful transplant of a pig heart into a human body, possibly opening a new path for those facing an overburdened donor system, according to the University of Maryland.

The Food and Drug Administration on New Year’s Eve gave emergency authorization for David Bennett, 57, to receive a genetically modified pig heart, the University of Maryland Medical Center said. Bennett, who had been deemed ineligible for a conventional heart transplant, had been hospitalized for six weeks with a life-threatening arrhythmia and was connected to a heart-lung bypass machine.

Dr. Bartley Griffith, the operating physician, on Monday described the transplant as a "breakthrough surgery."

"There are simply not enough donor human hearts available to meet the long list of potential recipients," Griffith said in a statement. "We are proceeding cautiously, but we are also optimistic that this first-in-the-world surgery will provide an important new option for patients in the future."

Griffith and Dr. Muhammad M. Mohiuddin, professor of surgery at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, spent five years perfecting techniques for transplanting pig hearts into nonhuman recipients.

Bennett will continue to be monitored in the coming weeks but has appeared to be doing fine in the three days since surgery.

"It was either die or do this transplant," he said prior to surgery, according to the hospital. "I want to live."

Pig and cow tissues have been used successfully for valve replacements, according to Harvard University Medical School. Those valves typically last about 15 years and don't require the use of anti-clotting drugs as opposed to a mechanical valve, which can last the rest of a person's life.

Last year, scientists at New York University Langone Health were able to temporarily attach a pig kidney to a deceased woman, NPR reported in October.

Xenotransplants, the term used for transplants from a nonhuman species to a human, have been researched as the demand for organ replacement increases. According to the FDA, 10 patients die per day while awaiting a donated organ.
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Gob
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Re: If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

Post by Gob »

Did he have bacon for his breakfast the day after?
“If you trust in yourself, and believe in your dreams, and follow your star. . . you'll still get beaten by people who spent their time working hard and learning things and weren't so lazy.”

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MajGenl.Meade
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Re: If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

Post by MajGenl.Meade »

Silly - he had roast beef (or none)
For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts

ex-khobar Andy
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Re: If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

Post by ex-khobar Andy »

Probably the first time ever you want your surgeon to be ham-fisted.

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Re: If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

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Oink!
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Joe Guy
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Re: If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

Post by Joe Guy »

Maybe they just thought the guy would be a good choice to practice the procedure on....


Pig heart transplant patient stabbed man leaving him paralysed in 1988

A first-of-its kind transplant involving a genetically modified pig heart is raising ethical questions, after it was revealed that the patient who received the surgery had previously stabbed a man repeatedly and left him paralysed.

David Bennett Sr, 57, made headlines around the world earlier this week, when it was announced he was safely recovering from the world’s first successful GMO pig heart transplant at the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Doctors at the university heralded the procedure as an important step in helping the more than 110,000 people each year on organ transplant lists get help sooner – where many die before they can get a surgery.

“This was a breakthrough surgery and brings us one step closer to solving the organ shortage crisis. There are simply not enough donor human hearts available to meet the long list of potential recipients,” Dr Bartley P Griffith, who performed the surgery, said in a statement.

The news had a decidedly different feeling for Leslie Shumaker Downer, whose brother Mr Bennett stabbed and paralysed in an attack at a bar in Maryland in 1988. She told The Washington Post, which uncovered the past conviction, that she recognised the significance of the heart transplant, but didn’t view Mr Bennett as a hero.

​​“Ed suffered,” Ms Downey, told the Post. “The devastation and the trauma, for years and years, that my family had to deal with…Now [David Bennett] gets a second chance with a new heart — but I wish, in my opinion, it had gone to a deserving recipient.”

On 30 April, 1988, Mr Bennett stabbed Ed seven times at a bar in Hagerstown, Maryland, reportedly after seeing Mr Shumaker flirting with his wife. He was convicted and sentenced to 10 years in prison, and was separately ordered to pay the Shumaker family $3.4m in a civil suit, which they claimed to have never received. Edward Shumaker was in a wheelchair for the next two decades, before having a stroke in 2005 and dying two years later. Meanwhile, the rest of the family struggled alongside him, taking out loans to pay for a wheelchair-accessible van. Ed’s brother, an EMT, who had dropped him off at the bar the day of the attack and was later called to respond to the bloody scene, struggled with guilt and later became addicted to opioids, before dying in 1999 of an overdose at the age of 28, according to his family.

UMD said in a statement that it provides “lifesaving care to every patient who comes through their doors based on their medical needs, not their background or life circumstances…This patient came to us in dire need, and a decision was made about his transplant eligibility based solely on his medical records.”

Surgeons implant the heart of a genetically modified pig into a human as part of a life-saving operation.

In most medical circles, it’s considered unethical to deny someone medical care based on their past criminal record.

“Punitive attitudes that completely exclude those convicted of crimes from receiving medical treatment, including an organ transplant are not ethically legitimate,” wrote an ethics panel in 2015 for the federal Health Resources and Services Administration, adding, “Criminals not sentenced to death are expected to return to society and be deemed worthy of equal treatment in the receipt of other items/services distributed by society.”

Mr Bennett was denied transplant eligibility at previous hospitals for medical and non-medical reasons. His past record of heart failure and irregular heartbeat made him ineligible for some transplants, as had his past record of failing to follow doctor’s orders, attend follow-up visits, or take medicine consistently, according to his son.

David Bennett Jr, Mr Bennett’s son, said his father never spoke of his past, and lauded him for taking a risky chance that might help benefit medical science. This winter, facing his potential death at a Baltimore hospital, David, Sr, reportedly began inquiring about being an organ donor or other ways to benefit science if he passed away from his heart condition.

“My intent here is not to speak about my father’s past. My intent is to focus on the groundbreaking surgery and my father’s wish to contribute to the science and potentially save patient lives in the future,” David Bennett, Jr, said in a statement.

Roughly 17 people die each day while waiting for an organ transplant.
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BoSoxGal
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Re: If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

Post by BoSoxGal »

Yes he was a good choice to practice the procedure on because he completed informed consent for experimental treatment for which he qualified because he was ineligible for the UNOS transplant list for multiple medical reasons.

In my time in the criminal justice system I learned beyond doubt that no person is defined by their ugliest act, no matter how ugly. This man’s crime was certainly senseless and brought tragedy into the lives of multiple people; nevertheless he paid his debt to society as determined by statute and the duly empowered judicial official who sentenced him, and all that should have no bearing on his access to medical care.

As much as it seriously pains me to say, antivaxxer idiots who are breaking our medical system still deserve medical care and you’ll find few nurses or doctors who would assert otherwise. It is the fundamental principle of the Hippocratic oath - to deny care on the basis of any judgment about a person's character would be to do profound harm, not just to that person but to the larger community’s faith in the medical profession.

eta: Beyond having paid his debt to society as proscribed by law, the man is also now contributing to society (albeit motivated by personal gain) by helping scientists and physicians learn about the efficacy of animal organ transplants which may ultimately solve the crisis of the dearth of human organs available to those needing transplants. Of course that raises other ethical questions in the area of animal rights, but that’s a different kettle of fish and hardly noteworthy in a world that raises and slaughters 70 billion land animals a year for human consumption - nevermind all the fish.
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Long Run
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Re: If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

Post by Long Run »

BoSoxGal wrote:
Fri Jan 14, 2022 12:53 am

It is the fundamental principle of the Hippocratic oath - to deny care on the basis of any judgment about a person's character would be to do profound harm, not just to that person but to the larger community’s faith in the medical profession.
This has been a theme in at least one episode of every medical show ever, from Dr. Kildare to MASH to ER, with the medical team taking care of the most disreputable sorts. Being on tv shows must mean it is a real thing. 8-)

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Re: If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

Post by Bicycle Bill »

BoSoxGal wrote:
Fri Jan 14, 2022 12:53 am
Of course that raises other ethical questions in the area of animal rights, but that’s a different kettle of fish and hardly noteworthy in a world that raises and slaughters 70 billion land animals a year for human consumption - nevermind all the fish.
26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

27 So God created mankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.

28 God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.  Rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it.  They will be yours for food.

30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground — everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.”  And it was so.

31 God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.  And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
.....Gen 1:26-31 (NIV)
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BoSoxGal
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Re: If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

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Bicycle Bill wrote:
Fri Jan 14, 2022 5:13 pm
And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground — everything that has the breath of life in it — I give every green plant for food.”  And it was so.
While the Bible certainly contains many references to the slaughter of animals for feasts, it is usually in the context of some special sacrifice to God or some special meal with that connection - hence the feast days. Before modern industrial agriculture the vast majority of people ate meat sparingly as a sauce to their vegetables - meat was frequently present only in the diets of the rich.

Anyway there is an abundance of evidence in the Bible from which to argue that humankind was placed in stewardship over the other beasts God created, and that stewardship does not include the raising in inhumane conditions and ongoing genocide of billions of domesticated animals most often by very inhumane means.

Here’s another view to consider:
Genesis Was Wrong: Man’s Dominion Over Animals Is Stewardship, Not Ownership

By Peter Singer

In May [2015], Pope Francis released his historic encyclical, Laudatio Si, or “Praise Be.” He chose his papal name, he explains in the text, because he considers St. Francis of Assisi to be “the example par excellence of care for the vulnerable and of an integral ecology lived out joyfully and authentically.” His namesake showed that concern for nature is inseparable from justice for the poor, social commitment, and peace within oneself.

The encyclical’s title refers to the Canticle of the Sun, St. Francis’s song of praise to God for all creation – the foremost expression of environmental holism within the Roman Catholic tradition. Yet the Canticle’s praise for “Brother Sun” and “Sister Moon”has seemed so close to nature-worship that some have doubted whether it could ever be included in mainstream Catholic thinking.

Those doubts have now been laid to rest. Francis’ predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, began to turn the Church’s attention toward the need for environmental sustainability. Francis has taken this process much further.

Laudatio Si has received considerable media attention, most of it focused on its uncompromising call for action on climate change. That is appropriate, for it is of the utmost importance that the leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics has unequivocally stated that scientific studies attribute “most global warming” in recent decades to greenhouse gases, “released mainly as a result of human activity.”

There is, however, another aspect of the encyclical that has received much less attention. St. Francis is among the most popular Catholic saints because of his reputation as a friend of animals. In keeping with that tradition, Laudatio Si amounts to the strongest statement against harming animals ever made by a pope in a document as authoritative as an encyclical.

Mainstream Christian thinking about animals is rooted in the Book of Genesis, where God is said to have granted man dominion over all the animals. St. Thomas Aquinas interpreted that verse as implying that it simply does not matter how man behaves toward animals; the only reason why we should not inflict whatever cruelties we like on animals is that doing so may lead to cruelty to humans.

A few Christian thinkers have sought to reinterpret “dominion” as “stewardship,” suggesting that God entrusted humanity to care for his creation. But it remained a minority view, favored by environmentalists and animal protectionists, and Aquinas’s interpretation remained the prevailing Catholic doctrine until the late twentieth century.

Francis has now come down decisively against the mainstream view, saying that Christians “have at times incorrectly interpreted the Scriptures,” and insisting that “we must forcefully reject the notion that our being created in God’s image and given dominion over the earth justifies absolute domination over other creatures.” Our “dominion” over the universe, he declares, should be understood “in the sense of responsible stewardship.”

Against the background of nearly 2,000 years of Catholic thinking about “man’s dominion,” this is a revolutionary change. But the encyclical includes another statement that could have even more far-reaching implications. That statement, which originally appeared in the Catechism of the Catholic Church issued by Pope John Paul II in 1992, calls it “contrary to human dignity to cause animals to suffer or die needlessly.” To ensure that the sentiment would be noticed, Francis tweeted it. (Yes, Francis tweets, using the Twitter handle @Pontifex.)

When is suffering and death “needless”? If you can nourish yourself adequately without eating meat, isn’t buying meat needlessly causing, or at least being complicit in causing, the death of an animal? Isn’t buying eggs from hens who have led a miserable life, jammed into small wire cages, needlessly causing, or being complicit in causing, the suffering of animals?

Before Cardinal Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI, he gave an interview in which he deplored the “industrial use of creatures” such as hens living “so packed together that they become just caricatures of birds.” Unfortunately, right now, tens of billions of chickens are being forced to live this way; indeed, mankind’s realm is full of unnecessarily suffering animals.

Although animal advocates implored Ratzinger to reiterate his views on animal welfare after he became Pope, he never did so. Francis, by contrast, appears to have been referring to factory-farmed animals when he spoke, in The Joy of the Gospel, of “weak and defenseless beings who are frequently at the mercy of economic interests or indiscriminate exploitation.”

Now, in Laudatio Si, Francis quotes the passage in the Gospel of Luke, in which Jesus says of the birds that “not one of them is forgotten before God.” Francis then asks: “How then can we possibly mistreat them or cause them harm?” It is a good question, because we do mistreat them, and on a massive scale.

Most Roman Catholics participate in this mistreatment, a few by raising chickens, ducks, and turkeys in ways that maximize profit by reducing animal welfare, and the majority by buying the products of factory farms. If Pope Francis can change that, he will, in my view, have done more good than any other pope in recent history.
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.
~ Carl Sagan

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Bicycle Bill
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Re: If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

Post by Bicycle Bill »

But even among animals, to whom — if you want to continue following along the lines of the Genesis story — God gave "...every green plant for their food", there are still entire families of species that will prey on other animals, killing and eating them for their meat.  And even in the animal kingdom we see elements of symbiosis that rise almost to the level of farming or ranching — herder ants tend aphids, which secrete a sugary substance that the ants then consume in much the same way as humans raise cows for milk, and a species known as honeypot ants have specialized individuals that become 'living larders', in that they are force-fed to the point that their abdomens swell immensely so that other members of the colony can then extract nourishment from them through the process of trophallaxis.

We humans have merely taken these examples from nature and raised them to unprecedented levels of efficiency.  Is this good, right, or humane?  That's a different topic which is worthy of its own separate discussion, I believe.

The record also shows that humans have, at times, taken up the role of becoming stewards and protectors of animals instead of exploiters — witness the recovery of the American bald eagle once humans stepped in and eliminated the use of DDT, or the conservation and re-introduction of other species such as the bison, the grey wolf, and the sandhill crane, just to name a few.

Trouble is, we humans as a species apparently have an insatiable blood-lust.  We have allowed almost every Natural Resources Department at almost every level to become little more than a production facility to create and maintain a level of 'game' animals such as deer, bear, elk, migratory waterfowl, squirrels, rabbits, and what-have-you combined with a licensing agency to exact money from people in exchange for permission to 'manage' or 'harvest' — that is,'shoot' — the resource.  And because of this, as soon as any endangered or protected species begins to number more than a hundred individuals, someone like Ted Nugent will come along and insist that they be delisted from protection so that he and his fellow ammosexuals can hunt them.
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Re: If all goes well, he'll be discharged in a weeeeeeeeeeeeeek

Post by MajGenl.Meade »

Oh well, for that matter Genesis as we have it makes it clear that no animals were injured or killed during the production of this movie until after Adam and Eve brought about the Fall and death entered the world. And it was God - not them - that did the deed. He killed something to make them skins to wear before he bunged them out of the garden.

3:21 The Lord God made garments of skin for Adam and his wife and clothed them.

I suppose we can always imagine that they actually killed an animal, now being meat-eaters after a few seconds of being upset about the fruit thing, and God merely used its skin.

But Genesis does not describe "dominion" as involving pain and death for animals at the hands of man. In that sense, Genesis is not "wrong".

The Roman church wrung their own desired meaning out of it. :shock: The usual problem.

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For Christianity, by identifying truth with faith, must teach-and, properly understood, does teach-that any interference with the truth is immoral. A Christian with faith has nothing to fear from the facts

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