There's yet another unusual angle on this, which I learnt after recording but didn't include as I thought it would distract from a general discussion. The recipient, David Bennett, committed a heinous crime in the past. His victim's sister made an emotional statement saying how upset she is that he (Bennett) has been given a "second chance" when her brother wasn't. But others have said he seems like an ideal candidate to test out new surgery on. Medical professionals should base decisions to treat solely on medical history, and that's what has been done. Whether you think it's a fly in the oinkment or hogwash, it's certainly food for thought.
would be an interesting topic for a different video. with a broad take on multiple ethical dilemmas the medical field is facing. granted perhaps it'd be a good idea to do it as a discussion format with other professionals/guests
Personally, I would find it unconscionable to suggest that because someone previously committed a crime, then they should be denied the best possible medical care. Reading up on the situation, apparently it is the case that hospitals may lower an individual’s priority for transplants if they have a history of substance abuse, which I find disgusting and amoral! Our medical system is far from perfect in the USA, but to withhold the highest standard of care from criminals would be to worsen the situation further.
You are genuinely the best medical education channel on CZcams. Highly informative videos with the best jokes I can't help but enjoy every second. Great stuff 🙌🏻
@@MedlifeCrisis If you had actually used the phrase “this one is a BANGER” you would undoubtedly have gotten “mashed” in the comments! But, not to worry, your loyal fans would “pig” you up afterward.
@@MedlifeCrisis The patient that received the pig-heart xeno transplant had died 2 months later. Most likely some sort of issue regarding bodies rejection, proper gene-editing and a few more drugs might be required to stabilize the patient's condition. Organ rejection is still a huge issue that needs to be solved...
I am an American, unfortunate I know, but I am currently blind and am waiting for a cornea transplant The last cornea I received was from a woman who had died in a car accident that morning and unfortunately it rejected currently the doctors at the Houston medical center are saying that my eyes can be saved and are ready for a transplant The insurance is saying that they aren't going to pay for any of it and that any old cornea will do if I had the option to take a cornea from a pig I definitely would and not only that I wouldn't have to wait for someone to die of covid to receive new corneas on top of all this, my mother was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy back in the mid 2000s due to her condition she is ineligible for a heart transplant right now, but if we would be able to give her a pig's heart it would be life-changing and a life-saving for her this video has affected me in a way that I'm not sure is expressable in words Dr Francis thank you for doing what you do you were an inspiration to my CZcams channel and an inspiration for why I have wanted to become a cardiologist since I was 14 before coronavirus I was applying to medical school and my disability has kind of thrown a wrench in becoming an MD I apologize for any errors in this comment, like I said I am blind and I am using text to speech My mother and I are fighters and we will never give up and to anyone who is reading this who is going through a similar situation I encourage you to keep fighting I know that it is hard but there is a light at the end of the tunnel
You deserve better than discount corneas. If there is any possible way to appeal the insurance company’s decision or get the local news to shame them please do not hesitate to do so.
@@khazermashkes2316 thanks for the support! once we told the insurance we have a lawyer they started paying for things real quick, sad lol but it's paid I'll be posting a video explaining my story soon :)
@@iquemedia I am glad that the insurance company did their job, but angry that you needed a lawyer. Please let us know once you have posted the video about it!
My older brother died when he was only a few months old, and my mother opted to donate his organs. I know it must have been SO hard for her in the moment, and I'm so proud that her and my dad opted for the transplants. Our family's tragedy meant that another child could see, another could breath, and others got every other transplantable organ available (hopefully). I look forward to the day where we can just 3d print organs we need, but until then, I'm glad that one of the deepest tragedies has the smallest of silver linings
@@Czenda24 Uhmmm.. well I think it would be VERY hard, because if my husband dies, I think I would want to be selfish and 'keep him' for myself. So I can say goodbye to his body a couple days. When you agree to donation, you don't have this goodbye..
@@Friggsdottir would you.. get an autopsy on a loved one who died under mysterious circumstances? They'll be getting sliced up and probably parts of them extracted so yeah that's obviously not the issue. Most people nowadays I know who've died end up getting cremated anyway if you'd burn the whole thing why would you care if organs were removed first
@ 22:52 - To touch off this point: Quite a lot of experts of the cancer Jobs had believe he essentially caused his own death. He postponed surgery by 9 months to look in to natural cures. By the time he consented, the cancer went from needing a discrete tumor removal to an entire Whipple Procedure. His cancer is one of the ones Pancreatic Cancer patients would hope to have. It's immensely treatable when caught early like his was.
In the spirit of interesting discussion, I've actually read that how much he decreased his odds of survival is surprisingly controversial. I'm just quoting Jobs's wikipedia article, but here's an excerpt "David Gorski [an oncologist and professor] wrote that "it's impossible to know whether and by how much he might have decreased his chances of surviving his cancer through his flirtation with woo. My best guess was that Jobs probably only modestly decreased his chances of survival, if that."" I want to be clear I'm not defending his actions, or even endorsing them. I'm firmly in the camp that believes Jobs only hurt his survival odds and did something that was blindingly obtuse and not in line with the medical consensus. But I see this story repeated with such absolute resolution very frequently, that I was surprised to learn that it's actually not entirely so black and white. While he did most certainly ignore medical advice and very likely hurt his odds of survival, there is some question as to whether or not he would've survived anyway. I find that fascinating, not really for the actual oncology/Jobs life, but because of how the story is often treated in media. It's painted as if Jobs had a 100% chance of survival and simply made a stupid hippy anti-intellectual choice and it cost him his life (to be perfectly clear, that is very possible, if not even very likely). You don't really hear any else. In complete fairness though, even on his wiki page the next quote/excerpt is from a conflicting opinion: "Barrie R. Cassileth, [...] on the other hand, said, "Jobs's faith in alternative medicine likely cost him his life.... He had the only kind of pancreatic cancer that is treatable and curable.... He essentially committed suicide."" But I do still find it fascinating, that there's even a divide in opinion, and how it's presented in media. Some doctors that believe he didn't do much harm, and others that believe he threw his life away. I am in no way qualified to really have a medical opinion either way (only that I generally agree that alternative medicine would just be called medicine if it worked).
@@scootergirl3662 he died in 2022... David Bennett, 57, died Tuesday at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Doctors didn’t give an exact cause of death, saying only that his condition had begun deteriorating several days earlier. Bennett's son praised the hospital for offering the last-ditch experiment, saying the family hoped it would help further efforts to end the organ shortage.
What an utter gem of a video Rohin! Enthralling by the storytelling and facts, and I laughed out loud many times, both because of the editing and the witty jokes. Thanks! ❤️
I wonder how many Americans get Rohin's humor. I (attempt to) crack similar jokes with American colleagues and all I get are blank stares. But I come to this channel and roar with laughter. It's kinda like coming home, but without the tax liability. (See what I mean?)
I love this man. He always does an amazing job of explaining things, and combats pseudoscience. For him to take his precious time to make complex videos like this to help educate people, really is quite incredible. Thank you good sir.
This subject is so very interesting to me. I am a cardiac patient. Three years ago I had my aortic valve replaced with a porcine valve. I thanked my little piggy every day for my life. I loved telling people my story and of my pig part. I knew that my little piggy would wear out some day and have to be replaced. It happened pretty fast as I am young (41) and very active. Feb 4th 2022 I had to have piggy replaced, this time I got a mechanical valve. It’s called a Top Hat (sounds fancy, ya?) and a bovine patch had to be placed on my aortic root due to an abscess we didn’t know was there. So now I have a cow part in me (thanks my bovine friend). Recovery from this second surgery was long and very hard. I’m just now feeling myself again. I just found out that unfortunately I might be looking at another surgery because in the 11 weeks since surgery I’ve grown much scar tissue around my valve which is impeding the flow of blood through the valve which makes it hard for me to catch my breath under much exertion. I’ll be seeing a specialist cardio surgeon at UW next week to find out what can be done for me. It’s pretty scary. I’m so young and have so much I still want to do in life. The thought of not being here to reach those goals or being here for my boys is just terrifying. But I have much faith in the medical professionals who look after me and look up to a higher power as well. It’s all I can do (besides taking my prescribed meds and doing my best every day to be as healthy as possible through exercise and heathy eating). I often think of all the doctors and patients and research and experiments and great minds and processes that went on in the past to enable someone like me to even have lifesaving surgery. And I thank them. So ya, that’s my story in a nutshell. Videos and topics such as this are endlessly fascinating to me ever since my heart troubles began. I quite enjoy telling my story involving my heart. Even in CZcams comments. So thanks for reading and I hope you have a great day! 🐷 ❤️
Conversely, my father had an aortic valve replace with a pig valve when he was 60. He was also told it would likely need replaced at some point, however, it functioned well for 20 years and may have worked longer but he was diagnosed with lymphoma at age 80 and passed away. The pig valve was never an issue, and it was speculated that maybe because he tended to have low blood pressure, which may have not been as taxing on the valve itself. I wish you continued good health and a blessed new year.
BIG FARMER- nearly spilled my coffee there. The media references. The flawless timing. The witty sarcasm and clever puns. Every single joke was absolutely pristine *chef's kiss* The content, of course, just as engaging! Also, bioethics is a reaalllyy messy arena- yet, you've managed to include it in a rather immaculate manner here. Surgical caps off!
I saw on a msm news broadcast that apparently the guy who got the transplant had stabbed a fellow in a bar 30 years ago and put the unfortunate victim in a wheelchair which raised questions about his deservedness to get the operation. If you take that sort moralism to it's logical conclusion then hospital emergency rooms would have to wait to for an investigation to determine if a road accident victim was at fault before any treatment was offered. Personally I wish the guy well.
Like they are saying in my country: "bawiąc, uczyć", that I would somewhat crudely translate into: "educate through fun". You, Good Sir, are the prime and stellar example of that philosophy, me thinks. I can feel echoes of Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and John Cleese in your comedic chops. Classic British Humour with very, very serious undertones, if you are quick and smart enough to see it. Chapeau Bas!!! Cheers! I.
Goodness me, this is definitely up there in the greatest videos you've ever made. Trotterly captivating from start to finish, highly informative and very entertaining to boot. Well done indeed 👀
“Treif” is specifically referring to forbidden foods: it literally means “torn.” “Asur” means forbidden more generally and so would be correct in this instance. In terms of the ethics, I’m torn. I’m a vegetarian and I think that we shouldn’t be exploiting animals for any purpose, but it’s hard to condemn the potential use of a few thousand pigs to save human lives when hundreds of millions are killed for culinary enjoyment.
🔎 I never knew that "Treif" meant "torn"; I'd always thought it to be synonymous with "Dreck" meaning "dirt". 🙏 Thanks for clearing that up. (I appreciate learning new things... Keeps my brain doing pushups!) 😉
Thank you for talking about Jewish and Muslim necessity to save life over all else. It's felt weirdly pointed and uncomfortable with how many people have been directly asking about this to only us. There's this stupid trope of Jews in media (specifically medical shows), refusing treatments because it's not "Kosher", and I feel like this over-obsession on our opinion of this transplant partially comes from that. Idk its weird; I was so worried watching this that you were gonna be like "another issue is whether Jews and Muslims will take this treatment and so on" but I was really really pleased, just another reason I love this channel!
I'm glad other people remember Pig Heart Boy because whenever I hear anything about heart transplants all I can think is PIG HEART BOY! I do not remember it looking so much like a bad PSA though lol
As medicine advances with science and technology, we are finding more ways to keep people alive for longer. While keeping someone alive longer is a great thing, you would also have to consider there quality of life. Also as you mentioned ethics is something we can not forget. Great explanation. 👍
I met an American guy at a comicon a couple of years ago whose job it was to prepare bodies for subsequent medical use (or something like that). He told me that the silver lining of the opioid crisis in the US was that the heart and lung transplant waiting lists were super short because if someone died from an opioid overdose, those organs were still good. Just wondering if you have any thoughts or further info on this!
@@mamacito1795 i agree, i just find it fascinating that we can take a bad situation and still find positives. I don't think it could ever justify it being okay.
"The Washington Post reported that Bennett's son, David Bennett Jnr, said that hospitals had refused to add his father to the wait list because he previously failed to follow doctor's orders, take his medication regularly, and attend follow-up visits." Perfect candidate for a pig heart tbh, proven treatments should go where they'll be the most likely to do good, and that means patients who will take care of the donor organs they've been gifted
I think Singer's ideas about speciesism were explained incorrectly here. For example, Singer would have no problem saying that humans are superior to worms because we are more intelligent, more capable of complex emotions, and so on. The gap between us and pigs in those areas is much smaller, so it makes sense to treat pigs with much more respect (while still not valuing a pig life as much as a human life). Speciesism is when we ignore an animal's intelligence, capacity for emotions, etc. and treat them as without rights or value *just because* they are not human.
@@paulgoogol2652 So why do we value human life? Is murder okay? There is no way to provide a coherent, secular argument for the value of human life that doesn't imply we should value animal life to differing degrees as well.
While the consideration of intelligence does solve some ethical problems it also creates new dilemmas. For example, if we treat animals based on their intelligence, by what justification can we oppose treating humans who are less intelligent differently? How do we measure intelligence? etc.
@@merrymachiavelli2041 We came to value human life and have empathy for one another because it was hugely advantageous, evolutionarily. I don't think there's any rational explanation for why we ought to value human life inherently, or any other kind of life for that matter, and I think that's okay.
@@josiahferguson6194 From what I understand, Peter Singer says that the capacity to suffer, rather than intelligence, is what we should use when deciding how to treat them. Source: czcams.com/video/av22cRQNBiQ/video.html
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." -George Orwell, Animal Farm Great video! A good deal creepier than I expected it to be but that just goes to show how I saw this matter with a mindset that was far too uninvolved.
As well as Oryx and Crake, the ethics part of your video made me think of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, in which clones are bred for the use of their organs by the clone’s original when needed. The clones are normal human beings. They are raised knowing their purpose. It’s horrifying.
That's in MICHAEL BAY's film The Island. in Okja the pigs are genetically modified to be tastier, but they are mixed with human DNA as well as the DNA of other species, and they inadvertently make them extra smart as well as extra delicious, so their suffering is magnified. Maybe it's the increased suffering that makes them more delicious. In fairness, pigs are already really loving and intelligent creatures and it already breaks my heart the amount of unnecessary cruelty there is in the meat industry. If you think it's ok to eat them, ok cool, whatever, but why does society also think it's ok to torture them?
Just do the exact same thing but grow the body without a brain and run the body off of an advanced computer system instead (just runs basic physical functions to keep the body alive), will probably be possible within a few decades when technology and biology inherently end up connecting.
@@Ruthavecflute No I don't, I over estimate the technological advances of future society, considering how technological advances usually compounds the speed at which it advances.
My Dad had a heart transplant in October of last year. After taking out his old heart they estimated that he would have had less than a year to live. Without the precious gift that the donor was willing to make and without the fantastic work of the cardiology team it most probably would have been his last Christmas. Getting more organs to more people in need is definitely worth exploring but using animals must be done the right way. The last thing we need is for it to fall flat on it’s arse as it could be a fantastic way for more people’s lives to be saved.
I think growing organs from human stem cells is the best way forward. I know it's years away and tinkering with pigs might be easier, but I'd feel happier with more stem cell research.
Stem cell research suffers from almost exactly the same problem as nuclear energy. It's a seriously powerful technology that has been dragged through the mud by decades of misinformation and emotional/political disputes.
Man you're having way too much fun with your jokes. It's like this whole scientific endeavour was made just to give you a reason for corny comments. I especially liked the outro. Also all books/films/ted-talks seem well worth giving a shot, so thanks in advance for those!
I've watched almost all of your videos and this one was your best one ever. The pacing, jokes, education, subject matter all combined artfully. Thank you for the great content. P.S. I still love your vitamin video :)
My mum’s a journalist and actually reported on the 1997 Indian transplant attempt at the time - she travelled from Hong Kong to be on the scene, and I think she was struck by how insanitary and improvised it seemed. She wasn’t surprised that the transplant was a failure. Thanks for the video, really interesting!
Great video. And yes you we correct with אסור. The concept is called 'pikuach nefesh', or 'watching over a soul', which basically says that you can ignore almost all of the 'do not' commandments if necessary in order to save a person's life .
I’m a vegetarian but I’m also a medical intern so I’m a bit torn on this. For me saving a patient’s life will always be paramount, obviously. This makes the already large grey area when it comes to medical ethics even greyer. This is all very very interesting stuff though. Reminds me of my medical ethics classes in third year.
I find it a trivial problem from the perspective of a consequentialist. However many years the animal suffers in its upbringing (if it even experiences suffering depending on our rearing quality) can simply be compared to the number of years the human would spend in pain or, worse, death.
@@jackoh991 I’m a vegetarian, so I still eat some animal products. I’m more against the killing part than anything else. I’m an intern and I haven’t personally prescribed anything yet.
@@starlight8554 One of the medicines keeping me alive took _thousands_ of rats to invent. I take a lot of different meds. 😬 I'm otherwise a vegan, mainly for health reasons.
@@starlight8554 mice/rats are typically euthanized at the end of a pharmaceutical experiment, especially considering many experiments require giving them awful diseases to start with. Animal testing is killing.
One of the best videos I have seen in a while. It is fascinating to think about not starting immunosuppressive therapies for pts after a transplant. It goes even further - if you can exchange your heart, next step will be lungs and liver. The only organ not amenable to transplant in the foreseeable future is one’s brain. But who knows who happens next.
I really hate how much you manage to make me chuckle while watching a rather educational video about porcine human heart transplants and the ethics behind it and also make it interesting. Honestly well done.
...not even talking about squeezing in the 97% chimp DNA! All mammals have a comparatively recent common ancestor about 100 million years ago. So, all mammals have very similar DNA - after all mice are much more similar to humans than they are to plants or birds. If you say pigs and bears each have 50% in common with humans, then there is probably a big overlap of basic mammalian DNA that all 3 species have in common within those 50% - for example the genes that make us grow 4 (instead of 5 or 8) appendages are very similar, but pigs, bears and humans all form different hands and feet, so those genes have differences (not necessarily big ones). We even have a lot of genes in common with plants. That's why we can use many plants as medicine - many substances produced by plants are similar to stuff that our own body produces - it just has a different function in those plants.
I like how you gave the appearance that you were super sorry for that intelligent design guy and were gonna be a bit lighter on it, then threw it all on its head and took the piss out of him. Done like a true badass Brit!
This is your best video ever. The info was so accessible and the light-touch ethics thoughtful but not judgmental or condescending, but the puns were even better than usual. I live for the day CZcams and medical science combine so I can give three thumbs up at a time.
Long time viewer, and that is only relevant for the fact that I am sooo happy for your growth and success. Idk man, but your videos are soo entertaining and educational! I can literally just watch your content anytime anywhere. I also love how you focus on the "good and bad" of science and medicine, introducing your viewers to using their own critical thinking and not to go by group-think. You sir got it all and I am here to enjoy it! Much love :)
You'll probably never read this but you have been a north star of factual comedy these past 2 years. Thank you for the effort you put into these videos. I love to laugh while being fascinated by your field. Although I am not working in the medical field, I love learning more about the human body. The sources you mentioned in the past help me learn even more. This video was a 10/10 (that's an A for the Americans out there). P.S. The exploitation of your children at the beginning of the video for views was also smart. Cute AF :))
This video was extremely interesting and thought-provoking, but also profoundly terrifying - The Percy pig bit at the end was just straight-up disturbing
You inform me and make me laugh outloud in the same video. As a comedically scrutinous 21 year old with no background in medecine, i shall hope you realise what an honour that is for me to say that. I love your channel, I love the fact you are an NHS doctor, you communicate health topics in an amazingly understandible way and i think you've got a good grasp on the world. Good work pal!
Physician associate in the UK here! Love your wonderful ability to entwine education and humour. We are taught as healthcare professionals not to be judgemental and yet it occupies one of the four pillars of ethics. Many patients awaiting livers will miss their opportunity for a transplant without evidence of sobriety, but this seemingly endless supply (although I'll hold my breath for the QALY analysis) would potentially avoid these judgement calls as well as the grey cases as you mentioned. Again wonderfully interesting, keep up the great work!
I think that an important thing to keep in mind in regards to ethics is this: anyone that holds a hard and uncompromising stand in this either has not thought of it through the lens of both logic and morality, or just doesn't care about the ethics at all. This is not something we can just say "Yes its moral" or "No its immoral". Both sides have their good and bad aspects, and it is through compromise and careful consideration that we are going to do whats the better of the evils.
As a vegan, I think this is fine. I would prefer we find a way to grow the organs directly as soon as possible, but until then, I value human survival more. I am open to the idea I may be wrong, but so far I haven’t found the opposing arguments convincing. I don’t eat animals in order not to inflict unnecessary suffering. Were my life to depend on it, however, it would take precedence.
I'm long time vegan and ended up having to take some drugs made from pig stuff while I was pregnant. The frustration for me was there we're other options but not enough data to show their safety in pregnancy. I decided in the end that this wasn't my choice really, just as when I shop in a supermarket some of my money will go towards the supermarket restocking meat, or when I pay my taxes they will fund meat meals in hospitals etc. I decided to just see it as outside of my personal control. It was a difficult time however, I tried really hard to find out more about the pigs and if they were specifically being killed for this one medication, for example, but big farmer is very protective over this kind of info!!
This is an interesting matter that I'd never known about. I'm not vegan and it wasn't until I got a beehive in my back yard that I found out that beekeeping is a no-no for vegans, not only that honey is an animal product but beekeeping itself is farming an animal. So now we move to my brother who is highly allergic to bee stings and is on a course of desensitising injections, one a month for five years. The injections are a minute dose of bee venom. Does that mean that a vegan person with the allergy won't accept the treatment? Those shades of grey are everywhere.
I live near a large pork processing plant, and my husband works in the Swine industry as well. They have a saying locally that the processor “uses everything but the oink”. Meaning, nothing goes to waste. I also live near a large medical center that I do happen to know has been doing some kind of research involving pigs. Exactly what, that I do not know. However, the two well known entities have been working together for decades on human health research. It’s a good bet that any pig that contributed to your particular medication, contributed to relieve human health/hunger issues in more more ways than one.
@@Kim_Miller As a vegan, I think that is justified. If you look at the amount of suffering done to obtain the bee venom, vs the amount of suffering that would occur if your brother had a fatal reaction to a bee sting, then out of the two options, one is very favourable. I appreciate this is a utilitarian calculation, but in this case it seems reasonably uncontroversial.
@@Kim_Miller i think this does vary also, I have been "vegan" for 15 years, I don't eat honey as an ingredient, but I do buy a jar of locally made honey from in my town every few years and use it medicinally. I think careful, small scale bee hives are okay and can be helpful for the environment. My husband on the other hand, also vegan, won't eat any honey. I also think wool could in theory be ethically made and would be more eco than acrylic fabric.
I'm so glad I found your channel through Tom Scott's video. "The pig is sus", "big farmer", I need to watch all your videos now. Also the subject is really interesting and I found you touched on all the angles I was intrigued by, and many others I hadn't even thought about. Really good stuff.
the definition of veganism (essentially, doing as much as possible and practicable to reduce harm to animals) is very inclusive of medical issues. some people can be shitty about it, but most are not gatekeeping veganism when it comes to someone needing medical attention that brings harm to animals in some way. of course it would be ideal to not do this and i would love to see something like synthetic organs, but it's what we have! i can only hope any animals kept would be treated better than animals raised for food are.
Probably will be treated better, if Wagyu beef can proof better treatment and nutrition make a great meat. For human grade organ a good treatment for the animal that will give a human grade organ beed the best treatment. because of course patient don't want their organ broke fast. But there is a catch if this become common because of money reason i can see they will grade the organ based of the Quality and of course there will be demand even for the low Quality.
I think that because hygiene is a big concern with these transplants the pigs at the very least wont be kept in large groups in tight spaces and hopefully since the organs are generally more expensive than meat the little extra expense for giving them a good life will be acceptable
If we could cure cancer by torturing puppies, should we do it? What if we could also produce this treatment chemically without puppy torture (but it was just costly and time consuming)? The ethical calculus makes an interesting hypothetical, but in practice I don't think we should begin a new form of industrialised torture and slaughter for human benefit and profit if we don't have to. Luckily, we don't have to.
You’ve got a slightly dark sense of humour buddy. I like it and it really helps with audience retention. I’m learning little bits from you with each video.
The thought that the animals we use to grow our organs might also be grown with more intelligence like us is disturbing. The suffering we already cause animals in our commodification of them is terrible, but to think that we also force them to perceive the world and themselves more like us is just … bonkers. It fills me with anxiety and dread thinking about that kind of suffering.
Have you considered doing a video on neurocardiology? I would love to see you have a conversation about it with a neuroscientist, since I haven't seen that many people talking about it in detail, even though research on the subject has been around since the 1970s. It also directly relates to organ transplants in that a lot of the time, it seems the heart's own internal immune system takes a very long time to reactivate after transplantation, and it never reaches pre-transplantation levels of activation. It would be really interesting to learn how the heart's neural wiring works and how that affects their nervous system as a whole from someone who can understand the research.
Excellent video as usual, and you crushed the perfect and appropriate ending! Well done for the appropriate topical insert, who currently needs a topical insert from the country, especially where it hurts.
Fantastic video! I've always found medical ethics fascinating. Some of the most significant scientific discoveries have come about due to horrific disregard for human (or other species) life. We all end up benefiting from some evil monsters' thirst for knowledge. We may condemn then, but then use their discoveries because "well, since it's already here, let's not let it go to waste"
Yeah i also find it hard to disregard this type of research. The Nazis found out a great deal of this but their research has been banned for so such a long time because they were... Well i guess they were cancelled in a major way.
@@otto_jk that's not what i said. Their science and ideology was cancelled in the sense that it's not okay to use, even things that might have been useful. I'm not talking about the punishments of the individual Nazis.
This will not only save lives that would’ve otherwise be too short, but it also brings us one step closer to fixing the chronic disease that is ageing!
There's yet another unusual angle on this, which I learnt after recording but didn't include as I thought it would distract from a general discussion. The recipient, David Bennett, committed a heinous crime in the past. His victim's sister made an emotional statement saying how upset she is that he (Bennett) has been given a "second chance" when her brother wasn't. But others have said he seems like an ideal candidate to test out new surgery on. Medical professionals should base decisions to treat solely on medical history, and that's what has been done. Whether you think it's a fly in the oinkment or hogwash, it's certainly food for thought.
would be an interesting topic for a different video. with a broad take on multiple ethical dilemmas the medical field is facing. granted perhaps it'd be a good idea to do it as a discussion format with other professionals/guests
Is it okay to give Homeopathy instead of Heart transplant?
Personally, I would find it unconscionable to suggest that because someone previously committed a crime, then they should be denied the best possible medical care. Reading up on the situation, apparently it is the case that hospitals may lower an individual’s priority for transplants if they have a history of substance abuse, which I find disgusting and amoral! Our medical system is far from perfect in the USA, but to withhold the highest standard of care from criminals would be to worsen the situation further.
@@Wyattporter Depends on the crime, I suppose... But that's another long debate on ethics. 😉
bruvah!!!! am NOT happy!!! ...... Think you owe me an new monitor , since mine is now covered in lukewarm Tea. :P
You are genuinely the best medical education channel on CZcams. Highly informative videos with the best jokes I can't help but enjoy every second. Great stuff 🙌🏻
ah thanks mate. You’re crushing it too, almost finished medical school! I actually thought of tweeting this video with “this one is a BANGER” 😂
Two people that made me choose medicine interacting
"Medlife Crisis: come for the information about medical science and the healing arts; stay for the egregious puns." :D
@@MedlifeCrisis If you had actually used the phrase “this one is a BANGER” you would undoubtedly have gotten “mashed” in the comments! But, not to worry, your loyal fans would “pig” you up afterward.
@@MedlifeCrisis The patient that received the pig-heart xeno transplant had died 2 months later. Most likely some sort of issue regarding bodies rejection, proper gene-editing and a few more drugs might be required to stabilize the patient's condition. Organ rejection is still a huge issue that needs to be solved...
I am an American, unfortunate I know, but I am currently blind and am waiting for a cornea transplant
The last cornea I received was from a woman who had died in a car accident that morning
and unfortunately it rejected
currently the doctors at the Houston medical center are saying that my eyes can be saved and are ready for a transplant
The insurance is saying that they aren't going to pay for any of it and that any old cornea will do
if I had the option to take a cornea from a pig I definitely would and not only that I wouldn't have to wait for someone to die of covid to receive new corneas
on top of all this, my mother was diagnosed with cardiomyopathy back in the mid 2000s
due to her condition she is ineligible for a heart transplant right now, but if we would be able to give her a pig's heart it would be life-changing and a life-saving for her
this video has affected me in a way that I'm not sure is expressable in words Dr Francis thank you for doing what you do you were an inspiration to my CZcams channel and an inspiration for why I have wanted to become a cardiologist since I was 14
before coronavirus I was applying to medical school and my disability has kind of thrown a wrench in becoming an MD
I apologize for any errors in this comment, like I said I am blind and I am using text to speech
My mother and I are fighters and we will never give up and to anyone who is reading this who is going through a similar situation I encourage you to keep fighting
I know that it is hard but there is a light at the end of the tunnel
Best of luck to you. An ironically very well written comment ;) I hope you can see again very soon. X
I wish I was blind. You can have my cornea.
You deserve better than discount corneas. If there is any possible way to appeal the insurance company’s decision or get the local news to shame them please do not hesitate to do so.
@@khazermashkes2316 thanks for the support! once we told the insurance we have a lawyer they started paying for things real quick, sad lol but it's paid
I'll be posting a video explaining my story soon :)
@@iquemedia I am glad that the insurance company did their job, but angry that you needed a lawyer. Please let us know once you have posted the video about it!
My older brother died when he was only a few months old, and my mother opted to donate his organs. I know it must have been SO hard for her in the moment, and I'm so proud that her and my dad opted for the transplants. Our family's tragedy meant that another child could see, another could breath, and others got every other transplantable organ available (hopefully).
I look forward to the day where we can just 3d print organs we need, but until then, I'm glad that one of the deepest tragedies has the smallest of silver linings
Don't want to be cynical but I'd think the organ donation was the least hard thing about that moment for your mother.
@@Czenda24 Uhmmm.. well I think it would be VERY hard, because if my husband dies, I think I would want to be selfish and 'keep him' for myself. So I can say goodbye to his body a couple days.
When you agree to donation, you don't have this goodbye..
@@WhoAmI2YouNow but you do get that chance though, just because they've taken organs doesn't mean the outside of the body looks any different
@@WhoAmI2YouNow not wanting your loved one cut up and body parts sent wherever is not selfish.
@@Friggsdottir would you.. get an autopsy on a loved one who died under mysterious circumstances? They'll be getting sliced up and probably parts of them extracted so yeah that's obviously not the issue. Most people nowadays I know who've died end up getting cremated anyway if you'd burn the whole thing why would you care if organs were removed first
This video is great for quotes; the pig is sus, dystopian novels are the blueprints for humanity, big farmer, it's all so good!
He's a linguistic wizard!
Big farmer was too good
'big farmer' is excellent.
my favorite is "is bacon now the cause and the cure for heart disease?"
It appears there are more possible pig puns than previously purported.
@ 22:52 - To touch off this point: Quite a lot of experts of the cancer Jobs had believe he essentially caused his own death. He postponed surgery by 9 months to look in to natural cures. By the time he consented, the cancer went from needing a discrete tumor removal to an entire Whipple Procedure.
His cancer is one of the ones Pancreatic Cancer patients would hope to have. It's immensely treatable when caught early like his was.
In the spirit of interesting discussion, I've actually read that how much he decreased his odds of survival is surprisingly controversial.
I'm just quoting Jobs's wikipedia article, but here's an excerpt "David Gorski [an oncologist and professor] wrote that "it's impossible to know whether and by how much he might have decreased his chances of surviving his cancer through his flirtation with woo. My best guess was that Jobs probably only modestly decreased his chances of survival, if that.""
I want to be clear I'm not defending his actions, or even endorsing them. I'm firmly in the camp that believes Jobs only hurt his survival odds and did something that was blindingly obtuse and not in line with the medical consensus.
But I see this story repeated with such absolute resolution very frequently, that I was surprised to learn that it's actually not entirely so black and white. While he did most certainly ignore medical advice and very likely hurt his odds of survival, there is some question as to whether or not he would've survived anyway.
I find that fascinating, not really for the actual oncology/Jobs life, but because of how the story is often treated in media. It's painted as if Jobs had a 100% chance of survival and simply made a stupid hippy anti-intellectual choice and it cost him his life (to be perfectly clear, that is very possible, if not even very likely). You don't really hear any else.
In complete fairness though, even on his wiki page the next quote/excerpt is from a conflicting opinion: "Barrie R. Cassileth, [...] on the other hand, said, "Jobs's faith in alternative medicine likely cost him his life.... He had the only kind of pancreatic cancer that is treatable and curable.... He essentially committed suicide.""
But I do still find it fascinating, that there's even a divide in opinion, and how it's presented in media. Some doctors that believe he didn't do much harm, and others that believe he threw his life away. I am in no way qualified to really have a medical opinion either way (only that I generally agree that alternative medicine would just be called medicine if it worked).
"Is bacon now the cause and the cure for heart disease?" I have been audibly laughing for a whole minute now. That was awesome.
it was a good one, I also loved the heart dependant organ bit too
Im mean Im still gonna eat bacon, im just gonna think of this and laugh while eating bacon
hence adding yet another benefit
@@scootergirl3662 he died in 2022...
David Bennett, 57, died Tuesday at the University of Maryland Medical Center. Doctors didn’t give an exact cause of death, saying only that his condition had begun deteriorating several days earlier.
Bennett's son praised the hospital for offering the last-ditch experiment, saying the family hoped it would help further efforts to end the organ shortage.
What an utter gem of a video Rohin! Enthralling by the storytelling and facts, and I laughed out loud many times, both because of the editing and the witty jokes. Thanks! ❤️
Is bacon now the cause and the cure for heart disease 😂. Yeah this video is absolute gold!
I wonder how many Americans get Rohin's humor. I (attempt to) crack similar jokes with American colleagues and all I get are blank stares. But I come to this channel and roar with laughter. It's kinda like coming home, but without the tax liability. (See what I mean?)
Fantastic video! Your humour is on point here and I loved it. 10/10!
Has he made any jokes about the idea of 'heritability' as postulated by Gary Schwartz, i.e. in this case acquiring more pig-like behaviour?
I love this man. He always does an amazing job of explaining things, and combats pseudoscience. For him to take his precious time to make complex videos like this to help educate people, really is quite incredible. Thank you good sir.
Genuinely impressed by how fun the educational videos are via humor and editing too. I keep rewatching the organ tier list video, it's fantastic
This subject is so very interesting to me. I am a cardiac patient. Three years ago I had my aortic valve replaced with a porcine valve. I thanked my little piggy every day for my life. I loved telling people my story and of my pig part. I knew that my little piggy would wear out some day and have to be replaced. It happened pretty fast as I am young (41) and very active. Feb 4th 2022 I had to have piggy replaced, this time I got a mechanical valve. It’s called a Top Hat (sounds fancy, ya?) and a bovine patch had to be placed on my aortic root due to an abscess we didn’t know was there. So now I have a cow part in me (thanks my bovine friend). Recovery from this second surgery was long and very hard. I’m just now feeling myself again. I just found out that unfortunately I might be looking at another surgery because in the 11 weeks since surgery I’ve grown much scar tissue around my valve which is impeding the flow of blood through the valve which makes it hard for me to catch my breath under much exertion. I’ll be seeing a specialist cardio surgeon at UW next week to find out what can be done for me. It’s pretty scary. I’m so young and have so much I still want to do in life. The thought of not being here to reach those goals or being here for my boys is just terrifying. But I have much faith in the medical professionals who look after me and look up to a higher power as well. It’s all I can do (besides taking my prescribed meds and doing my best every day to be as healthy as possible through exercise and heathy eating). I often think of all the doctors and patients and research and experiments and great minds and processes that went on in the past to enable someone like me to even have lifesaving surgery. And I thank them.
So ya, that’s my story in a nutshell. Videos and topics such as this are endlessly fascinating to me ever since my heart troubles began. I quite enjoy telling my story involving my heart. Even in CZcams comments.
So thanks for reading and I hope you have a great day! 🐷 ❤️
Conversely, my father had an aortic valve replace with a pig valve when he was 60.
He was also told it would likely need replaced at some point, however, it functioned well for 20 years and may have worked longer but he was diagnosed with lymphoma at age 80 and passed away.
The pig valve was never an issue, and it was speculated that maybe because he tended to have low blood pressure, which may have not been as taxing on the valve itself.
I wish you continued good health and a blessed new year.
Imagine pig heart recipients waking up after a successful operation and squealing with delight.
BIG FARMER- nearly spilled my coffee there.
The media references. The flawless timing. The witty sarcasm and clever puns.
Every single joke was absolutely pristine *chef's kiss*
The content, of course, just as engaging!
Also, bioethics is a reaalllyy messy arena- yet, you've managed to include it in a rather immaculate manner here. Surgical caps off!
I saw on a msm news broadcast that apparently the guy who got the transplant had stabbed a fellow in a bar 30 years ago and put the unfortunate victim in a wheelchair which raised questions about his deservedness to get the operation. If you take that sort moralism to it's logical conclusion then hospital emergency rooms would have to wait to for an investigation to determine if a road accident victim was at fault before any treatment was offered. Personally I wish the guy well.
Yes!
Wouldn’t say I wish him well :D But I’m not his doctor who, as you say, won’t do a background check and is simply trying to treat the body.
People who stab others do not deserve life.
@@Ole_Rasmussen unless you agree with the,, in which case you protect them
@@Ole_Rasmussen heavily disagree. Doctors and hospitals need to provide the best care possible, regardless of the patient’s history.
Like they are saying in my country: "bawiąc, uczyć", that I would somewhat crudely translate into: "educate through fun".
You, Good Sir, are the prime and stellar example of that philosophy, me thinks. I can feel echoes of Hugh Laurie, Stephen Fry and John Cleese in your comedic chops.
Classic British Humour with very, very serious undertones, if you are quick and smart enough to see it.
Chapeau Bas!!!
Cheers!
I.
Goodness me, this is definitely up there in the greatest videos you've ever made. Trotterly captivating from start to finish, highly informative and very entertaining to boot.
Well done indeed 👀
THE PIG DO BE LOOKIN A BIT SUS THO
I express my agreement
oh hey sandwich it's me maz from twitter
@@MazHem :o
hello o/
This video encapsulates everything I love about your channel. Stupid jokes, interesting medical topics, and thought provoking philosophy.
“Treif” is specifically referring to forbidden foods: it literally means “torn.” “Asur” means forbidden more generally and so would be correct in this instance.
In terms of the ethics, I’m torn. I’m a vegetarian and I think that we shouldn’t be exploiting animals for any purpose, but it’s hard to condemn the potential use of a few thousand pigs to save human lives when hundreds of millions are killed for culinary enjoyment.
🔎 I never knew that "Treif" meant "torn"; I'd always thought it to be synonymous with "Dreck" meaning "dirt". 🙏 Thanks for clearing that up. (I appreciate learning new things... Keeps my brain doing pushups!) 😉
I can see why you're Torn it's hard to be Asur as you would like to be on such complex matters.
Also: treif is pronounced "TRAYF". One syllable, rhymes with "safe".
@@BigMamaDaveX didn’t know there are words in the English language that have kept their German form because “Dreck” is literally dirt in German :D
@@shouko4218 Yiddish
Thank you for talking about Jewish and Muslim necessity to save life over all else. It's felt weirdly pointed and uncomfortable with how many people have been directly asking about this to only us. There's this stupid trope of Jews in media (specifically medical shows), refusing treatments because it's not "Kosher", and I feel like this over-obsession on our opinion of this transplant partially comes from that. Idk its weird; I was so worried watching this that you were gonna be like "another issue is whether Jews and Muslims will take this treatment and so on" but I was really really pleased, just another reason I love this channel!
The closing lines of Orwell's "Animal Farm" at the end are chilling. Considerable food for thought.
Glad you made this comment.
Remember Orwell wrote his books as warnings not as instruction manuals. (Not everyone got the memo saying this).
I'm glad other people remember Pig Heart Boy because whenever I hear anything about heart transplants all I can think is PIG HEART BOY!
I do not remember it looking so much like a bad PSA though lol
Another thing I didn't remember, they gave Babe a little wig?! wtf
Omg I've loved your videos for like 4 years!!!
As medicine advances with science and technology, we are finding more ways to keep people alive for longer. While keeping someone alive longer is a great thing, you would also have to consider there quality of life. Also as you mentioned ethics is something we can not forget. Great explanation. 👍
I met an American guy at a comicon a couple of years ago whose job it was to prepare bodies for subsequent medical use (or something like that). He told me that the silver lining of the opioid crisis in the US was that the heart and lung transplant waiting lists were super short because if someone died from an opioid overdose, those organs were still good.
Just wondering if you have any thoughts or further info on this!
I believe it was found that adding opioids preserves organs for longer while awaiting transplant. So some are pre-cured like ham.
Wow. I feel like we can almost always give something positive in any situation if we just look hard enough.
Still pretty cool.
@@juliusfinkas I mean sure that's one way to look at it, but it's still hella grim
@@mamacito1795 How so?
@@mamacito1795 i agree, i just find it fascinating that we can take a bad situation and still find positives. I don't think it could ever justify it being okay.
Waiting for the video that will discuss how it failed.
Agreed
"The Washington Post reported that Bennett's son, David Bennett Jnr, said that hospitals had refused to add his father to the wait list because he previously failed to follow doctor's orders, take his medication regularly, and attend follow-up visits."
Perfect candidate for a pig heart tbh, proven treatments should go where they'll be the most likely to do good, and that means patients who will take care of the donor organs they've been gifted
I think Singer's ideas about speciesism were explained incorrectly here. For example, Singer would have no problem saying that humans are superior to worms because we are more intelligent, more capable of complex emotions, and so on. The gap between us and pigs in those areas is much smaller, so it makes sense to treat pigs with much more respect (while still not valuing a pig life as much as a human life). Speciesism is when we ignore an animal's intelligence, capacity for emotions, etc. and treat them as without rights or value *just because* they are not human.
This is just a great example of lifeism. There is no reason to give privilege to living beings based on arbitrary traits.
@@paulgoogol2652 So why do we value human life? Is murder okay? There is no way to provide a coherent, secular argument for the value of human life that doesn't imply we should value animal life to differing degrees as well.
While the consideration of intelligence does solve some ethical problems it also creates new dilemmas. For example, if we treat animals based on their intelligence, by what justification can we oppose treating humans who are less intelligent differently? How do we measure intelligence? etc.
@@merrymachiavelli2041 We came to value human life and have empathy for one another because it was hugely advantageous, evolutionarily. I don't think there's any rational explanation for why we ought to value human life inherently, or any other kind of life for that matter, and I think that's okay.
@@josiahferguson6194 From what I understand, Peter Singer says that the capacity to suffer, rather than intelligence, is what we should use when deciding how to treat them.
Source: czcams.com/video/av22cRQNBiQ/video.html
"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." -George Orwell, Animal Farm
Great video! A good deal creepier than I expected it to be but that just goes to show how I saw this matter with a mindset that was far too uninvolved.
Animals are not equal
As someone who’s goal in life is to become a doctor the rapid advance of medical technology is so incredibly exciting
Good luck 👍🏻
@@AlanTheBeast100 idunno that question seems patronizing to me…
@@revolvency thank ya!
@@levismith5169 guess you don't need a humourectomy then.
As a medical student myself, I am rooting for you!
As well as Oryx and Crake, the ethics part of your video made me think of Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, in which clones are bred for the use of their organs by the clone’s original when needed. The clones are normal human beings. They are raised knowing their purpose. It’s horrifying.
There's also a movie with that premise (The Island). Interestingly, it seems both came out in 2005.
That's in MICHAEL BAY's film The Island.
in Okja the pigs are genetically modified to be tastier, but they are mixed with human DNA as well as the DNA of other species, and they inadvertently make them extra smart as well as extra delicious, so their suffering is magnified. Maybe it's the increased suffering that makes them more delicious. In fairness, pigs are already really loving and intelligent creatures and it already breaks my heart the amount of unnecessary cruelty there is in the meat industry. If you think it's ok to eat them, ok cool, whatever, but why does society also think it's ok to torture them?
Just do the exact same thing but grow the body without a brain and run the body off of an advanced computer system instead (just runs basic physical functions to keep the body alive), will probably be possible within a few decades when technology and biology inherently end up connecting.
@@rdizzy1 I think you underestimate both the complexety of the brain's job and the difficulty in growing a body without a brain.
@@Ruthavecflute No I don't, I over estimate the technological advances of future society, considering how technological advances usually compounds the speed at which it advances.
19:40 "The pig is sus"
Always love these memes from an informative channel!
Thanks for the laughs 🤣
I blasted out laughing
timestamp should be 19:40
@@ayrendraganas8686 updated, thanks!
@@oskarstaudte me too 🤣🤣
The first 27 seconds of this video is all that it needed. Just perfection. Everything else is a bonus.
The Loony Toons outro is *inspired*.
One of your best videos, especially the part about ethics. Fascinating times ahead.
My Dad had a heart transplant in October of last year. After taking out his old heart they estimated that he would have had less than a year to live. Without the precious gift that the donor was willing to make and without the fantastic work of the cardiology team it most probably would have been his last Christmas. Getting more organs to more people in need is definitely worth exploring but using animals must be done the right way. The last thing we need is for it to fall flat on it’s arse as it could be a fantastic way for more people’s lives to be saved.
I think growing organs from human stem cells is the best way forward. I know it's years away and tinkering with pigs might be easier, but I'd feel happier with more stem cell research.
Stem cell research suffers from almost exactly the same problem as nuclear energy. It's a seriously powerful technology that has been dragged through the mud by decades of misinformation and emotional/political disputes.
@@tissuepaper9962 I think it's unethical to create human embryos and then take cells from them.
@@Friggsdottir and that is your shortsighted opinion. You're entitled to it.
The first 30 seconds of this video are the best of any CZcams video I’ve seen in ages
I hope an update is coming soon given current events
Man you're having way too much fun with your jokes. It's like this whole scientific endeavour was made just to give you a reason for corny comments. I especially liked the outro. Also all books/films/ted-talks seem well worth giving a shot, so thanks in advance for those!
His true passion is comedy, clearly!
I've watched almost all of your videos and this one was your best one ever. The pacing, jokes, education, subject matter all combined artfully. Thank you for the great content. P.S. I still love your vitamin video :)
Man I don't know how we are getting this content for free.
My mum’s a journalist and actually reported on the 1997 Indian transplant attempt at the time - she travelled from Hong Kong to be on the scene, and I think she was struck by how insanitary and improvised it seemed. She wasn’t surprised that the transplant was a failure. Thanks for the video, really interesting!
You've nailed it. Human life, is paramount. *if* we can do it to save lives, if we can do it to make lives better, we should research it.
Great video. And yes you we correct with אסור. The concept is called 'pikuach nefesh', or 'watching over a soul', which basically says that you can ignore almost all of the 'do not' commandments if necessary in order to save a person's life .
I don't know what's better, informative part of your videos, irony or jokes.
My brain hurts, and my heart hurts. This video did its job very well. This should be taken seriously. Thank you, Doctor.
I’m a vegetarian but I’m also a medical intern so I’m a bit torn on this. For me saving a patient’s life will always be paramount, obviously. This makes the already large grey area when it comes to medical ethics even greyer.
This is all very very interesting stuff though. Reminds me of my medical ethics classes in third year.
I find it a trivial problem from the perspective of a consequentialist. However many years the animal suffers in its upbringing (if it even experiences suffering depending on our rearing quality) can simply be compared to the number of years the human would spend in pain or, worse, death.
@@jackoh991 I’m a vegetarian, so I still eat some animal products. I’m more against the killing part than anything else. I’m an intern and I haven’t personally prescribed anything yet.
@@starlight8554
One of the medicines keeping me alive took _thousands_ of rats to invent. I take a lot of different meds. 😬 I'm otherwise a vegan, mainly for health reasons.
@@starlight8554 mice/rats are typically euthanized at the end of a pharmaceutical experiment, especially considering many experiments require giving them awful diseases to start with. Animal testing is killing.
@@starlight8554 Why are you more against killing than torture?
My grandfather got a pig valve and everytime he ate pig meat he said he was being a cannibal.
One of the best videos I have seen in a while. It is fascinating to think about not starting immunosuppressive therapies for pts after a transplant. It goes even further - if you can exchange your heart, next step will be lungs and liver. The only organ not amenable to transplant in the foreseeable future is one’s brain. But who knows who happens next.
I really hate how much you manage to make me chuckle while watching a rather educational video about porcine human heart transplants and the ethics behind it and also make it interesting. Honestly well done.
My mum doesn't understand why I'm watching you instead of Netflix. This exact video is one of the many reasons.
the joke output in this video is crazy considering how little time you've have to write this (almost as crazy as a pig heart in a human being)
That nonchalant Churchill quote was outrageous. Love it.
A genuine question: Does the 50% bear DNA go in before or after we add the 50% pig? We gotta get those 3 halves in there somehow
...not even talking about squeezing in the 97% chimp DNA!
All mammals have a comparatively recent common ancestor about 100 million years ago. So, all mammals have very similar DNA - after all mice are much more similar to humans than they are to plants or birds. If you say pigs and bears each have 50% in common with humans, then there is probably a big overlap of basic mammalian DNA that all 3 species have in common within those 50% - for example the genes that make us grow 4 (instead of 5 or 8) appendages are very similar, but pigs, bears and humans all form different hands and feet, so those genes have differences (not necessarily big ones).
We even have a lot of genes in common with plants. That's why we can use many plants as medicine - many substances produced by plants are similar to stuff that our own body produces - it just has a different function in those plants.
As an immunologist I would probably use the same declaration slide. Immunology, what a terrifying beast
just ask david cameron. fuck me (not the pig) that was an amazing joke
This is one of the best videos I have seen in a loooong time. That ending montage is just perfect.
13:45 If this person worked in my industry, they'd know that intelligent designers are a myth. 🖍️
I like how you gave the appearance that you were super sorry for that intelligent design guy and were gonna be a bit lighter on it, then threw it all on its head and took the piss out of him. Done like a true badass Brit!
Just came back to rewatch this video, he died March 9, 2022 just two months after his surgery. Great advancements were found though!
Yes, yes I do remember Pig Heart Boy. I actually thought that because of that series, the pig heart transplant had been successfully tried before.
Brilliant video, you really porked out on the pig puns. Very well written.
This is your best video ever. The info was so accessible and the light-touch ethics thoughtful but not judgmental or condescending, but the puns were even better than usual. I live for the day CZcams and medical science combine so I can give three thumbs up at a time.
What a fantastic intro! Your videos somehow keep getting better and better.
Long time viewer, and that is only relevant for the fact that I am sooo happy for your growth and success. Idk man, but your videos are soo entertaining and educational! I can literally just watch your content anytime anywhere. I also love how you focus on the "good and bad" of science and medicine, introducing your viewers to using their own critical thinking and not to go by group-think. You sir got it all and I am here to enjoy it! Much love :)
Lawd we putting pig hearts in ppl? What a time to be alive!
I don't think the pig would agree :D
@@Land89 🤣 okay, you should be the one with the YT channel. Not me
A di same ting ppl we'n seh when de'n first start with electricity. But look at the world now. The future is unlimited replacement organs.
Two Minute Papers reference?
@@zyansheep Just wait to see how it'll be two pigs down the line
As Yuval Harari wrote in Sapiens, the question we have to ask isn't "What we want to become?" but, "What we want to want?".
You'll probably never read this but you have been a north star of factual comedy these past 2 years. Thank you for the effort you put into these videos. I love to laugh while being fascinated by your field. Although I am not working in the medical field, I love learning more about the human body. The sources you mentioned in the past help me learn even more. This video was a 10/10 (that's an A for the Americans out there).
P.S. The exploitation of your children at the beginning of the video for views was also smart. Cute AF :))
This video was extremely interesting and thought-provoking, but also profoundly terrifying - The Percy pig bit at the end was just straight-up disturbing
You inform me and make me laugh outloud in the same video. As a comedically scrutinous 21 year old with no background in medecine, i shall hope you realise what an honour that is for me to say that. I love your channel, I love the fact you are an NHS doctor, you communicate health topics in an amazingly understandible way and i think you've got a good grasp on the world. Good work pal!
Physician associate in the UK here! Love your wonderful ability to entwine education and humour. We are taught as healthcare professionals not to be judgemental and yet it occupies one of the four pillars of ethics. Many patients awaiting livers will miss their opportunity for a transplant without evidence of sobriety, but this seemingly endless supply (although I'll hold my breath for the QALY analysis) would potentially avoid these judgement calls as well as the grey cases as you mentioned. Again wonderfully interesting, keep up the great work!
Loving the support act.
The Cameron joke was a work of art!
Sadly, the recipient died today 9th March 2022
the short, dry bits of humour spread throughout this video are fantastic
Another banger of a video from Dr Francis, veterinarian at large
I didn't understand half as much as I'd like but what I did understand was utterly fascinating. Thanks.
I think that an important thing to keep in mind in regards to ethics is this: anyone that holds a hard and uncompromising stand in this either has not thought of it through the lens of both logic and morality, or just doesn't care about the ethics at all. This is not something we can just say "Yes its moral" or "No its immoral". Both sides have their good and bad aspects, and it is through compromise and careful consideration that we are going to do whats the better of the evils.
One of your greatest videos.
It's one of those times when I'm sad I don't have anyone with whom I can share it and they can appreciate it.
Banger video. I hope you don't get demonetized for using 0.8 seconds of copyrighted music.
I was not prepared for the David Cameron comment.
As a vegan, I think this is fine. I would prefer we find a way to grow the organs directly as soon as possible, but until then, I value human survival more.
I am open to the idea I may be wrong, but so far I haven’t found the opposing arguments convincing.
I don’t eat animals in order not to inflict unnecessary suffering. Were my life to depend on it, however, it would take precedence.
makes sense to me
That's cool to know. I respect those who are able to maintain veganism, as long as they don't force in on their pets and such.
@@liriodendronlasianthus she said nothing about pets.
As a vegetarian (I couldn't give up real cheese), I agree with your statement.
You are not vegan.
the start of the video is definitely a whiplash for me
I'm long time vegan and ended up having to take some drugs made from pig stuff while I was pregnant. The frustration for me was there we're other options but not enough data to show their safety in pregnancy. I decided in the end that this wasn't my choice really, just as when I shop in a supermarket some of my money will go towards the supermarket restocking meat, or when I pay my taxes they will fund meat meals in hospitals etc. I decided to just see it as outside of my personal control. It was a difficult time however, I tried really hard to find out more about the pigs and if they were specifically being killed for this one medication, for example, but big farmer is very protective over this kind of info!!
This is an interesting matter that I'd never known about. I'm not vegan and it wasn't until I got a beehive in my back yard that I found out that beekeeping is a no-no for vegans, not only that honey is an animal product but beekeeping itself is farming an animal. So now we move to my brother who is highly allergic to bee stings and is on a course of desensitising injections, one a month for five years. The injections are a minute dose of bee venom. Does that mean that a vegan person with the allergy won't accept the treatment? Those shades of grey are everywhere.
I live near a large pork processing plant, and my husband works in the Swine industry as well. They have a saying locally that the processor “uses everything but the oink”. Meaning, nothing goes to waste.
I also live near a large medical center that I do happen to know has been doing some kind of research involving pigs. Exactly what, that I do not know. However, the two well known entities have been working together for decades on human health research.
It’s a good bet that any pig that contributed to your particular medication, contributed to relieve human health/hunger issues in more more ways than one.
@@Kim_Miller As a vegan, I think that is justified. If you look at the amount of suffering done to obtain the bee venom, vs the amount of suffering that would occur if your brother had a fatal reaction to a bee sting, then out of the two options, one is very favourable. I appreciate this is a utilitarian calculation, but in this case it seems reasonably uncontroversial.
@@Kim_Miller i think this does vary also, I have been "vegan" for 15 years, I don't eat honey as an ingredient, but I do buy a jar of locally made honey from in my town every few years and use it medicinally. I think careful, small scale bee hives are okay and can be helpful for the environment. My husband on the other hand, also vegan, won't eat any honey. I also think wool could in theory be ethically made and would be more eco than acrylic fabric.
I'm so glad I found your channel through Tom Scott's video. "The pig is sus", "big farmer", I need to watch all your videos now.
Also the subject is really interesting and I found you touched on all the angles I was intrigued by, and many others I hadn't even thought about. Really good stuff.
That was brilliant, thank you!
And the jokes, notably Cameron and Andrew, made me laugh out loud!
These are really important questions that need to be asked much rather sooner than later.
the definition of veganism (essentially, doing as much as possible and practicable to reduce harm to animals) is very inclusive of medical issues. some people can be shitty about it, but most are not gatekeeping veganism when it comes to someone needing medical attention that brings harm to animals in some way. of course it would be ideal to not do this and i would love to see something like synthetic organs, but it's what we have! i can only hope any animals kept would be treated better than animals raised for food are.
You are not vegan.
Probably will be treated better, if Wagyu beef can proof better treatment and nutrition make a great meat. For human grade organ a good treatment for the animal that will give a human grade organ beed the best treatment. because of course patient don't want their organ broke fast. But there is a catch if this become common because of money reason i can see they will grade the organ based of the Quality and of course there will be demand even for the low Quality.
I think that because hygiene is a big concern with these transplants the pigs at the very least wont be kept in large groups in tight spaces and hopefully since the organs are generally more expensive than meat the little extra expense for giving them a good life will be acceptable
If we could cure cancer by torturing puppies, should we do it? What if we could also produce this treatment chemically without puppy torture (but it was just costly and time consuming)?
The ethical calculus makes an interesting hypothetical, but in practice I don't think we should begin a new form of industrialised torture and slaughter for human benefit and profit if we don't have to. Luckily, we don't have to.
@@nickyrivernene5921 Gatekeep somewhere else.
You’ve got a slightly dark sense of humour buddy. I like it and it really helps with audience retention. I’m learning little bits from you with each video.
The thought that the animals we use to grow our organs might also be grown with more intelligence like us is disturbing. The suffering we already cause animals in our commodification of them is terrible, but to think that we also force them to perceive the world and themselves more like us is just … bonkers. It fills me with anxiety and dread thinking about that kind of suffering.
Better don't think about all the humans that we do the same to. srsly though what is the solution except, don't think about it.
We love you for intellect, we love you for your Insight, we love you for your heart, and we love the jokes. Thank you
Have you considered doing a video on neurocardiology? I would love to see you have a conversation about it with a neuroscientist, since I haven't seen that many people talking about it in detail, even though research on the subject has been around since the 1970s. It also directly relates to organ transplants in that a lot of the time, it seems the heart's own internal immune system takes a very long time to reactivate after transplantation, and it never reaches pre-transplantation levels of activation. It would be really interesting to learn how the heart's neural wiring works and how that affects their nervous system as a whole from someone who can understand the research.
Your videos are very often better than the papers I read
Excellent video as usual, and you crushed the perfect and appropriate ending! Well done for the appropriate topical insert, who currently needs a topical insert from the country, especially where it hurts.
Best video so far. Droppin the dad jokes like you would be a stand up comedian on netflix
Marvelous. Love the depth and discussion.
8:15 I was NOT ready for that David Cameron joke. In stitches!
The gentleman who received the pig heart died yesterday didn’t he? Rest In Peace
You're the absolute best doctor on CZcams.
Down to earth doctor with a sky high intelligence.
Thank you for the amazing talk.
I truly think this is your best video yet! Well done and thank you! [PERV, Sus, Big Farmer references included!!]
The amount of genius jokes throughout the video is unreal.
Fantastic video! I've always found medical ethics fascinating. Some of the most significant scientific discoveries have come about due to horrific disregard for human (or other species) life. We all end up benefiting from some evil monsters' thirst for knowledge. We may condemn then, but then use their discoveries because "well, since it's already here, let's not let it go to waste"
Yeah i also find it hard to disregard this type of research.
The Nazis found out a great deal of this but their research has been banned for so such a long time because they were... Well i guess they were cancelled in a major way.
@@juliusfinkas Cancelling: being banned from twitter=being executed for war crimes
@@otto_jk that's not what i said. Their science and ideology was cancelled in the sense that it's not okay to use, even things that might have been useful. I'm not talking about the punishments of the individual Nazis.
This will not only save lives that would’ve otherwise be too short, but it also brings us one step closer to fixing the chronic disease that is ageing!