Leading geneticist says we are a hybrid of Pigs and Chimps

reply to post by soficrow

Which explains why pig parts are transplanted into humans.

really?

Scientists have already made great progress in altering the genetic make-up of pigs so their tissues are less likely to be rejected by the human immune system.

Genetically modified pig organs you omitted (or didn't know).

We modified pigs for this purpose because their organs are a similar size. We had to alter their genome to do it. I'm sure if the scientists tweaking the pigs DNA would have mentioned if they'd seen any common ancestry with us.

reply to post by Haxsaw


It would be more accurate to say that Muslims and Jews are not "supposed" to eat pork. I know many Muslims who don't bat an eye out of eating pizza with sausage and pepperoni and washing it down with a cold beer. Yet they still go to Mosque on Fridays......much like a lot of Christians I know that only practice their religion on Sunday morning.

This theory is preposterous, although it is a better explanation for speciation than random mutations over millions of years in my opinion.

reply to post by rhinoceros

I think by "no evidence of pig DNA in humans at all" Antigod means that we don't have a single gene that is most similar to some gene in pigs. This fact alone debunks this ridiculous idea of humans being pig-chimp hybrids.

Fact is, genetics doesn't explain much about much. Seems we need to look further, and McCarthy is doing that. ...I'm not really defending the humans=pig-chimp-hybrid hypothesis just the idea that it's necessary to think outside the box.

...have "pig parts" actually ever been transplanted into humans?

All the time. Between the 1960's and 1980's(?), transplanting pig hearts into humans was a big thing, now it's mostly skin and other tissue. Also, see below.

I didn't bother reading this McCarthy stuff so deeply

Maybe you should - he makes some interesting points that go beyond the packaged simplifications.

...bats are rat-bird hybrids because they have wings.

REALLY! I didn't know that!








Kidding. Couldn't resist.

reply to post by Antigod


My brother needed a heart transplant at the end of the 1980's - we were told that pig hearts were being used experimentally but didn't last long. Big issues included the 'morality' of xenotransplantation, infection risk, the rejection problem (overcome with massive doses of anti-rejection drugs), and the 'temporary' affect. We tentatively approved a pig heart as an interim step but my bro got a human donor heart in time. ...I've been searching PubMed but only titles are available for early studies.

Xenotransplantation

...Interest in xenotransplantation reemerged during the 1960s, when large advances were made in immunology. Chimpanzee kidneys have been transplanted into patients with renal failure.[1] In 1984, a baboon heart was transplanted into a newborn infant, Baby Fae, who had hypoplastic left heart syndrome and lived 20 days after heart surgery.[2] A baboon liver was transplanted to a patient with hepatic failure.[3] Porcine islet cells of Langerhans have been injected into patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus.[4] Porcine skin has been grafted onto burn patients,[5] and pig neuronal cells have been transplanted into patients with Parkinson (Parkinson’s) disease and Huntington (Huntington’s) disease.[6]

During these advances, several obstacles to the success of xenotransplantation have been identified. These include, but are not limited to, (1) preventing hyperacute rejection, (2) preventing acute vascular rejection, (3) facilitating immune accommodation, (4) inducing immune tolerance, (5) preventing the transmission of viruses from xenografts into humans, and (6) addressing the ethical issues surrounding animal sources for xenografts and the appropriate selection of recipients (given that xenotransplantation remains experimental).

Orthotopic transplantation of the pig heart Thorax. 1970 November

Orthotopic transplantation of the pig heart is described, with success in the last 12 of 23 studies, leading to survival until rejection in the last two. The pig heart was found to be easily damaged by cold. In contrast, organ viability was not appreciably affected when the warm ischaemic time was shortened by making the aortic anastomosis the initial manœuvre of implantation. The advantages of the pig as a model for the study of orthotopic cardiac allografts would appear to be its tolerance of long periods of cardiopulmonary bypass, immediate clotting after heparin reversal and ability to maintain the circulation without drug or pacemaker support. These factors have contributed to the relative simplicity of post-operative management.

This should please the Jews and Muslims

Astyanax
reply to post by IkNOwSTuff

 

My personal belief is we were tampered with in the past by a higher intelligence.

See what I mean, Soficrow? Magical thinking. Superstition.

edit on 30/11/13 by Astyanax because: it boldly went.

if you think about it, it's THE most simple and elegant premise. It's the slipperiest slope there is but so what, are we going to ignore it just because some people can't accept it? Truth is still truth no matter how many people can't handle it.

rhinoceros But have "pig parts" actually ever been transplanted into humans?

My uncle had a heart valve that was transplanted from a pig.
He lived with this for at a good twenty years.

reply to post by soficrow


You actually backed up my point.. pigs hearts are not compatible. You said so yourself. We had to modify pigs to be transgenic to get around it.

And you don't grasp that actually genetics have done an awful lot to explain a lot. Illnesses, evolution: DNA has done a lot to improve our understanding of them... well not your understanding, obviously. Shows a line of ancestry right back to a common ancestor with chimps.

I suggest you do what I did, spend about five years wading though papers on human genetics and the fossil record of our evolution, then a little bit longer brushing up on general evolution and biology just for the heck of it. If you had, then you might not have thought that article meant a platypus was a reptile/duck/mammal hybrid.

reply to post by Antigod


Your rudeness and ad hominem attacks are unacceptable. I don't like you putting words in my mouth either. As I've said repeatedly throughout this thread, "I'm not really defending the humans=pig-chimp-hybrid hypothesis just the idea that it's necessary to think outside the box." Interesting that you find it so necessary to create conflict. You must be a freelance journalist looking for copy. Not the kind of interaction I enjoy.

reply to post by Antigod

You actually backed up my point.. pigs hearts are not compatible.

My brother's human heart transplant was not compatible either although it was a "match." He has been on anti-rejection drugs since he got it and will be until he dies. And the fact remains that we were offered a pig heart as a temporary solution.

reply to post by soficrow



The difference is though that with a human heart you can live a pretty decent and lengthy life even on the immunosuppressants whereas with a normal Pig heart you've got days perhaps weeks at best. Even with the genetically engineered pigs you're only buying time until a more suitable human organ becomes available. You can not live indefinitely with the organ no matter what pharmaceutical cocktail you're imbibing. There are so many issues with those xenotransplants that most countries only started lifting band on research in the past several years.

Shows a line of ancestry right back to a common ancestor with chimps.

I suggest you do what I did, spend about five years wading though papers on human genetics and the fossil record of our evolution, then a little bit longer brushing up on general evolution and biology just for the heck of it. If you had, then you might not have thought that article meant a platypus was a reptile/duck/mammal hybrid.

I wouldn't expect someone who has spent so much time and money to admit they wasted both but you have to admit you guys still can't explain HOW it works. How do you explain the lack of "innumerable transitional forms "? methylation? How does your idea fit in with the genetic timeline? upload.wikimedia.org...

bottleslingguy
I wouldn't expect someone who has spent so much time and money to admit they wasted both but you have to admit you guys still can't explain HOW it works.

I understand, I wouldn't expect someone who couldn't be bothered to take the time to grasp the fundamentals of evolutionary theory to understand what goes into let alone what knowledge is possessed by someone who has taken the time to further their education and learn how things actually work so I definitely wouldn't expect them to understand the POV of someone with the drive and work ethic to do so.

How do you explain the lack of "innumerable transitional forms "?

there's nothing to explain as there really isn't such a thing as a transitional form or fossil in the sense you're trying to claim. unless of course you're at a Ray Comfort seminar. Even so, there is no lack of evidence in the fossil record despite the claims of people who can't operate a search engine like Google. we do have some great examples of intermediary species and fossils that exhibit some archaic adaptations as well as new ones. I can even pull out a couple of very good intermediate forms such as- then- and today- Australopithecus Afarensis is another good example of a transitional species exhibiting many apelike features in addition to bipedalism, different angle of the foramen magnum indicating that bipedalism was its main form of locomotion and a less pronounced sagittal crest among others. Oh and heres a chart showing some morphological changes in equine feet.

methylation?

the broadness of this inquiry could fill volumes, could you be more specific about what you don't understand about the process?

How does your idea fit in with the genetic timeline?

care to elaborate on what you think is WRONG with the timeline? It's OK to say you don't understand something. That's the only way to learn properly sometimes.

reply to post by peter vlar

wow so very elitist of you. you're saying evidence that a nostril moved a little bit up a snout and may have become a blow hole explains speciation? do we know how dna decided to appear and organize itself in such a non-random sequence? And don't tell me I have to study for ten years just to find out you guys don't know. You're all optimists I must say, but understandably so.

reply to post by bottleslingguy


I dont see how this proves that they are the same species or even linked to one another.

If you ask me, evolutionary theory which banks so heavily on the visual observations of skeletal remains is just absurd.

Did You know ancient Greeks would re-bury bury elephant remains that they would find in the ground with honors and elaborate ceremonies since they thought they were the skeletons of giant cyclops´......based on the visual observations of some bones.....

Surely the science of the 21st century is not limited to such a primitive and flawed system of examination. Such cant be the cornerstone for evolution....right?

You made some Good points. Have a great day sir /maam.

Phage
So, did the chimp rape the pig or vice versa?

Phage I love you but I had a horrid image in my head after reading that
Oh and the Chimp and Pig loved each other, it was the pig who made the first move.

I think human beings are simply their own species, no hybridization necessary.

bottleslingguy
wow so very elitist of you.

Sorry, I was attempting to be facetious not elitist and I thought turnabout was fair play since you were mocking someone else based on having an education.

you're saying evidence that a nostril moved a little bit up a snout and may have become a blow hole explains speciation?

That was 1 example and yes. Morphology however isn't the only tool used.

do we know how dna decided to appear and organize itself in such a non-random sequence? And don't tell me I have to study for ten years just to find out you guys don't know. You're all optimists I must say, but understandably so.

Ask any of my friends or colleagues, I'm a pessimist at heart. Unfortunately in science we deal in supportable, testable and repeatable facts. That doesn't mean we know everything or have every answer. Are there problems when dealing with the fossil record? Sure. It's the nature of fossilization itself that presents us with the biggest hurdles. The best analogy I can give would be to compare the fossil record with a jigsaw puzzle. We may not have the box top to know exactly what the picture looked like when we started putting it together but after a century and a half we've managed to piece enough of it together that we have a really good idea of how things looked.We are also willing to change our paradigm when new evidence presents itself. I understand that evolutionary theory from the outside appears to be very dogmatic but at the heart of it there are 1000's of evolutionary biologists, anthropologists, paleontologists etc. who work their asses off day in day out trying to turn current paradigms on their head. Sometimes the evidence doesn't bare out the hypothesis. Sometimes that wrong answer shows us where we went astray and leads us to a new question or different answer. At the end of the day, whether abiogenesis or god was the root of evolution, is inconsequential to my studies. Evolution is a fact. I may not be able to prove it with DNA in the case of the whales but in humans its an entirely different story and the fact that humans have admixture from other hominids and the fact that we can trace when where and how much is pretty undisputable.

reply to post by peter vlar


From Sparky63: "My uncle had a heart valve that was transplanted from a pig. He lived with this for at a good twenty years."

Xenotransplantation aside, all I'm saying is that current genetic theory is inadequate and leaves too much unexplained. My main fear is that I'll unwittingly make a case to justify human-animal chimeras, which I emphatically do not want to do.

reply to post by soficrow


theres a huge difference between a valve and the entire organ though.