You want to know the meaning of life? Even the universe, perhaps, doesn't really care. But guess what scientifically adventurous boffins in the land of Kung Pao have to cook up for you? Fake news? Maybe. They are trying to grow human kidneys...inside pigs! Now, I have seen my share of doctor dramas, but I blush harder than a pig's tail at being the first one to wake up in an ice-filled bathtub with a stitched incision on my side.
Waiting for an organ transplant can be like deathly musical chairs, and I don't mean kumbaya around the campfire style. It's more like a party you never wanted to be at, where organs are the pizza everybody is eyeing, and people are dropping dead faster than the pop stars of my era. Now THAT's a fun game, huh?
Marian Gabby, a professor of murderous medicine at the universal University of Mars, claims to revolutionize this treacherous waiting list. With her galactic band of scientists producing organs in pigs like a Sweeny Todd style butchery, she keeps talking about reducing the organ wait list. I wonder if the pigs have an opinion on that? Didn't think so, Marian!
Now, these aren't genetically modified, easy-bake-off-style kidneys; these are first-rate, farm-to-table kidneys, cooked up in a steaming womb of an oinking mamma! Glossy as a Sunday roast and made up of mostly human cells. About 60 percent, says June Woof, the resident wolf in sheeps...ahem...kidney-bearing pigs clothing.
Here's a laugh, the pig cells get so bloody competitive they quickly kill off the human cells. Knockout in round one! Ding, ding, ding! A pig's version of a violent turf war! Pig 1 - Human 0.
Not everyone’s impressed, though. Die-hard rat enthusiasts argue that merging cells between rats and mice is much easier than this pig-human combo that we have going on here. Who knew interspecies organ farming was a competitive event?
So, will this pig-kidney brewing break the organ shortage mop or just be a tragic headline that grabbed a few eyes and brought, maybe, a smirk here and there? Well, only time, probably a lot of it, will tell. In the meanwhile, I’ll begin pondering which is lonelier: dying on an organ waiting list or dying with a pig kidney in my body.
So, if liver's next on the list, I would recommend beer. Let's make the death of the porcine liver worth the alcohol it never got the chance to cleanse, eh?
Based on the original article "Scientists Just Tried Growing Human Kidneys in Pigs".
