This week, a 57-year-old man received a heart transplant from a genetically modified pig. While the long-term effects of this procedure remain to be seen, people are hailing this surgery as a breakthrough for science and medicine. If we can breed animals for organ donation, then we can potentially provide lifesaving medical interventions for thousands of humans.
Of course, xenotransplantation — that is, cross-species transplantation — raises difficult ethical questions. Some people worry about the practice of genetically modifying other animals for our purposes. Other people worry about the practice of breeding, raising and killing animals for our needs, particularly when we cause much more suffering to the animal than we receive in return.
These concerns are serious. Even if genetic modification of pigs is not a problem in and of itself, the practice of genetically modifying pigs for human purposes is deeply problematic. It harms many animals in the research process and many more in the application process, since we optimize these pigs for our use, not their own health and welfare.
More importantly, the practice of breeding, raising and killing pigs for our purposes is deeply problematic as well. Pigs have consciousness, emotionality, bonds of care and more. This is more than enough to render the practice of breeding pigs for xenotransplantation massively harmful for pigs, even if the practice is beneficial for some humans.
At the same time, there might indeed be trade-offs here. It remains to be seen how successful xenotransplantation will be, and it also remains to be seen whether, to what degree and on what timeline we can develop animal-free alternatives to this practice. But to the extent that this practice is distinctly successful, it would satisfy a real human need.
To make matters more complex, while breeding, raising and killing pigs for xenotransplantation causes massive harm, it does not cause nearly as much harm as other common practices. In particular, we breed, raise and kill more than 100 million pigs each year for food in the U.S. And if we include other countries and animals, that estimate rises to the billions.
The harms of factory farming are impossible to exaggerate. We often breed animals so they grow as large as possible as quickly as possible. We mutilate them without anesthesia. We frequently force them to live in cramped, toxic conditions and transport them on hot trucks without access to food or water. And we typically kill them on industrial disassembly lines that prioritize speed over welfare.
In contrast, the benefits of factory farming are constantly exaggerated. Yes, factory farming provides food to billions. But it also consumes much more land, water and antibiotics than plant-based food systems, and it produces much more waste, pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. In short, it harms animals directly so that it can harm humans indirectly.
Xenotransplantation thus has the potential to be much better than factory farming in all respects. It involves many fewer animals. It harms these animals much less. And, assuming it succeeds, it benefits humans much more. Given these differences, how can we criticize xenotransplantation on animal welfare or rights grounds while factory farming persists?
This is precisely the problem. Factory farming harms animals so much, for such counterproductive purposes, that it renders all other forms of animal use superior by comparison. This creates a permissive structure for a wide range of alarming practices. If we can factory-farm animals, we reason, then we can do virtually anything to them.
This reasoning is technically correct, yet we seem to be drawing the wrong conclusion. Yes, if we can factory-farm animals, then we can do virtually anything to them. But that supports either of two conclusions. Either we can, in fact, do virtually anything to animals, or we cannot, in fact, factory-farm them. We should be drawing the second conclusion.
This shows why ending factory farming is so important. As we know, part of why we need to end factory farming is that it kills more than 50 billion animals in the U.S. per year and harms workers, global health and the environment in the process. But another part of why we need it to end is that its very existence distorts our perspective and undermines our moral authority.
It is a difficult question where to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable forms of animal use. But we can say this much now: We need to end factory farming. And until we do, we need to resist the temptation to treat factory farming as the standard against which all other forms of animal use, such as xenotransplantation, are compared. Otherwise, our moral judgment will be compromised beyond repair, and progress will be impossible.
Jeff Sebo is clinical associate professor of environmental studies, affiliated professor of bioethics, medical ethics and philosophy, and director of the animal studies M.A. program at New York University. He is also the author of “Saving Animals, Saving Ourselves.”
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