animal heart transplants

Discussion in 'Hanafi Fiqh' started by shahnawazgm, Mar 9, 2022.

Draft saved Draft deleted
  1. shahnawazgm

    shahnawazgm Veteran

    Shadman likes this.
  2. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    Artificial Wombs Are a Technological Nightmare Waiting to Happen

    After Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk warned on Tuesday that society “should be much more worried about population collapse,” Musk’s fellow tech leaders came up with one solution for declining birth rates.

    “We should be investing in technology that makes having kids much faster/easier/cheaper/more accessible… Synthetic wombs, etc,” proposed Sahil Lavingia, the founder of digital product trading platform Gumroad.​
     
  3. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    The Exponential Age

    What the king doesn’t realize, when he accepts this bargain, was that his vizier’s request was exponential in nature. Although the piles of rice are manageable to begin with, they grow to colossal size as they double: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256. By the time the king reaches the final square, he’s ruined. The vizier has earned 18.5 quintillion grains, more than all the rice in the world.

    It’s an old story, and apocryphal. But not much has changed. In the game of chess, the vizier became the queen, inheriting the vizier’s powers. And the king is all of us—vulnerable, broke, and utterly unable to visualize exponential growth.

    So here we are, looking at a graph with two lines. One line represents the exponential growth of technology, a cumulative metric of halving battery sizes, bigger machine learning models, plunging cloud computing costs and faster processing speeds. It looks like an upside-down roller coaster, moving from a slowly ramping, nearly imperceptible climb to a sudden liftoff. The second, flatter line is the plodding linear growth of our institutions, customs, and practices. Can we split the difference? Do we want to?

    Carl Sagan tells the story of the Persian chess board in his final book, comparing the grains of rice to the reproduction of bacteria: a single bacterium divides in two, its daughters do the same, until a single bacterium becomes millions, then billions, gobbling up the world. Of course, this has never happened, because exponential growth, in nature, always comes up against obstacles—lack of food, predation, disease. “Exponentials can’t go on forever,” Sagan explains. With this, he evokes the inherent capacity, shared by all living systems, to correct themselves. Sagan is referring to ecological stability—the capacity of a system to return to a state of equilibrium after an upheaval. But in the face of a technological exponential curve, upheaval never ends. There will be no time for bouncing back, no place to which we can return. And so our institutions, which have been so long been defined by their stability, will need to borrow a different concept from ecology: resilience.

    According to the ecologist C.S. Holling, whose definition of resilience was fundamental to the systems ecology discourse of the 1970s, the constancy of a system’s behavior—its stability—is less important than the persistence of its relationships. A system may change beyond recognition, but if its internal relationships remain intact, it persists. In the sea, fish populations wax and wane; in the forests, lichen grow and fall dormant with the seasons. Some years, there are more mice; other years, owls. Resilience is not about maintaining an image, but a pattern. With this understanding, we should prioritize flexibility over equilibrium, and variability over consistency. Sameness leads to extinction. ​
     
  4. abu Hasan

    abu Hasan Administrator

  5. AbdalQadir

    AbdalQadir time to move along! will check pm's.

    Interestingly, many of the smart watch functions, GPS navigational systems, google glasses and such stuff we see now, were envisioned in Bond and other movies in the 60s and so on.
     
    Riasath Ali Asrar likes this.
  6. abu Hasan

    abu Hasan Administrator

    dr. moreau would be proud.
     
    Riasath Ali Asrar likes this.
  7. Shadman

    Shadman Active Member

    We might not even see a second transplant.
     
  8. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    On Monstrosities in Science

    To take a biotechnological example that is in some respects analogous to Ai Hasegawa’s dolphin-baby project, consider the possibility of growing human organs in pigs or other animals. There is something monstrous about human-pig chimeras — creating them violates taboos relating to bodily integrity and the immiscibility of species — but there is something very useful about having a ready supply of kidneys or pancreases, and so human-pig chimeras are a logical extension of Baconian (forgive the pun) science’s effort to relieve man’s estate and all that. Whether human-pig chimeras or any other useful but monstrous innovations of Baconian science are ethically acceptable is just the sort of question that deserves serious attention.​

    In the world of transplants, that's where we are headed next.

    Scholars might soon be faced with questions on chimeric organs - that is level 3/4 (as per mufti qasim's explanation) rolled into one ..
     
  9. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    well, I meant it in the sense that people are creating a fuss over something that's in the distant future. And I feel we need more data before committing.

    Why haven't people talked about chimeras yet? Probably because it didn't create enough ripples on social media to get them interested.

    Frankly, I hope human organ transplants get stopped because that is the surest way to stop trafficking. People can trade genetically modified pigs till their pockets burst and no harm done.

    I agree. We have rulings even on human half-breeds.

    So though we will rule it impermissible for Muslim doctors to create chimeras, we already have a ruling for what to do if you bump into a part-human-part-dog creature (escaped from a lab, probably while it's keeper was having a kip) on your way to the masjid: if it's not dry - you take a shower. and don't forget to report to the nearest animal advocacy group.

    true. but IF the principle demands reasonable certainty - then we have to wait. I don't know if everyone agrees to that pre-condition.

    indeed. and that was my question as well. isn't it too early?

    ha ha. nice one.

    again - those who added that condition surely meant "reasonable certainty" - what happens 'aadatan?

    --
    anyway, we can continue this discussion after a few hundred successful transplants.

    wa's salaam
     
  10. AbdalQadir

    AbdalQadir time to move along! will check pm's.

    I believe that's known to the questioners as well as muftis as well as anyone living in the real world.

    Because things are progressing at rapid rates in our times we can barely play catch up. The metaverse or some chips implanted in the body for example are technologies that are already being worked on.

    Even for the starvation example given in older books of fiqh, how many situations can you imagine where a person starving to death can only find pig meat to save his life. Yet the ruling exists. Granted, the verse alludes to it, but then that is proof that we are encouraged to do ijtihad for all types of situations.

    While historically the kuffar don't even have any qawaid or zawabit on elementary cleanliness, our fuqahaa have issued rulings for a plethora of what-if situations based on sound usul from Quran and Sunnah.

    The practical side of the issue will evolve both scientifically as well as in fiqh.

    There is only one certainty in life sciences - death.

    Everything else is zann, be it ghalib or iqbal.

    Something as simple as paracetamol or amoxycillin can cause adverse reactions in some people. I know people like that. Back in the day, diabetics faced life threatening reactions if they used the one type of insulin, which incidentally was life saving for some other people and vice versa.

    This pig transplant thing might as well work on kafirs who have been consuming pig meat for ages and might as well be rejected by a Muslim's body. Who knows!
     
  11. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    First pig-to-human heart transplant: what can scientists learn?

    He and his team will monitor Bennett’s immune responses and the performance of his heart. They will continue working towards controlled clinical trials.

    If Bennett’s procedure proves successful and more teams try similar surgery, regulators and ethicists will need to define what makes a person eligible for a pig organ,...Waiting a long time for an organ isn’t enough to justify the highly experimental and possibly risky procedure, he says. That’s especially true with other organs, such as kidneys; most people waiting for kidney transplants can be put on dialysis.

    Chapman likens the process to the use of experimental cancer drugs that are too dangerous to test in people with other options. Regulators and ethicists will need to decide what chance of success outweighs the risk of making a person wait for a human organ, he says.

    Although the combination seems to have worked, it’s unclear how many of the modifications are necessary. “There’s a lot more science needed in assessing each genetic modification,” says Sykes, who adds that “we need that information” because the modifications also have the potential to be harmful in people.

    Furthermore, researchers need to be able to study the pig heart’s physiology — whether it will beat at the same rate as a human heart, for instance — and whether ill people will react to the transplant in the same way as healthy baboons.

    So, it's a rare event with no chance of immediate mass adoption. The cost itself rules out most of the people.
    Why do people rush to seek fatwa for anything that happens anywhere - as if it's gonna rain pig hearts tomorrow!

    While it's nice to know the theoretical details, the practical side of the question should be patient for further data.

    wa Allahu a'alam
     
  12. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    ji
    but I am merely pointing out that the group which permits benefitting from haram asli - only on the condition of certainty of the benefit (i.e. life will definitely be saved) will not agree to allowing this transplant for everyone - because the certainty is too difficult to claim at this early stage.

    A man dying of hunger will definitely survive if he eats a small portion of pork or even blood maybe.

    Towards the end of that video mufti sab is responding to a group of people who demand certainty, and he says that certainty exists. I am asking is one case enough to provide certainty?

    We appreciate the tremendous courage of this live recipient, who has made an extraordinary decision to participate in this groundbreaking procedure to not only potentially extend his own life, but also for the future benefit of others.

    As the wording shows - everyone is waiting and watching.

    The infant, born with a fatal heart condition, received a baboon heart transplant and died within a month of the procedure due to the immune system's rejection of the foreign heart.

    If certainty is a pre-condition, then is it met, speaking today?

    disclaimer: This was just a casual observation on my part. I am not trying to refute any mufti. I don't know anything about the fiqh of organ donation/transplants - I am merely going by mufti sab's own words.
     
  13. Khanah

    Khanah Veteran

    Yeah but his body could still reject this I suppose, it's only been a few days. And one successful case doesn't mean overwhelming probability or certainty that this would work with most people.

    However, the muftis are clearly basing their ruling on IF it's proven to work, the doctors are advising you to do it, etc. Fair play to them for coming out and providing the fatwa early too, good that we aren't lagging behind like we do on some modern issues.

    Lots of interesting rulings will need to be provided in the coming decades such as permissibility (or lack of) of lab grown meat, etc. We need well trained individuals ready to deliver when called upon.
     
  14. Aqdas

    Aqdas Staff Member

  15. AbdalQadir

    AbdalQadir time to move along! will check pm's.

    Is he a disciple of that plumber mirza?
     
    Abdullah Ahmed likes this.
  16. Shadman

    Shadman Active Member

    He's a lunatic. He makes takfir of all Barelwis for not believing in pre-destination(obvious slander which I don't know where he is getting it from)
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2022
  17. AbdalQadir

    AbdalQadir time to move along! will check pm's.

    If he's really so confident, let him issue the same statement against Al-Azhar - in Arabic.

    Besides, i thought the two muftis just mentioned it as a matter of principle and a conditional statement, that IF no other option to survive exists...

    I don't think anyone of them took this one operation as a benchmark for future success and therefore ghalib zann or yaqeen.

    Who is this Haroon Sultan anyway? Didn't he also say that Muneebur Rehman needs to do public tawba and tajdeede iman and nikah for hand sanitizers? Is he a fellow Barelwi or tafzili or what?
     
    Last edited: Jan 27, 2022
  18. Unbeknown

    Unbeknown Senior Moderator

    sorry but this is stating the same thing firstly, secondly and thirdly - in slightly different words.

    besides, is there anyone left who doesn't have to do public tawbah?

    I guess, all public scholars/students should create a cron job that runs every 59 minutes and posts a message to twitter, facebook, insta, tiktok, whatsapp:

    "I do public tawbah for anything that I might have said in the past hour. Thank you."
     
  19. Shadman

    Shadman Active Member

    So if no options left, Haroon Sultan prefers we die?
     
  20. Aqdas

    Aqdas Staff Member

    Haroon Sultan said:

    Mufti Qasim Zia in the matter of transplantation with a pig heart is plainly wrong and he must take back his faulty fatwa and make public tawba.

    Firstly he has not understood the difference between yaqeen and zann, in the case of yaqeen it would be allowed not in the case of zann.

    Secondly, tajriba grants zann, not yaqeen and as we have said zann does not permit taking a transplant of a pig heart.

    Thirdly he is taking a single transplant as being successful and something what can be accepted as tajriba; a single operation cannot not be taken as tajriba what grants zann, far from it that it that grant yaqeen.

    #HaroonSultan
     

Share This Page