[HN Gopher] Kangaroo tendons could rebuild human knees better, s...
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Kangaroo tendons could rebuild human knees better, stronger
Author : geox
Score : 147 points
Date : 2023-07-19 12:07 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (lighthouse.mq.edu.au)
(TXT) w3m dump (lighthouse.mq.edu.au)
| xwdv wrote:
| Don't know why people have objections to this, we already use
| bovine and pig valves in hearts, saves lives, improves health. I
| am comforted by the fact that if I ever need to rebuild a knee
| someday in the future, kangaroo tendons may be an option, so I
| can stay off the bench and stay on the basketball court.
| FpUser wrote:
| >"undisclosed" materials for compatibility"
|
| Should not it invalidate the patent?
| reocha wrote:
| This is very cyberpunk.
| makeitrain wrote:
| Question: Would my new kangaroo enhanced legs disqualify me from
| the Tour de France?
| jaggederest wrote:
| Interesting related article I think I saw here a while ago:
|
| Healing of acute anterior cruciate ligament rupture on MRI and
| outcomes following non-surgical management with the Cross Bracing
| Protocol
|
| https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/early/2023/06/13/bjsports-2023-...
|
| TL;DR they braced the knee at 90 degrees flexed and saw evidence
| of some healing in 90% of enrolled patients after 3 months
| taneq wrote:
| This seems to be saying that a completely torn ACL will
| actually reconnect if the knee is kept immobilized? I did my
| ACL and in the MRI it was just _gone_ aside from a fuzzy puddle
| on top of my tibia, it 'd be incredible if that could regrow.
|
| > knee immobilisation at 90deg flexion in brace for 4 weeks,
| followed by progressive increases in range-of-motion until
| brace removal at 12 weeks
|
| Compared with an ACL reconstruction with Gracilis tendon graft
| (the procedure I had), I wonder if complete immobilization for
| four weeks might do more damage than just having the surgery. I
| was limping but still loading up the leg as much as possible
| for four weeks after the accident and then off it for a week
| after surgery, and the muscle loss and general degredation was
| severe. It took months of physio and most of a year of exercise
| to rebuild back to ~95%. Taking 2-3 months to get weight back
| on it sounds light it could be worse overall.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| If it grows back "correctly", that's still way better than
| surgery, since who knows if they "get it right".
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Is "rupture" a full tear? The "common knowledge" is that
| "ligament full tears can't heal". In fact, 10 years ago, people
| were told that partial tears can't heal either, and you might
| as well not bother.
| trogdor wrote:
| >Is "rupture" a full year?
|
| Yes. Complete discontinuity of ACL fibers on MRI.
| pr0zac wrote:
| Isn't this common treatment already? Don't actually know, just
| remember my stepmom and everyone else I've known that had knee
| surgery getting a cool knee scooter thing to roll around on for
| the months long recovery period.
| jaggederest wrote:
| No, this is _instead of_ surgery, as far as I can tell just
| splinting it bent at 90 degrees to allow it to heal.
| swader999 wrote:
| My wife healed her fully severed mcl without surgery. It's
| difficult but possible. You have to be really disciplined and
| follow the protocol.
| jaggederest wrote:
| From what I gathered from the article abstract I posted
| above, this is unique because it's a protocol for healing a
| fully severed ACL, where the MCL heals much more readily
| than the ACL apparently for reasons of blood supply and
| positioning.
|
| I love it when doctors can use conservative treatment to
| avoid the need for surgery though, very exciting when a
| natural process can do the work.
|
| If you have any anecdotal discussion from your wife's
| experience I'd be interested to hear more about it - I
| haven't banged up my knees yet but it's just a matter of
| time, already down some functionality in an ankle.
| swader999 wrote:
| Yes, although if you have a few million and access to a
| daily MRI you can even heal a PCL this way. See the
| Connor McDavid documentary "Whatever it Takes".
|
| For my wife, it was strict bracing at specified angles
| with forced stretching to retear the tendon at periodic
| intervals as it healed. She was on advil and a cryo cuff
| immediately after injury which really helped. I'd
| recommend having a cryo cuff on hand or a plan to quickly
| get one if knee injuries are likely in your future.
|
| Look into red light therapy for ankle, for example:
| https://a.co/d/7CPLFkl
| steve76 wrote:
| [dead]
| 5555624 wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36594634
| TOMDM wrote:
| One assumption this skips over is that it's okay to put athletes
| on the field with ligaments 6 times stronger than human baseline.
|
| Of course this is a phenomenal treatment assuming it works as
| planned, but isn't there a performance enhancement angle that
| needs to be considered for it's inclusion in professional sports?
| swarnie wrote:
| The Enhanced Games will be stoked for this.
| chongli wrote:
| Like the old SNL sketch: The All-Drug Olympics!
| williamdclt wrote:
| I'm okay with dealing with this problem when it comes, I
| definitely do not consider it a good reason to slow down
| medical progress. I'd rather sport adapts to medical progress,
| not the other way around!
| kingkongjaffa wrote:
| I for one welcome tendons of a kangaroo, teeth of a beaver,
| arms of a gorilla.
|
| viva la meta-human!
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Good luck getting dates!
| hef19898 wrote:
| I don't think so, the tendons make the knee potentially more
| stable, the performance so comes from the muscles. And it
| requires surgery, usually that kind of surgery is hard on the
| body, and requires extensive physio therapy and training
| afterwards.
|
| So, the kangaroo tendons are potentially better than
| traditional implants, the question you pose so is whether or
| not they are better than the original, human ones. And I
| somehow doubt that, but I am just a semi-engineer with a
| ruptured, but still working, knee and not a physician.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| This surgery has a very long recovery time. The ligaments are
| just part of the story, the bigger risk is the cartilage in
| the joint - if it tears, good luck, we have nothing to fix
| it. Expensive stem cell therapy maybe kind of works. CPM
| (continuous passive motion) sort of works over years, and
| then there are the cripple-you-for-life titanium joint
| replacements surgeries.
|
| In short, this is far, far from being a concern, as cartilage
| will fail even if the ligament can take it. Similar issue as
| steroid-user muscle growth outpacing tendonds.
|
| Medicine can't repair anything. I will repeat this for the
| 1000th time, if you think we have tech realize that we -
| can't fix an artery, re-attach a nail to the nail bed, fix
| some crystals on teeth (enamel), regrow hair, etc, let alone
| re-attach a nerve (though we do bypasses now). Basically,
| people way overestimate the reality of what they can do when
| they hear 3d organ printing myths.
| pmontra wrote:
| I wonder if human muscles can pull those stronger tendons as
| they should to walk and run normally. Probably the surgeons
| can weaken them a bit before the implant.
| [deleted]
| TOMDM wrote:
| That's my thinking too, but I am left wondering if athletes
| with this implant will be able to pull riskier corners
| knowing that their knees are unlikely to give this time.
|
| I look forward to finding out either way
| matwood wrote:
| > One assumption this skips over is that it's okay to put
| athletes on the field with ligaments 6 times stronger than
| human baseline.
|
| I would love this, if only so I have less chance of going
| through a fix again. I received a patellagraph to fix a torn
| ACL, and the rehab is what makes it such a PITA. It took 9ish
| months to be cleared for sports again, and I didn't feel
| confident in my knee until 18 months or so.
| jpeloquin wrote:
| Across species, tendon strength is strongly correlated with
| modulus (normalized stiffness). Greater stiffness has the risk
| of reducing range of motion. When a graft is used it is
| intended/hoped that the graft will remodel over time to become
| more similar to the original tendon's properties, which match
| what the entire organ system needs to function properly. Nor
| does a stronger graft mean that the connection between the
| graft and the bone will be 6x stronger. 6x stronger might also
| be optimistic; prior work suggests more like 2x stronger and
| stiffer.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23599401/
| Brendinooo wrote:
| It becomes a problem if your post-college Tommy John requires
| you to get a kangaroo tendon to be competitive in MLB. Not sure
| how you solve that problem in a fair and repeatable way though.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Should genetic engineering on humans ever become feasible to the
| point where you can make large changes to the body plan, I wonder
| if reverting bipedalism would be easier than fixing all of the
| problems it causes (such as, I assume, knees, due to taking all
| of the load on half of the limb joints, but, also, back problems,
| etc). With human computer interaction technology advancements, we
| may eventually move beyond needing hands at all, anyway.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| Bipedalism doesn't cause problems. Sitting on your ass all day
| and then occasionally doing stuff that overstresses your now-
| weakened joints causes problems.
| tcoff91 wrote:
| This comment is peak HN. Like it's so absurd that it feels like
| it must be satire.
| adrian_b wrote:
| When predictable genetic engineering of animals will become
| possible, there will be no difficulty in growing both two hands
| and four legs, like in the mythical Centaurs.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Not necessarily. That is like saying "when predictable
| engineering of bridges becomes possible, there will be no
| difficulty in creating a floating-in-air bridge". Engineering
| challenges still exist. My point is whether going to a more
| standard body plan is an easier engineering problem than
| fixing the design flaws in the nonstandard human one.
| adrian_b wrote:
| Your counterexample is not valid. There are reasons why a
| "floating bridge" would not be easy to make, but the fact
| that all the vertebrates with jaws that exist today have no
| more than four paired limbs is just a historical accident
| and only small changes in their body plan would be
| necessary to make one with six paired limbs or even with
| much more.
|
| In some vertebrates, i.e. amphibians, it is very easy to
| generate supernumerary limbs without any genetic
| engineering, but just by manipulating the embryos.
|
| Due to defects in the development of the embryo, birds or
| mammals and even humans are sometimes born with polymelia,
| i.e. with extra legs, and some of them succeed to have a
| relatively normal life.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymelia
|
| The purpose of predictable genetic engineering would be to
| ensure the development of a body precisely into a form
| optimized for a certain purpose. Obtaining random monstrous
| forms is easy even today, by using various mutagen agents
| and/or embryo manipulations.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| The problem isn't generating something with a certain
| body plan, I agree that is easy. The problem is achieving
| a design without common or significant mechanical
| problems over the lifespan of the organism. Can we assert
| that, in your example, animals with extra limbs don't
| have problems on par with the back or knee problems of
| bipeds? I don't think we can?
| adrian_b wrote:
| It is very unlikely that predictable genetic engineering
| for animals will become possible earlier than twenty
| years from now and a time between 50 years and 100 years
| from now seems most likely.
|
| We are still very far from completely understanding how a
| single nucleated (eukaryotic) cell works. After
| understanding a cell we should first be able to
| completely understand simpler multi-cellular living
| beings like fungi and plants. The animals are the most
| complex and there is no doubt that they will be the last
| for which it will become possible to change some genes
| and then predict with certainty what kind of animal will
| develop from such a modified cell.
|
| In any case, when that will happen it will be possible to
| design the body of an animal, within certain constraints,
| like we design now any complex machine. Bad designs will
| always remain possible, but good designs should easy
| avoid mechanical problems in the legs. By that time the
| simulation possibilities should be much better than
| today.
| rco8786 wrote:
| What if the "bionic man" from SciFi is not robots and
| nanomaterials but actually just us borrowing things from nature
| that happen to work better than the human version
| bryanmgreen wrote:
| A menagerie of animal-part patchwork humans sounds like a great
| time!
| mrweasel wrote:
| One has to be rather careful about the wordings of such
| announcement. I keep thinking "Dr. Nick want's to replace bits of
| my mom body with kangaroo parts.... I wonder how my dad feels
| about that?".
| merth wrote:
| jumpy?
| no_wizard wrote:
| Is it possible to farm Kangaroos for this purpose? Perhaps its
| brutal to suggest, but I imagine hunting wild Kangaroos is not
| what we want here, as their numbers are already in decline, IIRC.
|
| Can the rest of a Kangaroo be used in some productive way? I'd
| honestly feel ethically bad that we are killing Kangaroos just
| for their muscle tendon in certain areas
| mrits wrote:
| I was under the impression that Kangaroos were an overpopulated
| nuisance.
| senectus1 wrote:
| The bloody things breed like rabbits... you dont need to farm
| them.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > Can the rest of a Kangaroo be used in some productive way?
| I'd honestly feel ethically bad that we are killing Kangaroos
| just for their muscle tendon in certain areas
|
| From the article:
|
| > It was important to Dr Hartnell that no kangaroos were killed
| expressly for his research, and this has remained his practice
| throughout his investigations: all of the work has been done
| only using kangaroos that have either been culled for reasons
| of population control or harvested for meat.
|
| Kangaroo populations are fine; culling is done to keep them
| from overpopulating. Similar to deer in the US.
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jul/12/koala-ka...
| Zigurd wrote:
| Excuse me while I go to Truth Social and create a moral panic
| about trans women with superhuman knee tendons ruining college
| basketball.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Bold of you to assume someone hasn't already created that
| thread/meme.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| They claim they can prevent them from being rejected with their
| "special sauce" which they won't reveal.
|
| What else can this be other than washing away all of the cells
| and leaving behind only the scaffolding? Decellularization is
| already a thing for tendon xenografts. Maybe they have a unique
| way of doing it but that's pretty doubtful. In general this field
| is getting close to large scale use in humans as it is.
|
| Oddly, there's already a different Australian startup from
| another university doing extremely this.
| https://www.imcrc.org/blt-allegra/
| twic wrote:
| Lo and behold, the patent [1] says:
|
| > [0038] In preparing the xenograft for use, the tendon is
| surgically dissected and removed from the paratenon (tendon
| sheath). The tendon is composed mostly of an extra-cellular
| collagen matrix, which is non-immunogenic. The tendon may
| therefore require no denaturing (decellularisation) prior to
| implantation into a mammal. In some embodiments, the tendon may
| be subjected to a decellularisation process prior to
| implantation. In removing the cells from the tendon, the
| immunogenic antibodies within the cells are also removed, thus
| rendering the tendon non- immunogenic. Methods of
| decellularisation of tendon tissue are known in the art. Such
| methods include physical, chemical and enzymatic treatments,
| wherein the cells within the tendon are lysed, leaving an
| undamaged extracellular matrix having the same physical and
| biochemical properties as the natural tissue.
|
| So it is decellularisation, they aren't claiming any particular
| decellularisation method, but it's quite possible they have
| some particular recipe for decellularisation which works well,
| and which they are keeping secret.
|
| [1]
| https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2019014698A1/en?oq=20179...
| moomoo11 wrote:
| Cool but I'd rather have fully automated robotic legs that can
| let me jump like 30ft and sustain falls from 100+ ft.
| a_shovel wrote:
| <joke>I wonder, does this also make knees harder and
| faster?</joke>
| a_shovel wrote:
| Tough crowd.
| Qwertious wrote:
| The downvotes are probably due to the XML.
| omnicognate wrote:
| Kangaroo knees? Where do I sign up?
|
| And if you could replace my spine too while you're at it, that'd
| be great.
| [deleted]
| dvh wrote:
| Doesn't this increase the chance of novel diseases when they
| cross from kangaroo to human?
| cududa wrote:
| The ligament is denatured/ all cells removed which just leaves
| a scaffolding for the natural tendon to populate
| danw1979 wrote:
| If they're using decellularization to prevent rejection, does the
| tissue have to be ... freshly harvested (i.e. in a medical
| setting) ?
|
| Or would the offcuts from abattoir-killed roos be of sufficient
| quality ?
| orwin wrote:
| It seems tu be sufficient. Although maybe the abattoir have to
| really follow sanitary rules for once, that'll cut into the
| profits.
| twic wrote:
| > They have also developed a way of ensuring the kangaroo
| xenografts are not rejected after transplant. The key to this is
| what he describes as "the special sauce", and it is a closely
| guarded secret that has already been patented.
|
| PATENTS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!
|
| Anyway this appears to be it:
|
| https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2019014698A1/en?oq=20179...
| jaggederest wrote:
| I love it when people do this "patented secret" thing. Patents
| are public for very good reason - society protects ideas that
| are documented publicly so that the public knowledge is
| improved after the patent expires.
| twic wrote:
| Although there are secret patents:
| https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/the-thousands-of-
| secret...
| taneq wrote:
| Like most (all?) governments the U.S. government has a
| strict set of rules that it must follow unless it decides
| it doesn't want to.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Well sure. Because if the US govt's patent on hypersonic
| rocket propulsion (as a conjectural example) were public
| knowledge, it would be trivially simple for their rivals
| to use that information in their own programs or
| countermeasures.
|
| Surely it's evident that most nations would find an
| imperative in keeping that knowledge guarded?
|
| The govt doesn't _have_ to patent these techniques at
| all. They do so for the benefit of public enterprises (so
| contractors and military industry can benefit) and so
| that the knowledge _does_ eventually enter the public
| commercial sphere. That article itself mentions multiple
| patents that eventually had the veil lifted and /or
| expired.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| How do contractors benefit from the patent?
|
| They can "eventually" release the information whether or
| not they had a secret patent.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| they "benefit" by agreeing to play ball getting the
| (often absurdly huge) defense contract.
|
| and since the contractors are taking federal money, the
| gub'mnt reserves the rights to any of their findings;
| agree or don't get the contract.
|
| but this then gives the Gov another angle if the
| contractor deliberately or accidently releases or sells
| those secrets -- not just distributing classified
| materials, but also patent violations, and potential
| lawsuits. it's a tool to ensure compliance if/when the
| government is funding stuff they don't want released
| sparrowInHand wrote:
| And who watches the watchmakers?
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Furthermore the patent states that "Methods of
| decellularisation of tendon tissue are known in the art." which
| means he either lied in the patent, or it's not "special sauce"
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| I mean, it starts out by saying that the special sauce
| usually isn't even needed.
| benatkin wrote:
| Another case of this:
|
| > You've heard of the golden rule, haven't you? Whoever has the
| gold makes the rules.
| arijun wrote:
| Ah, yes, ahem, I definitely understood exactly what that patent
| is saying, but perhaps you could summarize it for all the other
| people who can't parse a patent immediately?
| jaggederest wrote:
| It basically confirms the theory discussed in this thread:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36785816
|
| In layman's terms, they're using achilles or tail tendon from
| certain kangaroo species that have been carefully dissected
| to retain only non-immune-reactive tissue (or
| decellularized), and sticking it in people's knees and other
| ligament sites in the body because it's strong.
| deaddodo wrote:
| Which part is difficult to understand? They use medical and
| scientific terminology, but otherwise it's pretty
| straightforward.
|
| It essentially covers the usage of macropod (kangaroo,
| specifically, of an enumerated variety) tendon and ligaments
| in a grafting procedure using "undisclosed" materials for
| compatibility. It then enumerates specific elasticity
| parameters before giving a description of the problem
| (background).
|
| Basically, exactly what the topic article summarizes into
| layman.
| ckemere wrote:
| Ironically, the whole patent appears to be about the concept
| (how is that patentable?!). The actual treatment is "known in
| the art ".
|
| Quote: "The tendon is composed mostly of an extra-cellular
| collagen matrix, which is non-immunogenic. The tendon may
| therefore require no denaturing (decellularisation) prior to
| implantation into a mammal. In some embodiments, the tendon may
| be subjected to a decellularisation process prior to
| implantation. In removing the cells from the tendon, the
| immunogenic antibodies within the cells are also removed, thus
| rendering the tendon non- immunogenic. Methods of
| decellularisation of tendon tissue are known in the art. Such
| methods include..."
| AYBABTME wrote:
| Seems like the special sauce is nothing at all but what seems
| to be well known prior art: [0038] In
| preparing the xenograft for use, the tendon is surgically
| dissected and removed from the paratenon (tendon sheath). The
| tendon is composed mostly of an extra-cellular
| collagen matrix, which is non- immunogenic. The tendon
| may therefore require no denaturing
| (decellularisation) prior to implantation into a mammal. In
| some embodiments, the tendon may be subjected to a
| decellularisation process prior to implantation. In
| removing the cells from the tendon, the immunogenic
| antibodies within the cells are also removed, thus rendering
| the tendon non- immunogenic. Methods of
| decellularisation of tendon tissue are known in the
| art. Such methods include physical, chemical and enzymatic
| treatments, wherein the cells within the tendon are lysed,
| leaving an undamaged extracellular matrix having the
| same physical and biochemical properties as the
| natural tissue.
| koheripbal wrote:
| This was tried with pig tendons about 20 years ago.
|
| I wonder what has changed.
| rcxdude wrote:
| Patents can in fact work that way in practice. Generally
| speaking the art of the patent is to describe the technique in
| as broad a way as possible as to cover any possible way to
| accomplish anything similar while avoiding as many important
| details needed to actually accomplish the goal as possible.
| That way the patent is useless for anyone who wants to solve
| the problem but very useful for you to go after anyone who
| manages to figure it out on their own.
| toss1 wrote:
| That is indeed the current practice, but it is the opposite
| of the original intent of patent concept. The idea was to
| grant a temporary monopoly in exchange to revealing the
| technique -- it was supposed to advance technology faster.
|
| The standard was (and AFAIK, still is) that the technique or
| technology must be revealed in sufficient detail that it can
| be reproduced "by a skilled practitioner in the field without
| undue experimentation".
|
| Of course, that was at a time when technological progress was
| much slower, and less transnational.
| rcxdude wrote:
| yeah, there's a pretty wide gulf between patents in
| practice and their original intent, alas.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Just in time for the WWC where there's recent news articles about
| why the women's game has so many ACL type injuries.
| pluijzer wrote:
| As someone with trouble giving up on meat this is a highly
| hypocritical comment but news like this always gives me an
| unsettling feeling in my stomach. We are sacrificing the life of
| an intelligent entity to fix the knee of another. Like I said it
| is hypocritical and I probably found a way to explain it away if
| I needed itvmyself and am happy for the people it will help but
| still, we as a species do have the tendency to put ourselves
| above others. I feel very conflicited by it.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| It's possibly the Disney effect on the culture affecting your
| subconscious.
|
| If we had happy cows as cartoon characters we might not eat as
| much beef.
| xgl5k wrote:
| I am not conflicted in the slightest. It's a "dog eat dog"
| world where every species put's its survival over others.
|
| I hunt and slaughter animals. While I do fully understand and
| appreciate the sanctity of all forms of life, I also understand
| that my actions are part of the natural order of the universe.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I'd draw a pretty big distinction between this and regular meat
| eating; you're not getting a new tendon several times a week.
|
| In this case, it's not even extra animal deaths:
|
| > It was important to Dr Hartnell that no kangaroos were killed
| expressly for his research, and this has remained his practice
| throughout his investigations: all of the work has been done
| only using kangaroos that have either been culled for reasons
| of population control or harvested for meat.
| foobarian wrote:
| TIL kangaroos are harvested for meat
| microtherion wrote:
| If you're in the US, meat selection tends toward the
| conservative. People have literally been fired for serving
| kangaroo: https://time.com/5430454/nebraska-school-cook-
| fired-kangaroo...
|
| But in some European countries, more bits of the animal are
| being eaten (beef tongue, e.g.), and more animals are being
| eaten (e.g. horses). In Switzerland, kangaroo and ostrich
| became somewhat popular when at the height of the Mad Cow
| Disease epidemic, people were reluctant to eat beef.
| reaperman wrote:
| Leather as well - kangaroo leather was rather prized in the
| motorcycle community for being more abrasion-resistant per
| thickness/weight than cow-hide leather. I think its
| popularity has somewhat fallen off but I believe it's still
| the most performant material.
| abracadaniel wrote:
| Same for whips as I recall. Niche use cases, but it's
| apparently much better than others.
| tsol wrote:
| You can buy the jerky on Amazon last I checked. This amazed
| me the first time I learned about it but apparently it's
| pretty mundane in Australia
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yeah. Very similar to venison, in both taste (lean and a
| bit gamey) and reasons for culling; too many in an area and
| no real predators other than humans.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| That sounds ironic as kangaroo's predators were predated
| ("culled") by humans.
| callalex wrote:
| Same with deer (wolf culling)
| 9991 wrote:
| We're just going to work our way down the food chain.
| pfannkuchen wrote:
| Already have, many people personally cull grass
| periodically.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Out of curiosity, what are/were kangaroo's predators?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacoleo
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thylacine too, but probably
| not for adult kangaroos.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Also dingos, crocodiles, pitons and eagles.
| Qwertious wrote:
| Also australian aborigines.
| pdabbadabba wrote:
| It's a common ingredient in dog food. If a dog is having
| some sort of allergic reaction, a vet will often recommend
| switching to kangaroo food to try to rule out a dietary
| cause. (I guess because kangaroo allergies are rare in
| dogs? At least in NA?).
| nineteen999 wrote:
| It's a common ingredient in human food here in Australia.
|
| https://www.coles.com.au/search?q=kangaroo
|
| It's pretty gamey, I don't find it unpleasant, but I
| wouldn't eat it in favour of a good beef steak.
| senectus1 wrote:
| not just, but yeah !
|
| Kangaroo meat is super lean and very tasty. needs to be
| cooked very carefully or it goes very chewy and dry.
| aziaziazi wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that quote up. Nonetheless I have the
| feeling it only respond to GP in a very short-sighted term. I
| do understand medical research should go on but don't
| mismatch research process with industrial application,
| especially when they bring ethical concerns.
| pluijzer wrote:
| That is true, I think I agree with this.
| dehrmann wrote:
| NSW is culling them because of overpopulation. At least that's
| what the kangaroo scrotum keychain the gift shop was selling
| said.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| >we as a species do have the tendency to put ourselves above
| others
|
| I mean, all species do this. Antelope don't lay down to be
| eaten by lions because it is good for the lion.
|
| It is funny that you feel like this is wrong while eating meat.
| I also eat meat and I would say it is morally much worse to
| kill a pig because I like the taste of the food and killing a
| kangaroo to provide significant quality of life improvement
| through increased mobility to those with severely damaged
| knees. I have zero issue with this being used until a better
| solution without killing a kangaroo could be developed.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I suppose this sort of grafting is a behaviour unseen in the
| natural world, whereas eating is.
|
| I admit my first thought was "are they going to at least eat
| the kangaroo?" - like that's any consolation for the animal.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Almost all of medicine (aside from the few natural/herbal
| remedies that actually work) is unseen in the natural world,
| I don't think we justify closing all the hospitals and
| medical clinics on that basis.
| xutopia wrote:
| I understand that paradox. The way I rationalize when it comes
| to food is that we wouldn't feel bad for a lion eating a
| gazelle... well we might but it would be required as lions eat
| that food. We're somewhere on that spectrum of omnivores who
| eat meat and that means eating animals.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| > we wouldn't feel bad for a lion eating a gazelle
|
| Most people probably do feel bad. Presumably you'd also feel
| bad if a lion attacked and ate a human even though it was
| just doing what you purport to be "required".
|
| Where it goes south is when people cherry pick the behavior
| of animals to justify their own actions.
| xutopia wrote:
| Say you're driving down the road and get into an accident.
| A choice in front of you is that you either hit a squirrel
| or a child.
|
| Would you feel better or worse?
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The lion doesn't really have our capacity to reason (to the
| same extent) or come up with alternatives. Lions can't make
| an Impossible Burger; we can, which changes the ethical
| calculus a bit.
| reformedveget wrote:
| That's because the lion doesn't have an abundance of
| resources that allow it care about "ethical calculus." It
| simply eats, mates, socializes, and sleeps; and it is
| satisfied with this arrangement -- never feeling the need
| for "more."
|
| In my opinion, thought that verges beyond: "how to acquire
| food," "how to acquire mate," "how to acquire friend," and
| "how to acquire sleep" is "too much," and a neuroses. Or
| maybe all of our actions are predicated on fulfilling these
| base needs? And that our civilization has created an
| environment where these needs can no longer be simply
| attained, so we come up with ever more complex ways to
| attempt attaining them.
|
| One can also make the distinction that those needs are also
| simply just "feel good" and "don't feel bad." For a lion,
| the aforementioned things are enough to "feel good." But
| for us people, the simple pleasures have become
| unattainable in any sustainable sense. So we once again try
| to find something to make us feel good. For the GP, that
| might be practicing vegetarianism; for the readers of
| Hacker News, it might be stuffing their minds full of
| information of only temporary utility.
|
| And for what? So we can feel good, and escape the bad.
| "Ethical calculus" is no different. It's simply a
| rationalization of our base needs. Though I wish the
| simpler pleasures were more readily available... I'm
| getting awfully tired of working harder and smarter to find
| outlets!
| inkcapmushroom wrote:
| Chimps kill and eat monkeys and even other chimps. Not sure
| what I should rationalize through that behavior.
| go_prodev wrote:
| If it helps to put your mind at ease, in some parts of
| Australia Kangaroos are a pest. They are culled in agricultural
| areas and this treatment prevents some of the animal from going
| to waste. They're also often roadkill as they chase headlights
| at night.
|
| Companies pay hunters around $1-$2 per kg for the kangaroo
| meat. An adult kangaroo can be upwards of 60kg (130lb). The
| meat is often used for dog food, but is extremely lean but a
| bit gamey tasting I've been told.
|
| So, hopefully this treatment doesn't cause additional death of
| the roos, but helps to make their deaths less wasteful.
| JamesBarney wrote:
| I don't I always find it crazy that society has drawn these
| weird lines where if you want some chicken tenders you can
| slaughter a billion and treat them terrible but if you want to
| push the limits of human knowledge you need 6 levels of
| oversight.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| It's a phenomenal demonstration of the human brain when a
| video of a guy being mean to a dog will win the outrage of
| Twitter while 23,000,000+ land animals are slaughtered per
| day for food in the US.
|
| What we seem to care about as a civilization is like a
| narrowly focused laser: we can only wrap our heads around the
| things small enough to fit in the tiny spotlight. Anything
| bigger and we just kinda take it for granted.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| It's not that weird. We bred dogs for millennia to read and
| express human-recognizable emotional responses. They are
| sympathetic by design. In contrast, We bred most everything
| else to be delicious. A more fun one is to look at people's
| responses to guinea pigs, which were bred for eating but
| now are seen as pets.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| That may be a satisfying explanation at first pass, but
| it breaks down quickly under scrutiny, I think.
|
| We can recognize the emotional state of pigs and cows,
| probably more than even we can with cats. Certainly more
| than we can with rodents and other pets.
|
| I also think most people wouldn't accept a video of
| someone abusing a cow, pig, or even a chicken. Let's just
| replace dog with piglet in my comment if that helps track
| the point.
|
| I'd wager most people wouldn't find footage inside a
| slaughterhouse or factory farm very palatable. But this
| happens by the hundreds of millions daily.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| Cats may not emote in human terms as well as dogs, but
| they are unusually good among the animal kingdom at
| reading human emotional expression.
| DashAnimal wrote:
| I really encourage you to try and give up meat and eggs again!
| It's not too hard -- just like any other habit to build and
| continue. And honestly I have the same mindset as you. The
| sacrifice we make to intelligent creatures for 5 minutes of
| sensory pleasure (taste/smell) makes no sense.
| stuff4ben wrote:
| But they're sooooo tasty! Other animals kill other animals,
| humans are no different.
| balloonthief wrote:
| Other animals also commit rape for pleasure, but we don't
| use that as a moral guideline for human behavior.
| legulere wrote:
| Other animals also practice cannibalism and so do humans.
| Killing other animals for food is not the same as killing
| humans, but also we humans differ from other carnivores and
| omnivores.
|
| I find meat also very tasty and eat meat. There are several
| ways to reduce impacts though: Eating less will most likely
| also have a health benefit. Game doesn't suffer it's whole
| life but only when it gets hunted.
| spicymaki wrote:
| Sure I think there is broad agreement with taste argument.
| However, I think we can agree that humans are on another
| scale with respect to animal killing. We are way past the
| survival of the fittest on the plains of the Serengeti
| here.
| ChatGTP wrote:
| We might be, but that's not by choice for many.
|
| I _hate_ factory farming and if we lived in a world with
| more wilderness and healthier oceans, I think hunting is
| a fairly humane to operate. For most wild animals they
| die horrible deaths, the most humane way to go is being
| taken by an expert marksman or archer during adulthood.
|
| I've seen a fish have it's face mauled off by squid, and
| much worse. If that fish could've been dispatched by fish
| spike in seconds as opposed to having it's face mauled
| off, I think it would've went with the spike.
| flextheruler wrote:
| What would you say to someone who's only qualm is the
| animals humane treatment?
|
| I typically only eat chicken but I just don't see an
| issue with if the chickens are humanely treated and
| killed. What else would we do with all the chickens
| besides eat them? They'd die out if we stopped eating
| them and it's not like anyone's going to put them in a
| zoo.
|
| The way I see it is we've bred these animals as livestock
| and we're responsible for them as livestock and that's
| okay. It's how we treat them as livestock that matters.
| Factory farms are one of many gross byproducts of
| industrialization that we now have to deal with like
| fossil fuels.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > They'd die out if we stopped eating them and it's not
| like anyone's going to put them in a zoo.
|
| There are feral chickens in quite a few places.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feral_chicken
|
| Tahiti's airport has a bunch of them.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I'm not sure I agree that a feral chicken has a better
| life than a domestic chicken being humanely raised for
| meat/eggs. The feral chicken probably lives in a state of
| borderline starvation and is at risk from disease and
| predators; the domestic chicken gets to walk around in a
| protected area and has a good supply of nutritious food
| and water and a place to get inside at night and when the
| weather is bad.
|
| Sure the big factory chicken farms are something else,
| but you can buy ethically sourced chickens (or raise them
| yourself if you have the space) if that bothers you.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| I mean, we're getting into Star Trek episode
| ethical/moral dilemmas; is it better to live in a gilded
| cage, or be free but at risk of poverty? No right answer
| to this.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| Well, the decision isn't between having feral chickens
| vs. caging them.
|
| Domesticated chickens are bred into existence. We could
| just stop doing that if we had ethical problems with it.
| The consideration doesn't hinge on whether there exists
| some wild variant of the animal we're breeding.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| My note about feral chickens was to contest the stated
| idea upthread that the species would die out if we
| stopped intentionally breeding them.
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| True, my comment was really for them: What's wrong with
| stopping the breeding of a species, especially one we
| bred to exploit.
| digging wrote:
| > I typically only eat chicken but I just don't see an
| issue with if the chickens are humanely treated and
| killed.
|
| If that's your only concern, and not environmental
| destruction, then that's fine - if you're ensuring that
| the chickens you eat are humanely treated and humanely
| killed. The best way to do that is to buy from local
| farms you can visit - otherwise it's just aspirational
| and in effect identical to someone who doesn't care at
| all.
|
| > The way I see it is we've bred these animals as
| livestock and we're responsible for them as livestock and
| that's okay.
|
| But we can stop mass producing them. There don't need to
| be 30 billion of them. Scale is what makes factory
| farming such a catastrophe (environmentally, ethically,
| and for our own health).
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| > What would you say to someone who's only qualm is the
| animals humane treatment?
|
| The typical response to this would be a game of Name The
| Trait.
|
| For example, what would be wrong about farming humans as
| long as we treat them humanely?
|
| Or more generally, what's true of animals that if made
| true of humans would make it okay to farm humans? And
| then when you come up with a symmetry breaker, we apply
| it to humans and see if you're okay with the reductio. If
| so, you bite the bullet on a crazy human atrocity, and if
| not, then it's not the trait that actually matters to
| you.
| somenameforme wrote:
| There's a philosophical problem you run into here. A man
| who has no hair is obviously bald, and so is a man with
| exactly 1 hair. But how many hairs does it take for this
| man to suddenly no longer be bald? Not only is there no
| "real" answer; the practical answers will vary in
| subjective and inconsistent ways from person to person.
| It's an abstract and largely subjective value judgement.
| And I think the same is true here. There's no single
| binary value where something goes from A to B.
|
| Take mosquitoes. Even in areas where mosquitoes rarely if
| ever carry diseases, people are perfectly cool with
| widescale genocide. Why? Because half of those animals
| can, on occasion, give us a little itchy that's mildly
| inconvenient for a few moments. Roaches are another
| example. In their case, their life itself is often worth
| less than our mild annoyance or discomfort at seeing
| them. And so on. In practice, most people are perfectly
| fine with killing the overwhelming majority of species of
| animals.
|
| And so too here. I simply do not see any problem with
| killing a e.g. chicken for food. Oddly enough I have a
| _strong_ suspicion that the more one is around animals,
| the more this becomes true. Which is paradoxical, because
| contrary to what you might think, even chickens can be
| awesome little affectionate critters. It 's probably
| because you see the cycle of life itself more regularly.
| Foxes are cute, clever, and awesome critters - until one
| makes its way into your chicken coop, kills every hen,
| and takes exactly 1 away. At the same time, that's just
| the nature of life. It's all as natural and normal as the
| fact that you and I too will be wormfood soon enough.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| That's trivially solved with shared culture. Simply by
| both being human, we share a level of shared experience
| that would make me uncomfortable eating you. To a lesser
| extent, we have a shared experience with our domesticated
| pets, which is why we find it repugnant to eat them, but
| unlike with Grandma it's okay to give them the Old
| Yeller' treatment when need be.
|
| Most edge cases you could come up with are covered by "it
| wouldn't necessarily be unethical to eat them, but we
| have a universal taboo because edge cases are so absurd
| and rare."
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| You're putting forth multiple traits, btw, but I don't
| think it's as trivial as you think it is.
|
| One trait seems to be "shared culture" whatever that
| means. What about humans with cultures we don't share?
| What about humans with downright alien cultures we can
| hardly understand nor agree with? What does "shared
| experience" with a dog mean? What about brain-dead humans
| that we don't share an experience with?
|
| Another trait seems to be "being a human". What about
| Santa's elves or any hypothetical sentient being that's
| not a human? Does any alien race that discovers us have
| the ethical justification to farm us?
|
| > it wouldn't necessarily be unethical to eat them, but
| we have a universal taboo because edge cases are so
| absurd and rare.
|
| Would it be okay to farm or enslave humans if we simply
| didn't have that taboo? Or in a hypothetical world where
| it wasn't taboo: would it be okay then?
|
| These aren't edge cases btw, these are reductios that
| test for position's consistency and dispel the sort of
| "I'll know it when I see it" hand-waving we like to do.
|
| Any coherent position has a coherent answer to
| hypotheticals.
|
| There is a trivial answer that does nip it easily in the
| bud: we agree to value sentience thus we stop farming
| sentient beings whether they're human, cows, or Santa's
| elves.
|
| Finally, I was just offering a potential response to your
| question. HN is a poor place for this kind of discussion,
| but I hope you at least see that there is conversational
| meat on the bone, pun not intended.
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The less "like us" they are, they more justified we are
| in killing them. "Like us" is tied around shared culture
| and experience. If you asked me to choose between saving
| the life of an elf and the life of a human being, I'd
| choose the human damn near every time (barring cases
| where the human deserves death regardless of the
| dilemma).
|
| "Shared experience" in this case is a basic history of
| doing stuff together, or in a sympathetically similar
| way. Dogs have been shaped to serve side-by-side with
| humans as companions, sharing in our experiences. So
| eating them is wrong. There are no humans that are less
| like us than than the animals we eat. Brain-dead humans
| are an example of just following taboo: We don't kill and
| eat other humans, because of the whole "we are more alike
| than we are different" thing, and incidentally extend the
| same courtesy to things that take complex explanations
| for not being us.
|
| If we ran into other conscious, sapient species, we'd
| probably be hesitant about killing them due to the shared
| experience of sentience making them a lot more like us
| than a cow. But on the other hand, killing an alien would
| be a hell of a lot more permissible than killing a human.
|
| And I apply the same kind of logic to people. My friends
| and family are significantly more valuable than random
| strangers. In a trolley scenario with one of my friends
| on one track and 3 strangers on another, I'd save my
| friend, every time, and I wouldn't trust anybody who
| would answer otherwise.
| psychlops wrote:
| Using animal behavior as a blueprint to justify human
| behavior won't end well.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's possible to get adequate nutrition with a vegan diet but
| it's a lot of effort (at least until it becomes habit) and
| for children it's particularly risky. People are omnivores
| and meat provides a lot of the nutrition we need. I don't
| think anyone should feel guilty about eating meat per-se,
| though the conditions and treatment of animals in some
| farming operations are valid concerns.
| civilitty wrote:
| _> the conditions and treatment of animals in some farming
| operations are valid concerns_
|
| Anyone who has the room for a chest freezer in their garage
| and can afford it can go to a local farm and buy a whole
| (or half or quarter) cow, lamb, or pig and have them
| slaughtered and deep frozen.
|
| Depending on their locality, there are usually plenty of
| such farms that usually treat their animals much better
| than the farms supplying super markets. Makes it much
| easier to inspect their farm in person too.
| slashdev wrote:
| Kangaroos don't have many natural predators anymore. Even if
| you don't harvest them for meat, you'd have to cull them to
| prevent them overpopulating and destroying their environment.
|
| The article mentions that the kangaroos harvested for meat are
| sufficient to meet the current worldwide needs for ACL
| surgeries.
|
| Sometimes killing animals is the ethical thing to do. Reality
| is complex.
| dehrmann wrote:
| What makes the kangaroo problem even worse is they're
| grazers, and maybe it's just a former British colony thing,
| but people like to plant grass.
| cyrnel wrote:
| > you'd have to cull them to prevent them overpopulating and
| destroying their environment.
|
| We don't do this for cats, why should we have to do it for
| kangaroos? Trap Neuter Release exists. There have been
| struggles with implementing it, but it seems largely to do
| with lack of awareness and funding.
| slashdev wrote:
| Cats are predators, that's very different from say deer or
| kangaroo populations, which tend to overboom and then
| starve after they strip the environment of the plants they
| eat.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| AFAICT, no one around here culls or traps cats, but we
| don't have a cat overpopulation problem. OTOH, even with
| hunting seasons, we definitely have a deer population
| problem, and the rabbits have been going _insane_ this year
| for some reason.
|
| Perhaps it's just a case of different strategies for
| different regions.
| bpiche wrote:
| New Zealand apparently does. Never been there, seems
| lovely
|
| (edit: this opening graf is too good not to share)
|
| "Animal welfare protestors at a hunting contest in rural
| New Zealand have faced off against a group of child
| attendees, some clutching dead feral cats, who repeatedly
| chanted the word "meat" at demonstrators."
|
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jun/28/chaos-at-
| new-z...
| 1MachineElf wrote:
| A film that explores a similar theme is The Island (2005) -
| recommended!
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| How would this not result in kangaroo harvesting
| farms/extinction?
| jb12 wrote:
| hahaha if you can figure out how to farm Kangaroos, let us
| Aussies know please!
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I gather that kangaroo "leather" is also quite resilient.
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