And then the next step is to do research showing that pigs that are happy, stress free, and eat a good diet produce organs that are better for transplant. If so, this might be one of the most ethical animal industries.
Oh we can, there was this guy in Germany that failed art school, he had a couple mates, they figured that with good genes, training and education they could...
You see where this is going, right? Oh, what you describe actually might fit the book Brave New World as well.
Anyway yeah I know what you mean, this is why things like education, well-paying low-stress jobs, housing, health care, access to food are so important. They encourage an overall healthy and happy population without imposing on them.
But the US is a bit of a shithole in that regard; low paying jobs, food deserts, financial worries, crippling debts to pay for a lifestyle that people can't afford but need, etc. The country and its policies are self-destructive, and, dare I say it, a kind of economic eugenics - if you're too poor to afford health care you'll be removed from the gene pool.
Yes, a slippery-slope argument that all gene manipulation leads to eugenics.
Here's the counterpoint: The Nazis (and eugenicists / race-scientists in general) used the authority of science, but didn't actually do good science (and slipped in a lot of stuff that was pure ideology); so actual science is automatically different.
Ah, but the human is more economically productive than the pig, particularly when taken as a cohort, and healthcare and happiness are expensive - and there is therefore a point of diminishing returns for increased happiness and health.
It makes more sense to allow a certain portion of your population to die of preventable causes than to make them all happy, as the current net goal is economic productivity, not human happiness. This is demonstrated aptly by the lack of socialised healthcare in much of the world, and where it does exist, the relative paucity of resources provided.
So, while I agree in spirit with what you posit, capitalism and the value axis it brings has to die first.
If we're genetically modifying the pigs to be more like humans, I wonder if there would be health risks with eating the meat - specifically from prions. Similar to those that come from eating humans. Admittedly probably negligible until we modify them a heck of a lot more than we are right now (if they do theoretically exist).
Prions don't appear from thin air - and you can already get deadly prions eating meat, the reason why you don't is the same why you don't get all kinds of deadly diseases from meat - it's (usually) well regulated and any outbreaks are immediately culled. A pig genetically modified to be "more like a human" wouldn't spontaniously get deadly prions.
Apparently they have recently granted permission for these (type of) pigs to be sold for meat so those who suffer with alpha-gal syndrome (and are thus allergic to regular meat) can eat it. So I’m guessing by not.
I think the ones approved for consumption don't have the full set of genetic modifications used for this transplant, they just have the alpha-gal change.
Pigs are already similar enough to humans that there are major risks from parasites; I don't think the small modifications we've seen so far would significantly increase prion risk.