Winston Churchill once said, ”I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us like equals.”

I didn’t know Churchill could see so well into the future.

Need an organ transplant? A new heart? Maybe a liver? Kidneys? Perhaps a lung or two? Have you been on a waiting list and just can’t buy any more time? Do you like bacon? Pork chops? Throwing the old pigskin around?

No worries. Just buy a hog. But not any hog. A genetically modified one that can provide compatible organs for you and your loved ones.

Research company Revivicor announced this week they are on the brink of being able to provide pig organs grown on farms for human transplants. They envisage commercial farms spread throughout the land that will breed these modified pig clones. 

The experiments offer real hope for those in need of organs for transplantation, around 100,000 Americans. Some statistics say 17 people die a day because they can’t locate an organ match. Never mind how in the world they plan to pay for it. That’s another story.

But the research is also stirring concerns about using farm animals for their organs and the chance of spreading animal viruses to people.

Some call it exciting. Groundbreaking. Real medical progress.

Others gasp in horror at the thought. It’s brave new world where, instead of smelly livestock farms raising poultry to satisfy the human taste for chicken, they raise them in clean well-lit play pens with access to better health care than your average American human has.

The research company took the first journalist through one of their farms that’s been operating for 20 years in Virginia last week. As the reporter held a tiny piglet clone in his hands, he marveled at how smart and individualistic their personalities were.

He noted how the pigs are purposely bred to be heavily muscled, solid and soft at the same time, maybe like a pork chop or a good hot dog. 

If one has ethical problems with eating meat, pork and others, you’re probably going to have a problem with raising animals to grow a second liver for your alcoholic uncle Hank, and probably even a nice new heart for mean old granny Mildred.

But if you like pork barbeque, you are what you eat. What’s the big difference in growing them to eat or growing them for spare parts?

It does bring up the looming possibility of cloned humans. Where are these boundary lines, these “bioethics” as they are called? The company is currently busy collecting data to get the modified pig organs approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Then let the clone farms begin.

Meanwhile in Alabama, legislators have said frozen human embryos are children and deserve all the rights a fully out-of-the-womb child has.

Welcome to America in 2024. Pig organs for people and playgrounds for frozen embryos. It’s an election year, right?

Standard reporter JL Jacobs can be contacted at jjacobs@southernstandard.com