Now that it's possible to grow a beating human heart in a laboratory jar, would it be unethical to "kill" it or let it die?

A human heart is an organ not a life. That’s like saying a car engine is a car.

The heart is neither the repository of information nor the seat of emotions. It has no brain activity, no neuronal activity. Ergo, it is not a human being.

I agree with the first two answers. If we grew a spleen, there would be no moral problem disposing of it.

No.

If it was a brain, that would be another story entirely.

Notwithstanding every love song every written about it, it’s a pump, period.

No sentience or potential sentience, just meat.

@Austinlad: Don’t go breaking my pump, there darlin’!

@Austinlad, haha, nicely put.

Yeah, it’s just plumbing.

We actually have two brains. One surrounds our heart. It is the first organ to form after the heart and remains in place throughout our entire lives. It is connected to our head brain.

After extensive research, one of the early pioneers in neurocardiology, Dr. J. Andrew Armour, introduced the concept of a functional heart brain in 1991. His work revealed that the heart has a complex intrinsic nervous system that is sufficiently sophisticated to qualify as a little brain in its own right. The heart’s brain is an intricate network of several types of neurons, neurotransmitters, proteins and support cells like those found in the brain proper. Its elaborate circuitry enables it to act independently of the cranial brain – to learn, remember, and even feel and sense.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies

That’s really fascinating…thanks so much – that made me happy for Fluther. :-)

On a general note, I never thought about this issue. My first instinct was that, because this is an organism that could not survive outside it’s laboratory environment, there is no ethical issue because there should be independent life in order for ethical concerns to attach.

However, how complex does the organism have to be before it does become unethical to kill it – what if taking this to the extreme we can grow entire people but make them completely dependent on the lab environment for life such that they could never have been produced in nature?

I feel like this is complicated, however, by the issue that because the heart is dependent on science for life, unless it is placed in an animal host it will have to die when the science is cut off. What if it could be kept alive indefinitely in the lab (no tissue degradation)? It would have to be “killed” eventually in that case – putting it in a person (unless also immortal) would be sentencing it to death oddly.

I strongly disagree with the analogy with sentience. We always get into the issue of defining sentience (mice? dogs? bacteria?). Too many issues if we get it wrong – I think we should stick to living here.

Finally – we are JUST addressing ethical issues at this point, correct? We are not collapsing ethics and morals here…are we?

In light of @RealEyesRealizeRealLies statement and link, I wonder if the isolated heart-in-a-jar developed the same neuro functions without a brain’s intervention…

As I understand it, the heart brain is the first brain to form. It is a membrane surrounding the heart, and all other organs form afterward.

It brings a new found relevance to old statements about heart ache, and out of the mouth speaks the heart.

I don’t have the links presently, but I remember that some people are actually debating whether this heart brain forms before, after, or right alongside the heart. It’s new and exciting science to say the least. My personal belief, as a currently unsupported hypothesis, is that the heart brain actually controls our ncRNA, which has also been linked to controlling our speech centers in our head brain. The implications are profound, for it means that our ncRNA (not the head brain) is actually controlling our speech.

In the beginning was the Word. And the Word became flesh.

@RealEyesRealizeRealLies – in an indirect manner?

How do you mean?