A random thought

There is a severe shortage of human organs available for transplantation as highlighted by the recent stories of young Sarah Murnaghan. Scientists have taken two different approaches in an attempt to generate more organs suitable for transplantation. Briefly, one involves modifying pigs so their organs can be directly transplanted and the other involves growing organs from scratch by seeding a scaffold with human stem cells.

I wonder if anyone has considered using the in situ pig organ(s) themselves as a scaffold to first generate a chimerical human/pig organ and selective kill the pig cells of the target organ over time to make a completely human organ? Obviously, the pig would need major modifications to its immune system but the advantages of an in situ bioreactor over an artificial one are enormous.

What is money?

The dictionary definition of money is ‘a medium of exchange’ with the occasional qualifier ‘in the form of coins and banknotes’ but that doesn’t mean much beyond ‘it's what you take to the store and exchange for stuff you want.’ The definition doesn’t make money a fundamentally more understandable concept.

Opposite of spending, money is earned through work (also known as labor). From this vantage, money is a form of stored labor. There are other ways to store labor: the widgets produced by labor such as automobiles, toys, clothing, food… any product which involves the input of labor. But these items can be difficult to transport and store and depreciates (or degrades) at variable rates. So the advantages of being paid in money over widgets are obvious. To restate: labor = widgets = money.

A better definition of money: medium of exchange of labor.