Victimless Leather

image The Tissue Culture & Art (TC&A) Project at University of Western Australia has succeeded in creating Victimless Leather. This is a tiny leather jacket "grown out of immortalised cell lines which cultured and form a living layer of tissue supported by a biodegradable polymer matrix in a form of miniature stich-less coat like shape." It's perfect for a doll's house, or if you have a mouse that needs a leather jacket. I'm guessing this isn't a hoax, since it shouldn't be that hard to grow cells on a scaffold shaped like a jacket. But it would have been cooler if they had grown it large enough to fit a person.

Body Manipulation

Posted on Tue Nov 30, 2004



Comments

yuck. grown in a jar. i like my leather peeled from a cow, thank you very much.
Posted by bobo  on  Tue Nov 30, 2004  at  01:28 AM
May I point out that a living thing was still killed in the production of this object? you can call it victimless, but the cells were alive, too.
Posted by PlantPerson  on  Tue Nov 30, 2004  at  09:04 AM
Must ... resist ... obvious troll ...

Nope, I can't resist 😊
We are all responsible for the death of billions of cells every hour. Are they victims? It's just part of living that things die!

You should actually read the Victimless Leather statement at:
http://www.tca.uwa.edu.au/vl/vl.html

John.
Posted by John.  on  Tue Nov 30, 2004  at  12:29 PM
I think the coat-shaped thingy is still alive, actually; it's in that lab setup with nutrient solution and all.

Once they take it out of there and the cells die, then, yes, it won't be victimless.
Posted by cvirtue  on  Tue Nov 30, 2004  at  05:03 PM
I can't tell if it's real or not, but the pictures of their lab setup look pretty cool-- maybe a little too good to be true?

I have heard that some of the regions of India where cows are held sacred and never killed or harmed are big producers of leather products. All the shoes, belts, etc. are manufactured from animals that died of natural causes-- TRULY victimless leather!

I don't know how accurate that story is, but it is definitely true that India is a major exporter of leather goods.
Posted by Big Gary C  on  Tue Nov 30, 2004  at  06:45 PM
>>>May I point out that a living thing was still killed in the production of this object? you can call it victimless, but the cells were alive, too.<<<

Well, then for the sake of not being a hypocrite, I hope you never ever bathe. Do you have any idea how many poor little innocent skin cells die when you wipe a towel over your skin to dry off? It's a miniature holocaust every morning!

Scratching an itch or brushing your hair are right out, too.

You'd also better learn to photosynthesize, since even being a militant vegan, you're going to have to kill billions of living cells to eat. Who says carrots and soy beans don't feel pain? They are made of living cells too! Oh, sob, sob....
Posted by Barghest  on  Tue Nov 30, 2004  at  09:08 PM
PlantPerson didn't say it was *bad* just that cells die. So you don't have a case for accusing PP of being a hypocrite.

The question of where to draw lines between living things that are ok to eat for food, or use their bodies in other ways, and those that are not, is an interesting one. Mushrooms, grass, fish, birds, cows, dogs, whales, gorillas, people....
Posted by cvirtue  on  Wed Dec 01, 2004  at  08:15 AM
The only thing you can eat without killing another living thing...is Honey.
Posted by Maegan  on  Wed Dec 01, 2004  at  11:31 AM
"The only thing you can eat without killing another living thing...is Honey."

Not true at all. You could eat, for example, dirt. Not to mention milk and cheese. But it's certainly true that everything we eat or otherwise use has a cost to someone or something, somewhere.
Posted by Big Gary C  on  Wed Dec 01, 2004  at  12:04 PM
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