[HN Gopher] How to Build an Artificial Heart
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       How to Build an Artificial Heart
        
       Author : Hooke
       Score  : 16 points
       Date   : 2021-03-04 06:04 UTC (16 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.newyorker.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.newyorker.com)
        
       | hprotagonist wrote:
       | _In 2001 and 2002, the heart was installed in fourteen patients.
       | That's when the ambitious plans began to falter. "By nine months,
       | all of them except four had died from either complications or
       | device failure," Cohn recounted._
       | 
       | I remember as a freshman going to a talk by the AbioMed folks
       | that was very optimistic and rosy about the future, in about
       | 2002. I think video of a patient talking about his artifical
       | heart was involved. How disappointing that things didn't pan out.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | choeger wrote:
       | This is definitely one of the few cases where extensive animal
       | experiments need to be considered. Create a heart, put it into a
       | thousand pigs and see how they do. Once they do fine, go over to
       | hundreds of primates. Afterwards go on with terminal human
       | patients.
       | 
       | It goes without saying that one should not waste animal lives or
       | make them suffer for just any kind of experiments.
       | 
       | But if the practical engineering of auch a device appears to be
       | that difficult we should not risk the whole company on small-
       | scale human experiments.
        
       | fellowniusmonk wrote:
       | As someone with a faulty valve and other sundry heart defects, I
       | don't see how you can read this article and not fault the FDA.
       | 
       | I've gone through two periods of extreme shortness of breath,
       | it's not a good way to live, it's not a good way to die.
       | 
       | Especially if you can't even volunteer to move research forward.
       | 
       | I'm a big fan of countries who have made organ donation opt-in as
       | the default.
       | 
       | Is 660k deaths per year due to heart failure insufficient to let
       | people volunteer? Am I missing something here?
        
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       (page generated 2021-03-04 23:01 UTC)