Britain’s Daily Mail reports that a European research team will have a fully-artificial heart ready for clinical trials by 2011.
Dr. Alain Carpentier said: ‘We are moving from pure research to clinical applications. After 15 years of work, we are handing over to industry to produce an artificial heart usable by man.’
The prototype was developed with the help of aerospace engineers. Shaped like a real heart, with the same blood flow rhythms, it uses similar technology to artificial heart valves already used around the world. The recurring problems of most artificial hearts – immune system rejection and blood clotting – are avoided by constructing it from chemically treated animal tissues.
But this one is not made of meat.
First fully artificial heart ready for human trials ‘within two and a half years’ [Daily Mail]
Hmm… I wonder if they could coat it with cloned tissue from the human it’s going into??
Yeah, cultures are the way to go.
The pharmaceutical companies already use such cultures for testing drugs. I have a short story, “The Flesh Vats of Merck” sat around waiting to be given a point.
The age of full-body cyborgs is getting closer… you can soon get an artificial lung, heart, and kidney. The stomach and intestines can be replaced by IV. Artificial limbs already work tolerably well. They still need to develop an artificial spleen and a liver.
I’m also wondering why they’re calling it the first? According to Wikipedia, the AbioCor was the first, being first implanted all the way back in 2001.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AbioCor
It only fits larger framed men (about 50% of men) but it’s still fully implanted and internally powered. (Powered for only 1/2 hour at a time, though, then it needs charged.)
This might be an improvement, but from what I’m reading it’s definitely not the first.
Oh sure, your robot heart may pump blood like a real heart, Mr. Scientist…BUT CAN IT LOVE?
How will the beat rate be regulated, though?
At least with a transplant the thing knows to beat faster if need be. With a machine heart, well… do you just turn up a bloody knob? (does it go up to 11?)
Isn’t there a patient with a continuously-pumping device who has no pulse? I think ‘pumping’ may be a biologic efficiency hack.
And because I cannot resist:
Resistance is futile.
One step closer to Ghost in the Shell