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Heart Kept Beating Outside of Body
defence budget writes "CNN has a report about a human heart that was kept beating on its own outside a body during a test of a new medical device. Perhaps the success could be replicated for the Brain as well? (A 'living' computer?!)"
ROBOCOP.
Now that would be awesome
Now that's one telltale heart!!
Keeping
Well, the article says that they expect to be able to keep the heart beating 24 hours after removal from the body, and that an iced heart will last 6 hours.
Is that cummulative? can they add the two techniques and keep the heart "fresh" for 30 hours total? This is good news for transplant hopefulls.
You can't take the sky from me...
Chilling the heart slows down the metablolism of the cells, to try to keep them from dying. Pumping the heart full of warm blood tries to provide the nourishment the heart would get inside of the body, and allows the heart cells to function normally. I could be wrong, but I don't foresee any benefit from pumping an organ with chilled blood.
"Sure buddy, I got this spleen in last week -- one careful owner, well, not careful enough obviously. Ha ha."
"CNN has a report about a human heart that was kept beating on its own outside a body during a test of a new medical device. Perhaps the success could be replicated for the Brain as well?
Keeping hearts, and maybe someday brains, alive outside the body? Somehow, it's never gonna be the same watching the "Wizard of Oz". ;^)
Think about it, though. At the time the Wizard of Oz was written, all three possibilities were deemed equally impossible. (IIRC the Tin Man wanted a heart; the Scare Crow wanted a brain; and the Cowardly Lion wanted courage. I'm sure if I mis-matched things someone will set it straight quickly enough.)
Nowadays, heart transplants are performed often enough they are no longer news worthy UNLESS the heart is artificial AND self-contained. Who knows what another 30-50 years will bring? Maybe they'll be able to transplant brains AND courage, too?
Anyone who thinks courage can't be transplanted has obviously not consumed "courage enhancing" beverages in any great quantity.
Warning: Drinking may make you think you have mystical kung-fu powers
Perhaps the success could be replicated for the Brain as well? (A 'living' computer?!)"
Or perhaps also the success could not be replicated for the Brain. Even if this particular advance could be used to supply blood to the brain, the spinal cord is the complicated part. So no.
Why do people say stuff like this? You know, the brain is a perfectly good 'living' computer?! while it's sitting inside your skull. I can't really imagine a better place for it.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
is of course that they were able to do something useful with the heart afterwards.
I'd like to point out that the average mammalian heart will keep beating of its own accord for several minutes after it has been removed from a living body. The normal heart has a set of electrodes, called the sinoatrial node and the atrial ventricular node, which broadcast electrical impulses to coordinate the simultaneous contraction of the heart muscle. Read all about it here.
I remember this because of a rat vivisection lab in sophomore biology. We opened that sucker up, and cut its heart out while it was still beating, and dropped the heart (it was about the size of a garbanzo bean) into a 100-mL beaker full of saline. The heart functioned like a little underwater jet-ski, pumping itself around the inside of the beaker for a good 5 minutes after it had been removed from its host.
the point is that the heart wants to keep on beating for a while...
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
The real interesting part is - did the scientist walk round the lab, clutching the still-beating heart, or perhaps even hold it aloft, while laughing in his best evil anime voice... ?
Then a loud disembodied voice cries "Finish him!"
graspee
"Wow, it's Liquid Schwartz!! "
—Barf the Mog, Spaceballs
Thank you.
You biology department people are a bunch of sick fucks. I bet you all had a great laugh at the heart from a slaughtered animal zipping around a beaker, didn't you?