FDA Rejects Artificial Heart

Mad_Rain writes "Those people who fear cyborgs can rest easy. The Food and Drug Administration voted to reject Abiomed's request to sell artificial hearts to people who have suffered heart failure and exhausted their treatment options. The FDA stated that there was too little gain with too many adverse side effects in the limited trial run (17 people underwent the procedure). Although this isn't quite the same product mentioned in previous Slashdot coverage, it does seem like a setback towards replacing failing organs with fully artificial ones."

Comments

Why?

[TheGavster]

I never understood 'cure for death' type devices getting shot down. Like, your heart is going to stop and you will die, but we could perform $risky_medical_proceedure and there's a 10% chance you'd live. That's pretty lousy survival for say, cough drops, but not all that bad when faced with certainty of death.