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Heart Surgeon Takes Notes from da Vinci
vivekg writes "Leonardo da Vinci probably never thought he had the proverbial Holy Grail to a revolution in heart surgery. Almost 500 years after da Vinci's death, intricate diagrams of the human heart made by him have inspired a British surgeon to pioneer a new way to repair damaged hearts."
Old science is not necessarily bad science. In fact, the hallmark of good science is how well is holds up over time and continued testing. Granted, Leonardo de Vinci was not "practicing" modern science. Rather, he was using the oldest form of science which is observational science. However, this approach is still valid and tends to be the most robust type of science which, like Leonardo discovered can also lead to the most controversial reactions from people who have investments in the current understanding of certain topics........... *cough* *cough*, like evolution.
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Stop eating McDonalds you fatasses!
Reality test... am I dreaming?
But we do know he had the literal Holy Grail, hidden as part of the Priory of Sion. Or at least, he would have had, if it hadn't been made up by a delusional Frenchman in the 1950s
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
It's funny how much you can get done once you blow bureaucracy out of the way. Exhuming corpses for study probably broke a billion laws back then as well, but so much has come from his approach.
Then again, I might be confusing the Da Vinci Code with reality. Damned fiction based on facts. It's probably safest to just say that I HEARD that he exhumed corpses. I didn't know him personally.
Well, there's only one way to perform surgery on a heart........ verrrrrrrrry carefully.
Does anyone else here get the feeling from this that doctors have a sort of "well, that's how it's always been done" approach to medicine? I mean, you'd think that at some point, somebody would have stopped and said "is there a better way to do this?" I guess, in some ways, this guy is that "revolutionary" thinker...
Be a real patriot: Question authority. Think for yourself. Formulate your own conclusions.
Am I missing something or does the article say nothing about what the new technique was? And why only the Da Vinchi drawings were the only ones that could have lead to this discovery.
Mitral valve prolapse, fortunately, is not deadly. But the usual treatment always has the potential danger of valve infection. I hope the new technique will help prevent that problem.
From the article:
His anatomical knowledge came from his post-mortem dissection work, which the Church forbade.
Great minds of the past shouldn't just be honored for their great contributions to art and science. In fact, it may almost be more important that they defied the religiously dictated laws of their times. Even Isaac Newton, who may the most important scientist in our history, dabbled in occult beliefs that some feel led to his gravitational theory.
I tip my hat to Leonardo, Galileo, Newton, and others for having the guts to stand up to the religion to advance humans forward.
Advice for my fellow geeks: before seeking out that threesome you dream of, you might see what a TWOsome is like first.
Maybe this article Da Vinci decodes heart valve surgery explains it better
rancis Wells, a consultant cardiac surgeon at Papworth Hospital in Cambridge, England, said he had a "eureka moment" as he pored over drawings and notes by the artist in the royal collection at Windsor Castle.
With Da Vinci's understanding of the importance of the opening and closing phases of the valve, Mr Wells has worked out how to restore the valve's normal and full variability in opening and closing properly.
"That has been a big step forward," he said yesterday.
So, yes the work of Da Vinci 1500, did lead to some modern improvments in medicine today!
A mechanic was removing a cylinder head from the motor of a Harley, when he spotted a world-famous heart surgeon in his shop. The heart surgeon was waiting for the service manager to come take a look at his bike. The mechanic shouted across the garage, "Hey Doc can I ask you a question?"
The famous surgeon, a bit surprised, walked over to the mechanic working on the motorcycle.
The mechanic straightened up, wiped his hands on a rag and asked, "So Doc, look at this engine. I also can open hearts, take valves out, fix'em, put in new parts and when I finish this will work just like a new one. So how come I get a pittance and you get the really big money, when you and I are doing basically the same work?"
The surgeon paused, smiled and leaned over, and whispered to the mechanic..... "Try doing it with the engine running!
... of malpractice suits. If you do something differently, and something goes wrong, the lawyers come out and sue because you were doing something non standard. I find it a bit spooky that a doctor would even need to look at old drawings to know how heart valves work. Isn't this why they are made to work on cadavers, so they know the body inside and out? Doesn't the real thing trump some old drawings?
Uh. No they don't. Where you live, they have the right to take their kid out of the class and homeschool them. Over here, there is not even the homeschool option.
I pay taxes and my money is used on stuff that I don't approve of. Do I have a problem with it? Of course not. That's the way how a society works! Sharing and making compromises. "My tax money should not be used on stuff that I don't like" is nothing but self-centered Ayn Rand inspired whining.
The owls are not what they seem
Personally I believe that the problem is the increasing centralization of control over the schools. This includes all Federal interference and all state interference.
Schools should be funded locally, and have local control. Unfortunately, the various levels of government have stolen the sources which were traditionally used to fund schools, so local funding is a problem which needs solution. This doesn't make it any less necessary. If the local students are to be taught lies, it should be because the local citizens have decided that that's what they want their children taught. (They will suffer the appropriate consequences...but their folly should not be forced on everyone else.)
This has been my position for over 2 decades, and everything I've seen during that period of time has only reinforced the opinion. Only at the college or university level should the state (e.g., Idaho or Pennsylvannia) have any involvement. The states should run the colleges, because specialized education needs to draw from too large an area of population for local funding to be reasonable. They should be tuition free, but have appropriately difficult admissions requirements, and may limit the number of open spots for admission. (The state can decide how many English majors it needs to educate, and how many BioChemists, and fund that many classes of the appropriate type.)
At all levels, private schools should continue to be an option.
Some will argue that this will unfairly penalize the children of poor cities. In my experience in those cities the federal government alone extracts more funds nominally for education than are expended on schooling by all levels of government combined. This may not be true everywhere, but it's certainly largely true. Also, the most important parts of schooling don't require much in the way of funding, though they do require the cooperation of the parents. Thus if the parents will not cooperate with the local school, the school should have the right to refuse to allow the student to attend lessons. Disruptive students are not something that should be tolerated...but when schools are used in the way in which they are currently, that's what you get.
That said, not all students are academically inclined. There needs to be a flexible "tracking" system, which allows those mechanically inclined to develop their skills as well as a track which allows the academic students to develop THEIR skills. I envision one hour per day during elementary school (after third grade) where students experience are instructed in "enrichment specialties", which should include things like band, set theory (arithmetic should be mainstream...by rote, and sorry), wood/metal/plastic shop, etc.
OTOH, this requires a fairly large elementary school. Other benefits would accrue if elementary schools were local enough that all students could walk to them. That way the neighborhood kids would study together. This would probably mean that, e.g., grades K-3 would all be taught in the same room by the same teacher. (If you have enough students to split this in two, perhaps you could split them by distance rather than by age.) This WOULD be an acknowledged combination school and babysitting service, and play areas would be an important part of the situation. Teachers in this class would be expected to LIVE in the school, and keep it open. Provisions for substitutes would be necessary. Etc. Class sizes would be small, but the salaries would be enough to live on given the free rent. (I envision that most of these teachers would start out as mothers raising their kids. So room would need to be sufficient to handle not only the teacher, but also a husband or other partner and their children. With a safe fenced area around it which is the school yard.)
N.B.: A lot of what I'm proposing is just my idea spinning of how it might ideally work out. The important parts are:
1) No central control.
2) Local choice on funding & curricula & environment.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.