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In France, a Second Patient Receives Permanent Artificial Heart
Jason Koebler (3528235) writes One of the most important goals of transhumanist medicine—possessing a perfectly healthy heart—has so far remained elusive. This week, we came a step closer when for the second time ever, a French company implanted a permanent artificial heart in a patient. More than just pumping blood, future artificial hearts will bring numerous other advantages with them. They will have computer chips and wi-fi capacity built into them. We'll control our hearts with our smart phones, tuning down its pumping capacity when we want to sleep, or tuning it up when we want to run marathons. The patient who received the first of these hearts, though he survived for 76 days, died after the heart "stopped after a short circuit, although the exact reasons behind the death were still unknown."
I strongly believe that in the not too distant future the number 1 thing that people will wonder why we were so dumb as to not notice it was a horrible idea was having every goddamn thing connected and communicating.
ROM people. ROM!!! (the second ROM was written in allcaps for emphasis)
You can't remotely exploit a device without a network or public interface.
We're so obsessed with connectivity and networks these days that we are blinded to the negatives of all this connectivity - thinking they are just problems of the system to be resolved rather than inherent aspects of the system which can not be gotten rid of.
Alrighty rant(off);
v Now since, like you, I love the internet and connected thingymabobs somebody please reply and give some really good counterarguments against my thinking that IP addresses+Organs is a bad idea.
Permanence has a pretty specific meaning here. It says nothing of duration, only that it's the last.
Getting a permanent heart that lasts 76 days is not nearly as enticing as getting a temporary heart that lasts 2 years.
That statement sounds like gutless PR posturing: Obviously you want to learn as much as you can from a failure, especially an unexpected one; and make appropriate modifications based on what you find; but there's a reason why people say mean things about sample sizes of 1. It's entirely possible that you won't be able to nail down exactly why things went wrong in a single unit. Given the continued supply of patients who Will Die, Period, without replacement organs that aren't available, it hardly seems worthwhile to stop just because you lack a perfect determination (so long as you do, of course, make whatever improvements/modifications your imperfect determination suggests are needed).
You aren't going to make progress without experiments, some risky; but you have a population of (adult, of-sound-mind) patients who will definitely die without intervention. You don't want to act in reckless disregard for human life; but when you've got people who will definitely die and the possibility of producing improved treatments, excessive avoidance of uncertainty is disregard for human life. It's a pity that the PR flacks didn't have the guts to say that.
So what is your point, really? Abandon all health care?
You do realise that there are a lot of people with excellent cognitive abilities dying of heart failure every day, and that many could have lived decades of high quality life had their hearts been healthy, right?
There is a basic human inclination to selfishness that is caused by instinct and reinforced by our habit of perceiving ourselves as fundamentally separated from others (Me here with World out there). There is also a basic human inclination towards generosity that comes mostly from our pack instincts and is reinforced by cultural values. Most of the arguments around enlightened self interest are motivated from these two inclinations.
I am inclined to reflect, however, that if each neuron in my brain operated as independently as each amoeba in a pond, my mind would not exist. There would be no thoughts at all, nor any concept of self. In order for something as complicated as me to exist, individual organisms (my brain cells) must sacrifice their independence and accept their role as subservient to a larger collective. This surrender must be complete; the neurons do not (and must not) act on selfish motivations.
It is easy for us to say that individual existence is not part of the nature of a neuron. A neuron fundamentally *is* part of a greater whole. But if you trace back our evolutionary history far enough, you will see this was not always true of the neuron (or of any kind of cell).
In order for humanity to progress beyond the problems of our day, a similar transition will be necessary. The more people understand themselves as part of a group, rather than as individuals at odds with their neighbors, the more we will be able to cooperatively overcome whatever ails us.
Zoom out far enough, and the human race looks like just another cell colony on its slow journey towards ever more complex forms of integration.