Slashdot Mirror
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."
With wifi/bluetooth capability I feel like there's not anything that could possibly go wrong. It will be important to have it connect to the cloud in order to retrieve heart rate profiles for the day.
If the artificial heart stops, would that count as a "Blue Face of Death"?
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.
From the article:
"French artificial heart maker Carmat says it will not perform another human implant until it has determined the cause of death of the first patient fitted with the device."
Six months later: Implanting a new heart, despite still not knowing what happened the first time."
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.
"Have you tried turning it off and back on again?"
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
"Near Field" is a very specific thing. Whatever you're thinking of there, certainly isn't what I'm talking about - the near field of 2.4ghz would be around 1/10 of a meter away and no further.
For large sets, this will be our guide even unto death, for the LORD will work for each type of data it is applied to...
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?