Here’s a more general (and perhaps biased) interpretation of the history of artificial heart transplants. We can start by dividing history into life before and after the Jarvik-7.
The Dark Ages
Before artificial hearts were developed, people seemed to simply accept their fates- they lived, they got sick, and they died. It was just the way the world worked. We cried, we cursed the gods, and we moved on with life. At one point though, the human struggle for existence became much more marked, particularly in the field of health.
At one point, we determined that it wasn’t good enough to stamp our feet and pout when someone close to us died. At one point, we took matters into our own hands, and we started to play. We cut each other open, we drew pictures of the fun stuff inside, and we started to put two and two together and learn how the human body worked and why people died.
What do you do when someone goes crazy? Well, we know the brain controls what you do and how you act, so we’ll just cut out the piece of the brain that causing the problem. What do you do when someone can’t see well? We know some laws of physics and optics, so we’ll make lenses to help people see. All medicine is experimental, even in the very early days, when cavemen said (or gestured/grunted), “hey look! When you grind up this plant and rub it on your wound, it feels good. Let’s use it!”
Even with all the scientific advances that resulted from this ambitious spirit, the artificial heart always remained a sort of Holy Grail for scientists and surgeons. Considerable effort was put into nearly every other alternative- pharmaceutical intervention, live donor transplants, and xenotransplantation (transplant from an animal). However, the construction of a device to completely replace the heart was fraught with complications that prevented many early models from succeeding.
A ray of hope: Jarvik-7
The development and successful implantation of the Jarvik-7 into Barney Clark gave the public a new reason to hope for a total artificial heart. For 112 days, the Jarvik-7 pumped Mr. Clark's blood faithfully, powered by a 323 pound console that stayed by his bed. The media tracked his progress nearly every day, following all the surgical complications that arose. However, the optimistic statements of the surgeon, Dr. William DeVries, and the fighting spirit of Mr. Clark himself, ignited a public faith in transplant surgery.
The small handicaps that impacted Mr. Clark's daily life- a power supply that chained him to a hospital bed, a nightmare of drugs to weaken his immune system, and a series of surgeries to address organ failure and seizures- were well worth the price of extending his life and proving the great potential of our new technologies and medicine.
The hottest heart of today: Abiomed's Abiocor
Abiomed now proudly boasts that they are the producers of the "world's first completely self-contained replacement hearts" (www.abiomed.com). By using cutting edge technology, patients with less than 30 days to live can now double their life expectancy. An internal battery pack is implanted into the patient, and is continually charged through an external battery pack, which can power the heart for four hours. Without the external battery pack, the internal motor can run for half an hour.
What is going on? This heart is equivalent to the iPod video right now- the hottest, most advanced, artificial heart of this day and age. It looks sexy, clean, modern. Here is something you can trust your life with! No more chunky console to lug around on your shoulder like the Jarvik-7. Oh no, you can cover the battery packs discreetly with your shirt or jacket, and nobody has to see you plug yourself in every four hours. You can even unplug your external battery pack to take a shower! Look- you with your failed heart, with your numbered days- never mind the slew of medications you take every morning, the regular checkups at the hospital, the post-operative complications... with our product, you can be
normal.
It seems to me that after all those years of research and testing, what we have now is the Jarvik-7 in a sexier cocktail dress. It's still not designed to function for more than two months, yet this seven-hour operation is still being performed to implant this $100,000 device into patients who have no other hope. Is this really the fulfillment of the cyborg vision? Where is the immortal heart, the heart that pumps and pumps like there is no tomorrow? While the concept is still undoubtedly cyborg, and researchers are working towards a more permanent heart, the reality is that the artificial hearts of today cannot sustain life as well as natural healthy hearts. However, our desire for the triumph of human knowledge, our yearning for immortality, has convinced us that anything is possible. With enough clinical trials, enough surgeries, enough engineers, we can defeat heart disease and ultimately death.
Tammy Wang: A New Heart to Heart >
Hearts: Let's Begin!
