The long list of people waiting desperately for heart transplants may be shortened or even completely thrown out, as the FDA has approved a partial artificial heart that keeps people alive in the hospital while they wait for a heart transplant. This is only the first step. About 4,000 people in the United States await heart transplant each year. During a typical year, only about 2,200 donor hearts become available. The race is on to create the official artificial heart so no one would have to wait for a real heart anymore. The gruesome business of finding recipients to match to body parts, to even taking the heart from the donors could possibly be eliminated.

For now “surgeons would remove the bottom half of the patient’s heart and sew the artificial heart to the remaining top half, called the atria. The device is made of a plastic material called polyurethane.” The artificial heart was studied and “in 81 transplant patients, nearly 80 percent of patients implanted with the heart remained alive for 79 days, long enough to receive a donor heart, demonstrating that the artificial heart could successfully serve as a bridge to transplant.”

I’m frankly surprised that it has taken us this long to make at least temporary artificial hearts. I figured that by now we would have most of the organs and body parts. Despite my disappointment, this technology is amazing and more money should be put into this research. The top leading cause of death is heart disease; it makes so much sense to make this research high priority. Artificial organs are the future, and to eliminate those lines would be so humane. Furthermore, if people get these artificial hears or whatever they can come back and be productive in society. This is no longer about extending life as much as possible but actually letting them live it. If people no longer have to worry about death, at least resulting from organ failure, then they would be more motivated to live more fully. Also, we would have less handicapped and more people working. It’s simply not only more humanely better to improve this science, but also economically wiser.