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Medicine

In France, a Second Patient Receives Permanent Artificial Heart 183

Posted by timothy from the police-won't-need-kill-switches-for-cars dept.
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."
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In France, a Second Patient Receives Permanent Artificial Heart More

In France, a Second Patient Receives Permanent Artificial Heart

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  • Wifi (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09, 2014 @12:38PM (#47863171)

    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.

    • Re:Wifi (Score:5, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 09, 2014 @01:11PM (#47863591)

      You may skip this ad and restart your heart in 5s.

    • Insurance companies will no longer need to profile all people, they will simply ask their pals in the health sector to lock the heart rate for life insurance ("No no he's not dead, he's, he's restin'!") and put it in HNGGGGGGGG mode if their pension funds customers don't obey the proper life expectancy :)

    • Yah, when I came to "it can be controlled by your cellphone", my first thought was "and it can also be controlled by the cellphone that that guy over there is holding. And he doesn't necessarily like you".

      • Yah, when I came to "it can be controlled by your cellphone", my first thought was "and it can also be controlled by the cellphone that that guy over there is holding. And he doesn't necessarily like you".

        Well I dunno about you, but the first thing I would make sure of when shopping for a new heart would be that it doesn't have a remote-shutdown option. Who cares that the guy who doesn't like you can access it, if all he can do is make you slightly sleepy.

        Anyway, probably the biggest cause of death with these things will be Slashdot users trying to install Open-WRT or something ....

    • Re:Wifi (Score:5, Funny)

      by NotQuiteReal ( 608241 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2014 @01:43PM (#47863897) Journal
      Hackers will always be pinging it to see if it is vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug...

    • But nonetheless, the next article shows that it still seems to be safe.

      "Research Finds No Large-Scale Exploits of Heartbleed ..."

  • When it fails (Score:5, Funny)

    by dunkindave ( 1801608 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2014 @12:39PM (#47863189)
    If the artificial heart stops, would that count as a "Blue Face of Death"?

  • WIFI-Enabled Vital Organs?!?! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by deathcloset ( 626704 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2014 @12:47PM (#47863283) Journal
    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.

    • Re:WIFI-Enabled Vital Organs?!?! (Score:5, Funny)

      by jpvlsmv ( 583001 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2014 @12:49PM (#47863313) Homepage Journal
      If the implanted device is running an IPv6-only stack, nobody will be able to talk to it for years and years. I don't expect to see broad rollout of pure IPv6 in my lifetime.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by geekoid ( 135745 )

      OR you are just old and wrong.

      • I wouldn't preclude being old and right.

        Years of cynicism and distrust has been vindicated for many of us, because sooner or later, much of the stuff we fear could happen does.

        And, if nothing else, from an engineering perspective, you at least plan for the worst from the start.

        Sure, my worst case scenario might not happen. But if you at least acknowledge it's a real possibility, you might mitigate a lot of other things.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fermion ( 181285 )
      I can't, the summary reads like a bunch of propaganda tripe written by some cult. I am a person who wonders if sending your real time medical information to Google or Apple is really a good idea.

      Some people seem to be only concerned with living forever in relatively good condition, or keeping a young person alive even if the quality of life is dismal. They will give up whatever privacy, dignity, or wealth to accomplish this task. We have had some success. The average lifespan is increasing, and more imp

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by qbast ( 1265706 )

        Here is what scares me. We do not seem to be doing much to keep the brain healthy into very old age.

        Because we have no bloody idea what to do about it. In comparison heart is simple - it has to pump blood and that's it. I would rather not put all medicine on hold until we figure out brain.

      • I Here is what scares me. We do not seem to be doing much to keep the brain healthy into very old age. I have seen active, intellectually stimulated, well read, educated people fall into senility even though they have kept their mind active and engaged. It seems there is a limit to how long a brain can be very healthy. Do we want to be 125 years old and not be able to accomplish basic tasks? Do we want a world where a huge percentage of the adult population cannot care for themselves.

        I've been saying this for years, after watching demented family members being kept "healthy" via maintenance drugs for years after their minds have departed. Maybe ten more years of bring dead while the body is kept alive.

        It's hard for me to imagine that any presumptive Hell could be worse than sitting around in a wheelchair in a hallway somewhere, drooling, half blind and shitting in diapers, having no real idea of who I was.

        But that is where most of us are heading. If we fend off heart attacks, strok

        • Surely you can find a solution that doesn't involve prison time for your descendents.

          A tank of argon and a cleaner bag come to mind.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Ihlosi ( 895663 )
      You can't remotely exploit a device without a network or public interface.

      Ok, but do want to tell the patients that they'll need to have their chest cavity cut open for a firmware update?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Alef ( 605149 )

        I'll put it another way: Do you want to tell the patients that you didn't think the software keeping them alive through, so they'll need to have a firmware update?

        Really, a heart is one freaking ancient invention. It's not something that needs new features every two months.

        Unless it is to close security holes, of course. Oh, wait...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AK Marc ( 707885 )
      ROM is great, until you discover a fault, and open heart surgery is then the only way to fix the problem. I'm unsure how your stupid idea would be a benefit.

      There's no reason they can't make it open wi-fi, connecting to any unsecured network in the vicinity and lose 100% security. You don't need layer-2 security to get layer-7 security. That, and I'd make a button in a spiderman location that would need to be pressed before WiFi or write capability were enabled, or some other physical switch to secure t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Alef ( 605149 )

        True. On the other hand, when designing something as critical as a heart, you'd better have extremely thorough quality assurance and testing to make as sure as humanly possible that faults are discovered before you make someone's life depend on it.

        While I agree that requiring open heart surgery to reach the firmware probably is taking it too far, I wouldn't like to have an artificial heart installed, where the developers have had the luxury of thinking they can always fix problems later. The assumption shou

      • Why not have the physical interface do the firmware upgrade? I prefer not to do a firmware upgrade on my router without a wired connection, I sure as hell wouldn't want to do that with my heart. In fact, I would prefer to have the firmware stored in two places in case an upgrade went badly.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AK Marc ( 707885 )
          Because physical connections are very very problematic. They've been tried before, and always abandoned. The skin doesn't seal 100% to any current materials, so there's a near 100% chance of infection at the plug site, not to mention the increased likelihood of damage and other problems.

    • The goals of transhumanism require networking. Intelligence itself requires networking.

      Consider: a single neuron cannot think. Thinking is the activity of a network of neurons. And furthermore, the limits on the expressive power of your thoughts are determined, in part, by the number of processing nodes (neurons) available. There are some problems that you will never be able to solve, or even visualize, with a single brain.

      Yes, putting one's toaster on the internet seems to be a far cry from collaborati

  • Transhumanist medicine?

    There is something wrong with that term....

  • 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

    You know, I see stuff like this, and I think this is a terribly bad thing waiting to happen.

    Great, your artificial heart has wi-fi. The firmware will become obsolete, or have security holes, or any number of ways in which this will be problematic.

    It just seems like people build these things, when they have no real concept or experience with b

    • There's also the fact that having a control interface isn't really 'cool' as much as it is 'we couldn't duplicate the sensory and feedback systems that made the old one adjust itself automatically, so here's a dial to futz with!'

      Compared to out-of-control, control is nice; but compared to 'just fucking works' it's a thankless chore and a good opportunity to make mistakes.

      • Yeah but, in this case, it didn't "just fucking work".

        It stopped fucking working, so we had to fucking do something about it.

        Maybe, eventually, we'll fucking figure out the fucking sensory & feedback systems, but for now, it's pretty fucking awesome that we can get fucking artificial hearts if we fucking need them.

        That said, having fucking wifi connectivity in your fucking heart does sound fucking scary.

        • Given the (lack of) alternative, it's certainly an improvement in this case. I was objecting to TFS's "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." blather.

          Since there aren't enough donor organs, and those tend to have their own prob

          • How could you improve the heart? It's really very reliable, self-maintaining, self-configuring, powered off readily-available biochemical energy. You can pretty much forget it's there, most of the time. Evolution has done an excellent job. The only area I can see to improve would be correcting single points of failure.

            • Certainly nothing obvious comes to mind, in terms of features.

              The only class of complaint that would be nice to see addressed (not exclusive to the heart, also covers skeletal muscle, bone density, tissue healing, and assorted metabolic processes) is that most of the parameters are still tuned for a relatively high-exertion, high-risk, environment with a strong risk of at least occasional malnutrition. As your basic first-world 'press buttons at work, hired because he knows what buttons to press' type, I

              • If you include non-heart things, though...

                1. Fix the bloody retinas! They are back to front.
                2. Why is regeneration limited to small-scale only? A lot of amputees are unhappy with this. The ability probably isn't there because there's no selective advantage in recovering from wounds which would have killed from blood loss anyway.
                3. Everything that relates to aging.
                4. The fat thing you said.
                5. Instincts urging the consumption of calories vastly in excess to requirements.
                6. The appendix. Begone!
                7. Parts are no

      • Compared to out-of-control, control is nice; but compared to 'just fucking works' it's a thankless chore and a good opportunity to make mistakes.

        +1

        Though to be fair, there are many inconveniences people will put up with to not be dead or in a hospital.

        • Certainly. If you lack an important organ, even a pretty lousy reproduction looks like a great idea (see also, kidney dialysis, diabetes treatment, etc); but we have a rather long way to go before any transhumanist puffery about 'advantages' becomes justified. Even reaching approximate parity with a normally functioning organ is a pretty heroic challenge. If you don't have one of those, your standards are lower; but you aren't getting an upgrade.

  • This isn't supposed to happen... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Notabadguy ( 961343 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2014 @12:50PM (#47863335)

    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."

    • Re:This isn't supposed to happen... (Score:5, Funny)

      by qbast ( 1265706 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2014 @12:53PM (#47863363)
      They are trying to reproduce the bug.

    • Re:This isn't supposed to happen... (Score:4, Insightful)

      by fuzzyfuzzyfungus ( 1223518 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2014 @01:42PM (#47863887) Journal
      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.

  • If I receive wi-fi enabled organs, will I be required to also get the horrible wi-fi logo tattooed on my forehead?

  • And of course 90% comments are whining about wifi. As if 'wifi' was somehow synonymous with 'unsecured and unauthenticated wifi'. Getting this secured is trivial compared to making a heart that will keep patient alive for years. Until it is possible to make artificial heart respond to nervous system and speed up/slow down as needed, having some control system will improve patient's quality of life.

    • Making a heart that will keep the patient alive for years is not easy but it is likely easier than making "we'll control our hearts with our smart phones" secure. The "wifi" is only one tiny part of the huge completely out of the control of the heart maker chain of security there.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ebyrob ( 165903 )

      Wifi is so totally secure:

      I mean... Where would I find [wonderhowto.com] someone who knows how to crack the mighty WPA2-PSK you probably use to secure your whole network?

      How could you possibly think any wireless communications are secure anywhere? *especially* blue-tooth and WiFi.

      • The only thing that link proves is that WPA2-PSK is secure as long as you choose a long enough password.

        Of course you can capture a handshake and try and bruteforce the password. But as long as said password is long enough, and even with GPU-assisted cracking, you'll die before you even go through a thousandth of the possibility space.
        Security doesn't have to be perfect - if it turns out eventually that hardware advances or a flaw in the implementation makes an attack even remotely feasible, then you'll

    • The comments aren't rejecting having a control. They are rejecting the suggestion of wifi, a very unappropriate choice of control channel. Several have suggested some form of NFC, which may be a choice more suited to the application.

    • And of course 90% comments are whining about wifi..

      The cool part will be how Comcasr integrates it into their home monitoring system.

      Kids home from school? check

      All the appliances working? check

      Outside of the house secure? check

      Grandma's Cheney Industries turboheart functiniong okay? check

      Grandpa's new heart.......Damnit, he's looking at porn again! 120 bpm is too high...

  • Gives a new meaning to "blue screen of death".

    (drops mic)

  • Even if you can fix our hearts and our telomeres and the cancer, there are all kinds of cognitive problems associated with old age - Alzheimer's and plain ol' AAMI.

    So even if you can keep your 20s body into old age, at some point you'll be unable to remember things that happened recently such as whether you put your pants on this morning, and of course to check that you're wearing pants before you leave the house. Having a prime physique will make it much less horrifying for innocent bystanders, but still..

    • at some point you'll be unable to remember things that happened recently such as whether you put your pants on this morning

      You don't have to remember the event of putting them on. You can just quickly check if you are wearing them right now.

    • I'd hate to have one sneak up on me, leaving me mentally incapacitated before I knew what hit me; but I'd say that "enjoy the bodily condition of my early 20s until cognitive indicators start to look worrisome, put affairs in order, administer euthanasia procedure co-developed by veterinary experience and recreational pharmacology enthusiasts" is a strategy that would easily exceed virtually all historical quality-of-life outcomes...

    • Re:A working heart is not much (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Alef ( 605149 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2014 @01:56PM (#47864027)

      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?

    • I am curious if they would be able to do some sort of 'mental reset' at that point, restoring your brain to its youthful state, although likely losing most or all memories in the process. Could you imagine looking at videos you recorded of yourself to tell your 'new' self stuff? Or perhaps people would just decide it is more cost effective to kill the elderly minds off and let the next generation take over. Pondering cyborg technologies always allows for such fascinating thought experiments...

  • Permanant vs temporary (Score:5, Insightful)

    by belthize ( 990217 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2014 @01:04PM (#47863503)

    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.

  • Comment removed (Score:3)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday September 09, 2014 @01:17PM (#47863647)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • > That first patient, a 76-year-old man suffering from terminal heat failure, died March 2.

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