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Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

bbc.com

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Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#51

Post by retrac »

pkaye wrote: post #45
robbiep wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no real medical need for an ‘annual physical’ it is a creation of the American medical-industrial complex and creates more problems than it solves. Having said that seeing a doctor occasionally for blood pressure etc is useful, but the interval for someone young and otherwise not experiencing any symptoms doesn’t need to be annually

> There is no real medical need for an ‘annual physical’ it is a creation of the American medical-industrial complex and creates more problems than it solves. What problems does it create? Isn't preventive care a good thing? Also Japan does annual physicals much more rigorous that in the US. I wish what is done in the US was more rigorous because it would have caught the autoimmune disease that caused my kidney failu…

Medicine can hurt as well as heal. A concrete example. Many doctors will advise you not to get a full body MRI scan. You can pretty easily buy such a service, and hire some radiologists to pour over every cubic millimetre of your body. But it's a really bad idea.

Because they will almost certainly find something ambiguous or troubling. And they're gonna biopsy. And then, well, maybe that's ambiguous. Another biopsy. You're terrified, the doctor's now worried about something they would never have known about otherwise, and maybe you have surgery to get it early. In the end the complications of all that quite potentially add up to a shorter life expectancy than simply not getting scanned in the first place. On average. Though of course, if you had a giant treatable tumour that shows up, well, you'd want the scan. But most people don't have one, and all those interventions can cause harm.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#52

Post by rootusrootus »

throwthere wrote: post #34
rootusrootus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an LVAD, though -- isn't that an entirely different beast than an artificial heart, with a different use case?

Artificial heart is kind of a non-specific term. It covers anything from LVAD, LBAD and RVAD together, ECMO or biventrivular vad. So depends on what you’re specifically referring to but lvad is the most common of those.

Fair enough. I'm in no way experienced in the medical field. I would have told you I thought an artificial heart was a complete heart replacement, just like a full transplant but with a mechanical device instead. TIL.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#53

Post by MPSimmons »

msrenee wrote: post #23
momenti wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heart transplant recipients survive 15 years on average: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_transplantation

The Wikipedia page cites a documentary as the source, which may be correct, but doesn't seem like an appropriate source. Here's a paper that I skimmed the abstract of claiming ~9 years: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15280687/

I don't know what the documentary source is, but this paper is from 2004, and it's likely that procedures have improved reliability since then.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#54

Post by MPSimmons »

fredsmith219 wrote: post #40
melling wrote: post #2

“Currently 17 people die every day in the US waiting for a transplant, with more than 100,000 reportedly on the waiting list.” David Bennett was only 57. Heart disease, and related issues are a big problem. While I’m hopeful for this technology, I wish there was a way for people to see heart issues coming much earlier in life so they can attempt to treat, or delay, the problem.

Having trouble taking satisfactory breaths while laying flat? See a doctor. Feeling out of breath abnormally while working out? See a doctor. Got an Apple Watch? Just for kicks take your ekg. It is crude but can detect abnormal heart rhythms.

You probably know this, but for anyone else reading - I have an Apple watch that has the EKG. It is a two-contact EKG, so it's limited in what it can see. It also requires you to actively look at it (you have to touch the crown while it's reading).

It did successfully diagnose a bout of bigeminy that I had, but unfortunately my cardiologist didn't think it was important, and I ended up having a heart attack anyway. But I lived, and now I have a new cardiologist, so there's that.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#55

Post by throwaway4aday »

franga2000 wrote: post #38
mrmuagi wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't there catch-it-early type diseases? Like breast cancer, testicular cancer, colon cancer, etc... that prove this wrong? The funny thing is, the older you get, you are likely to have some sort of symptom. Such is life. For blood pressure, I would expand and add general bloodwork for health conscious individuals or people with a family history for certain issues -- diabetes, liver, androgen, heart health markers..…

I've heard many experts talk about issues with "catching disease early", one being that what doctors find might have never developed far enough to cause harm and so the treatment might actually be more harmful. I don't want to risk trying to explain it from memory since I have zero medical knowledge, but there's a YouTube video by "MedlifeCrisis" about this that also has sources cited in the description. The title is…

> one being that what doctors find might have never developed far enough to cause harm and so the treatment might actually be more harmful.

This is not a reason to not screen regularly. If treating very early is the problem then you should still aim to detect it early and then closely monitor it until you have enough information to decide whether to act or not. There are many people that will simply not go in for testing until there is a major problem if you advise against regular testing. A close family member of mine just passed away recently because he didn't go in for regular testing and they caught the cancer way too late.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#56

Post by hwillis »

rootusrootus wrote: post #32
throwthere wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not always, some are”destination” therapy meaning no transplant planned in the immediate future. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/17192-left-...

That's an LVAD, though -- isn't that an entirely different beast than an artificial heart, with a different use case?

It's still typically a massive change in quality of life. The left ventricle is what feeds your entire body blood; the right ventricle only feeds the lungs. When the left ventricle fails, blood backs up and starts overflowing into the lung space in addition to the rest of your body slowly suffocating. It's exceptionally unpleasant.

The right ventricle is usually in much better shape so an LVAD can be almost like having a functioning transplant, except that there's a big wire going out of your chest/neck (which is a constant infection risk and can't really get wet) and you're now battery-powered.

Any kind of heart transplant comes with huge problems, even besides the immunosupressants etc. The nerves don't reconnect, so the heart doesn't respond to commands to speed up. It makes any kind of exertion difficult and unpleasant. Diet is critical, clots are a constant fear, etc. By the time you get a transplant you've usually spent a while with insufficient bloodflow, and your organs have been slowly dying.

It's nothing short of incredible that people can get 20+ years out of transplants. The deck is stacked against us hard.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#57

Post by hombre_fatal »

dt3ft wrote: post #4
melling wrote: post #2

“Currently 17 people die every day in the US waiting for a transplant, with more than 100,000 reportedly on the waiting list.” David Bennett was only 57. Heart disease, and related issues are a big problem. While I’m hopeful for this technology, I wish there was a way for people to see heart issues coming much earlier in life so they can attempt to treat, or delay, the problem.

Or, change the way they live, work less and enjoy what little life they have ahead?

Well, we certainly do set up people for [heart] failure in our culture. Standard American diet is atrocious and I often day-dream about what it might take to transition to a culture around healthy, whole foods.

It's hard to imagine. And looking at the westernizing diet of the rest of the world, maybe that's a ship that never sails back. Maybe tech breakthroughs are the only hope we have if major cultural reform around health and food never arrives.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#58

Post by MPSimmons »

retrac wrote: post #51
pkaye wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no real medical need for an ‘annual physical’ it is a creation of the American medical-industrial complex and creates more problems than it solves. What problems does it create? Isn't preventive care a good thing? Also Japan does annual physicals much more rigorous that in the US. I wish what is done in the US was more rigorous because it would have caught the autoimmune disease that caused my kidney failu…

Medicine can hurt as well as heal. A concrete example. Many doctors will advise you not to get a full body MRI scan. You can pretty easily buy such a service, and hire some radiologists to pour over every cubic millimetre of your body. But it's a really bad idea. Because they will almost certainly find something ambiguous or troubling. And they're gonna biopsy. And then, well, maybe that's ambiguous. Another biopsy.…

There are a couple of orders of magnitude difference between findings from a full-body MRI and a routine labwork run.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#59

Post by danielovichdk »

_jal wrote: post #33
DiffEq wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to be callous by this comment but if you mean "live differently" as living unhealthy well I have a problem with this. People that live in unhealthy ways cause all sorts of grief to others as well as financial loss. It is not right that I have to pay for people that decide to essentially eat themselves to death; it is not right that my wife and I had to care for my mother for months because she decided to…

Welcome to being an adult. People will do all sorts of things you think are not "OK", including people you're attached to. If you have kids, they will, too. How we choose to deal with watching people do things we think they shouldn't is a matter of character. I will say that I try hard to listen to people's criticism with an open mind, but people who badger me when they know I have considered their position, well, we…

It's only one self that can determine if one self is in balance or not. Just like we can lie to ourselves telling "everything is alright" while in truth it's not really the case.

But yes, as adults we can determine for ourselves. But it's a poor character trait not to be responsible for how you feel.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#60

Post by jll29 »

May he rest in peace - he had some additional happy days from what it looks like, and he helped science advance a bit, kudos to him.

What worried me was when I read he was "not eligible" to be a recipient of a human heart; I hope this is not just because he had a bad (or no) insurance.

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