Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 241 posts

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#141

Post by dhosek »

heyoni wrote: post #16
slowhand09 wrote: post #5

My friend was a member of the transplant team at Johns Hopkins. "They" said he was near multiple organ failure prior to the transplant. And he survived significantly longer than expected. Recovery under those circumstances was a very long shot already. Kudos to him for undergoing the procedure, and furthering the research. Condolences to he and his family.

Which is probably how they got approval to do a pig heart transplant in the first place since he would never get on the transplant list.

From the article: “Doctors at the University of Maryland Medical Center were granted a special dispensation by the US medical regulator to carry out the procedure, on the basis that Mr Bennett—who was ineligible for a human transplant—would otherwise have died.”

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#142

Post by dhosek »

rurp wrote: post #106
data_acquired wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of Atul Gawande's books (Complications) mentions that amongst deaths where an autopsy is done, the cause of death was misdiagnosed by the doctor about 40% of the time. Quote from book [Page 197, Chapter name : "Final Cut"] --- "How often do autopsies turn up a major misdiagnosis in the cause of death? I would have guessed this happened rarely, in 1 or 2 percent of cases at most. According to three studies done in…

I think 100 years from now people will look back on our current medicine the same way we view medicine from 100 years ago. There is some impressive progress, but we know less than we think we do and conduct a lot of wasteful and harmful procedures. It's disturbing to learn how thin the evidence is for a lot of modern medical operations. For example, the recommendations for certain cancer screenings have actually been…

It's a bit startling to realize just how young medical science is. I think it's not unreasonable to compare medicine (and a lot of biology) in the nineteenth century to the state of physics in the sixteenth century.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#143

Post by 0des »

bradly wrote: post #121
heyoni wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which is probably how they got approval to do a pig heart transplant in the first place since he would never get on the transplant list.

I have an uncle in his sixties that has drank and smoked his whole life and he has been on heart and liver transplant list for about a year. Because he continued to live unhealthily his heart started failing this week with multiple heart attacks they moved him to level one priority and he will likely get his transplants this week. It feels weird that he is now ahead of others because they tried to be healthy and he d…

Hey, regardless of the politics of the situation, I hope you and your family are doing okay. Sorry to hear about your uncle.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#144

Post by SamoyedFurFluff »

sonicggg wrote: post #123
majormajor wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why are you so concerned about being able to observe it long-term when prior to this it had never even been able to be observed short term ? Do you think they should be doing this on a bunch of healthy people to "learn more"? Like you think there will be volunteers? Or do you think it's simply impossible and shouldn't have been done at all? Or are you just being contrary to be contrary?

Healthy people? Well, it's not like it's "raining organs" for people on a waiting list. Many of them will die waiting. There must be someone on a slight better shape and willing to take a chance.

It may not be ethical to do this under the guise of administering medical practice even if there is informed consent. Part of a doctors duty is to be the rational actor to say “you could have 6 months to live and this procedure has no evidence that you’ll live any longer, in fact, it could shorten your life to the time of your surgery”.

This is advocating for civil engineers to willingly approve on a bridge they have no evidence won’t collapse, just because the current bridge needs serious replacement.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#145

Post by SOLAR_FIELDS »

Karawebnetwork wrote: post #78
testesttest wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A test in the US < $50 and is easy to schedule without having a doctor involved at LabCore or similar. Is that an option in CA?

In Quebec at least, a doctor's prescription is required for all blood tests even at private labs.

Crazy how different it is vs the States - check out for instance what you can get immediately at this pretty popular chain: https://www.anylabtestnow.com/general-health/

Hundreds of different ones. Granted you still need some level of medical expertise to be able to accurately interpret results on a lot of them but a smart enough layman could probably self diagnose some illnesses with enough homework.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#147

Post by Konsistency »

slowhand09 wrote: post #5

My friend was a member of the transplant team at Johns Hopkins. "They" said he was near multiple organ failure prior to the transplant. And he survived significantly longer than expected. Recovery under those circumstances was a very long shot already. Kudos to him for undergoing the procedure, and furthering the research. Condolences to he and his family.

No post body was provided.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#148

Post by bigDinosaur »

dhosek wrote: post #142
rurp wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think 100 years from now people will look back on our current medicine the same way we view medicine from 100 years ago. There is some impressive progress, but we know less than we think we do and conduct a lot of wasteful and harmful procedures. It's disturbing to learn how thin the evidence is for a lot of modern medical operations. For example, the recommendations for certain cancer screenings have actually been…

It's a bit startling to realize just how young medical science is. I think it's not unreasonable to compare medicine (and a lot of biology) in the nineteenth century to the state of physics in the sixteenth century.

And certain major areas of medicine that people don't think about that much (outside of the field) such as medical informatics are younger still. This stuff has a huge impact on how medical care is actually delivered, but can be kind of left out of the broader public discussions around medicine due to the focus on the actual literal medicines.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#149

Post by 999900000999 »

Stupid question ?

Could they actually enhance the heart to be 10x stronger than a normal human. Giving the recipient superpowers.

I'm imagining the movie now BearMan, of course, we're still in the early stages, but I can imagine in 50 or 60 years being able to pick out all types of super enhanced implants.

All jokes aside, this man is a hero for trying such a crazy experiment, may he be the first but not the last. If this technology is perfected, no one will ever die waiting for a transplant again.

Re: Man given genetically modified pig heart dies

#150

Post by dpierce9 »

Supermancho wrote: post #3

He lasted 2 months. For reference, artificial hearts generally do 130 days - (2018) https://syncardia.com/patients/media/blog/2018/08/seven-thin... with some notable outliers that live for years, and human to human transplant is about 9 years. Usually it's some related systemic problem that kills you under these conditions eg consistent brain clotting causing stroke or organ failure due to drug cocktails.

Survival rate commensurability across time and procedure is quite complicated when you also have fairly strict/different/evolving selection criteria.
Post reply on HN