The Kidney project has been at it for at least 8 years. Maybe they’ll have something in 10 years. I am not optimistic about anything coming out of it soon. It’s like the Moller Skycar.
Can an artificial kidney finally free patients from dialysis?
61–70 of 97 posts
Re: Can an artificial kidney finally free patients from dialysis?
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
"This important research, which study leaders say could save many lives in the future, was made possible by the family of a 57-year-old male who elected to donate his body after a brain death declaration and a circumstance in which his organs or tissues were not suitable for transplant."
Ooh, I need to look into this... I assume "donate to science" is an additional opt-in not covered by the regular organ donor designation, but it seems like something where one or more or less inclusive of the other and it'd be cool if we treated them as such. Like, my organs are kind of crummy, so idk if anyone would benefit from them as a transplant. I just want my body to be useful!
It may not be a simple tick box like the organ donor one on your driver's license application.
It sounds like something you would do through an advanced directive or your will, but I'm not an attorney.
Re: Can an artificial kidney finally free patients from dialysis?
#63As someone on dialysis, this would be amazing to see. I wonder if the same immunoresponse issues would happen with this like with a transplant. The holy grail of transplant medicine for years has been acquired immunity, where you convince the immunesystem not to attack the transplant. Still hoping we see progress there, but this looks like a viable alternative to a donor transplant.
The article says it "does not trigger the recipient’s immune system to go on the attack." I've read elsewhere that the biological stuff inside is sealed off from the immune system.
It’s pretty hard to seal off the kidney from the immune system since the immune system is in the blood and kidneys filter blood
Re: Can an artificial kidney finally free patients from dialysis?
#64The Kidney project has been at it for at least 8 years. Maybe they’ll have something in 10 years. I am not optimistic about anything coming out of it soon. It’s like the Moller Skycar.
Yes, I've been following this line of research since 2004. This may predate the Kidney project: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1523-1755.2004.00923.x
I'm glad there are still new developments and I hope something comes of it (I have known people who needed to go through dialysis). It is definitely in the realm of the high-and-lofty.
Re: Can an artificial kidney finally free patients from dialysis?
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
https://archive.ph/ba9Cw Presumably it's just an overbroad filter responding to some random attack in the past. Either way: best not to pick it apart on this thread, which isn't about web filtering, but rather artificial kidneys.
Oddly, I'm getting a server not found for archive.ph.
Try:
Also, try turning off DoH on Firefox:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/dns-over-https
(Except for me it wasn't server not found, it was an SSL error about no cipher (or "cypher" in SSL-speak) overlap.)
Re: Can an artificial kidney finally free patients from dialysis?
#66As someone on dialysis, this would be amazing to see. I wonder if the same immunoresponse issues would happen with this like with a transplant. The holy grail of transplant medicine for years has been acquired immunity, where you convince the immunesystem not to attack the transplant. Still hoping we see progress there, but this looks like a viable alternative to a donor transplant.
There is a lot of research going into making kidneys without the markers that cause rejection. They hope to make pig kidneys compatible with human transplantation this way.
Do you know how far away stuff like this is from commercial application?
Re: Can an artificial kidney finally free patients from dialysis?
#67Using throw-away as this sounds dismal, BUT: who makes money from this and who loses money? That will tell you whether this can happen or not. Dialysis is big business. Technicians. Consumables. Doctors. Repeated Vi$it$. Real estate (often owned by the Nephrologist $.) More saliently, Nephrologist also control the standard of care. Do they stand to gain more from artificial kidney surgery/maintenance, or do they stan…
What does it matter who loses money? This isn't a 3 person scam, there are 10s of thousands of people capable and it only takes a single company getting a single practice in the area to start doing ${RADICALLY_MORE_EFFECTIVE_THING} and they get all of the pie while these stagnant people now get none. If there is some grand conspiracy of how they have enough power to prevent anybody from coming in and doing it better/…
>> This isn't a 3 person scam, there are 10s of thousands of people capable and it only takes a single company getting a single practice in the area to start doing ${RADICALLY_MORE_EFFECTIVE_THING}
This isnt an iOS app where 10,000 developers compete to bring prices down. This is medicine. You cant just compete, the Nephrology Board has to approve these standards of practice. Funny, they also benefit when there isnt progress.
Lets tackle it another way -- if medicine is a perfect competition, how is are hospital bills one of the leading causes of bankruptcy in the US? Shouldnt programmers have made it all efficient and made everything free like in software?
Re: Can an artificial kidney finally free patients from dialysis?
#68Using throw-away as this sounds dismal, BUT: who makes money from this and who loses money? That will tell you whether this can happen or not. Dialysis is big business. Technicians. Consumables. Doctors. Repeated Vi$it$. Real estate (often owned by the Nephrologist $.) More saliently, Nephrologist also control the standard of care. Do they stand to gain more from artificial kidney surgery/maintenance, or do they stan…
On the other hand, the government spends a huge amount on dialysis. Medicare pays for it regardless of your age. Removing the need for dialysis simplifies life for politicians by putting off the day they need to raise taxes or cut Medicare services. Dialysis is also a lot crappier than this would be. My mom was on dialysis and quality of life is not great. Neither is the expected lifespan. Free markets have their fla…
>> Free markets have their flaws but their big advantage is competition.
Medicine is not a "free market", it is tightly controlled. The standards of care are determined by doctors. Doctors also happen to control the supply of care and hence the price of care. Doctors also happen to rake in money doing all this.
You cannot just release a medical device or medicine like you release code into github.
Re: Can an artificial kidney finally free patients from dialysis?
#69The day artificial organs replace the need for donation organs, it will save millions of people (today and future)
doesn't even need to be "organs" plural... a single organ could probably do that - although one would no doubt include information to help others. For all the bad things going on in the world... always good to see options like these becoming possible.
Re: Can an artificial kidney finally free patients from dialysis?
#70Will this be abused whereby peoples are coerced into trading their kidney for an artificial one for a price?
What does that scenario look like in practice? Suppose I'm the evil coercing person. I have an artificial kidney and $X, you have (still in your body) a real kidney, and you're short of money so you prefer (artificial kidney + $X) to (real kidney). We make the trade. Why would I do that? Presumably so that I can (evilly) treat someone with kidney disease by giving them a real kidney, which they prefer to an artificia…
We have already seen this. In Iran you can buy a kidney for $5000, which is around 2 years of rent in the country. So I'd argue it's substantial but not really life changing.