Physicians have successfully implanted an artificial heart that does not beat:
Salina Mohamed So’ot has no pulse. But she is very much alive.
The 30-year-old administrative assistant is the first recipient here to get a new artificial heart that pumps blood continuously, the reason why there are no beats on her wrist.
An interesting development. I wonder if the efficiency and reliability of such artificial hearts will ever be such that people elect to replace their existing hearts with them even before their biological hearts wear out?
[via Slashdot, from The Straits Times][image from on Technology Review]
Human life expectancy keeps increasing steadily, thanks not only to medicine and technology but to social and cultural progress, too. Potential next steps on the ladder could well come from both camps: an example from the med-tech side might be