| I used to deliver food in a hospital. I got to know a guy who had emphysema or something like that I served him food off and on for about two years. One day I saw that he disappeared and I thought he was dead, but he popped up a few days later with some gnarly staples on his chest and a much less hoarse voice. After a few false promises over the years he finally got a new set of lungs, they gave him a new heart too because his was fucked from the strain that his damage lungs had put on it. IIRC, he got a new set of lungs and a heart on Wednesday, was sitting up by Friday and was eating the pureed food that I served him by Saturday. I had no idea the recovery time was so fast for a procedure that involves splitting your chest open, ripping your heart and lungs out and sticking new ones in there and sewing it back up. The unfortunate part of this all is that he probably isn't still alive today as I understand it because lung transplants still have poor prognosis, unlike something like a heart transplant. I believe it's due to increased infection inherent in the nature of the organ -- it makes direct contact with outside air and has an insane surface area, couple that with immunosuppressive drugs and the risk of infection you're looking at an increased chance of death. But if we had some way to grow perfect stem cell organs for situations like this or ECMO that can keep a baby alive it changes everything. The US spends 1% of the GDP on dialysis alone, it's mind boggling. We've found these treatments like ECMO that 'work' in a very tenuous sense that they can sometimes if you squint hard enough produce desirable results but it's in no way sustainable or scaleable. Any technology that pushes us towards a future where we can grow and store organs will change the face of humanity in so many ways. It'll free up so many resources that we can then focus on other game-changing medical innovations, which I think will lead to a snowball effect of the eradication of so many maladies and a fundamental shift in the human condition. |