The Artificial Heart

The medical need for a permanent replacement heart to be used with candidates for a heart transplant can be shown. The difficulty lies in the human body's inability to accept a permanent artificial transplant and in the lack of technological expertise to develop a workable and testable prototype. The first artificial heart was transplanted into a patient in 1969, by Denton Cooley (Cooley 57). Dr. Cooley continues to believe that a permanent artificial heart will be developed to aid the expected 10,000 to 20,000 people who are expected to have severe enough cardiac conditions by 2010 to warrant implantation of an artificial heart (Cooley 58). All artificial hearts have caused severe problems in the patients in which they were implan

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age on the waiting list over patients utilizing conventional therapy. Doctors can no longer utilize a "UNOS stat" notation. Although these measures help to force doctors to realize their ethical obligations to their patients and others on the waiting list for donor organs, it does not clear up other ethical problems with the artificial heart. The artificial heart is only approved, by the FDA, for use as a temporary measure between the time a patient's heart fails and a donor heart becomes available. The required consent forms are usually signed under the stress of a crisis situation. When a doctor knows the risk of the patient decreasing his chances for a successful human heart transplant, if the patient remains on an artificial heart for longer than three weeks, and the doctor knows he cannot control the availability of a human donor heart within that time, a truly the informed consent cannot be possible. The patient is being asked to consent to a temporary program, with very restrictive lifestyle for a short length of time, but yet, the doctor knows the patient may never receive a new heart. If the doctor knows the patient would not consent if he thought that the implantation of the artificial heart might be permanent,
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Approximate Word count = 3326
Approximate Pages = 13 (250 words per page)

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