ical status of patients using an artificial heart is not always better than without the implantation. Therefore, it is not medically ethical to proceed with surgery and implanting a device which may not improve the patients life and may very well shorten it and reduce the quality of the patients remaining life. At this point, ethical questions arise. Critics of the artificial heart have raised valid ethical questions to its use. Ethical problems have emanated from the consent process, the independence of institutional review boards, the involvement of the for-profit Humana Inc., the allocation of immense amounts of money for end-stage treatment instead of for prevention of heart disease, the patients' quality of life, the use of publicity. Doctors have manipulated the national organ procurement network, violated standards for qualifying patients for transplants, and the side-stepped reporting criteria by calling the use of heart-lung bypass machines, to bridge patients between heart failure and the time a transplant can be found, therapy instead of an e
...