LONGEVITY: Business Week on ending heart disease

Max More (maxmore@primenet.com)
Fri, 19 Sep 1997 00:41:52 -0700


This week's Business Week (Sept 22) has an excellent summary of current
high-tech approaches to beating heart disease. Several very promising
approaches appear to be coming onto the market very soon, perhaps to
drastically reduce deaths due to the biggest source of mortality.

The article covers advanced surgical procedures that use robots and tiny
incisions (instead of cutting through the breast bone), and laser drills to
improve blood flow, gene therapy (the Apo-1 Milano gene produces protective
proteins similar to HDLs), drugs, genetically engineered animal heart
transplants, and so on.

The most fascinating device I found was an assist pump "called the
Streamliner under development by Bartley Griffith, a cardiologist at the
University of Pittsburgh. The Streamliner, about the size of a D-cell
battery, whirls like a tiny turbine, pumping blood not in heartbeats but in
a continuous flow: patients who get it will have no pulse."

Walking around with no pulse! Now that's extropian chic!

Max

Max More, Ph.D.
more@extropy.org
http://www.primenet.com/~maxmore
President, Extropy Institute: exi-info@extropy.org, http://www.extropy.org