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No. 378764
>>378757 Oh, I thought you meant some transhumanism shit. My bad.
I do think that robotic replacements are less practical and farther away than lab-grown organs though. A titanium pump is no substitute for a biological heart, even if it is impressive, basically because it can't respond to signals as living tissue can and it can't grow. They did manage to save a little boy earlier with a tiny titanium heart (http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/05/24/us-italy-heart-idUSBRE84N0XZ20120524) but, even if at this point the artificial one was sustainable over a long period, he would need several surgeries as he grows up to replace it, because it cannot grow with him. (This "heart" can apparently pump 1.5 litres per minute; an adult pumps about 5 - 5.5 litres per minute.) Hearts are also fairly simple organs, really, and an artificial heart mostly sounds impressive because you will die immediately if anything goes a bit wrong with it. But consider a robotic filtering organ like the liver or kidney, or a lung, or an intestine. Dialysis machines are fuckhuge for a reason: these organs actually have very complicated functions that we can't make machines with the same capacity as a fist-sized kidney unless they are significantly larger than your head. There's an "artificial" kidney being worked on right now that can fit inside a person, but it's... it's really more like a box with living kidney cells inside, it's not a mechanical thing in its own right.
Robotic parts have their uses too though, just not when it comes to transplants. Bionic limbs are way fucking easier than growing a whole foot in a lab.
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