DailyDirt: Matchmaker, Matchmaker, Make Me A Match...

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Sometimes extending a person's life requires an organ transplant, but it's not exactly easy to find a replacement organ -- especially when donors don't have spares. Medicine is getting better at growing some replacements, so maybe someday patients won't need to rely on other people dying to get a heart, liver, pancreas, etc. After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.
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Filed Under: alvin roth, lloyd shapley, medicine, organ donation, organ transplant, organoids, stem cells


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  • icon
    JoeCool (profile), 14 Apr 2016 @ 6:20pm

    Hmm

    It's not too hard to guess at why you only have one heart. It's a pump and a circulatory system. If you had TWO pumps, odds are good one would be stronger than the other. A stronger pump means a possibility of backflow on the weaker pump, and backflow on blood means blood clots, which means death. So having two hearts means an elevated chance at embolisms and less chance of surviving.

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Anonymous Coward, 14 Apr 2016 @ 6:26pm

      Re: Hmm

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      Lawrence D’Oliveiro, 14 Apr 2016 @ 7:13pm

      Re: It's not too hard to guess at why you only have one heart

      Be careful of the assumption that a biological system is in any way intelligently designed.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      klaus (profile), 15 Apr 2016 @ 12:23am

      Re: Hmm

      Would Chev Chelios
      Count as having two tickers?
      Well, Doctor Who then?

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2016 @ 2:30pm

        Re: Re: Hmm

        Top banana! Chev Chelios IS that balls out urban ranger!!! The Staph at that zenith before he started shagging RHW, going to Kew Gardens and being seen at Crufts. Are you doing a poem there Klaus or someting? Wow.

        Oh Wait, your not german are you?

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2016 @ 4:40pm

          Re: Re: Re: Hmm

          Poem? What? It's called a haiku......

          link to this | view in chronology ]

        • identicon
          Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2016 @ 5:30pm

          Re: Re: Re: Hmm

          Please don't dis the Germans. Just, don't. History man

          Let's bask in the light that was Chev Chelios and ponder how he could survive a drop from 30,000 feet and land on a car and survive, then an hour later, after conquering electricity, and multiple kung-fu gangsters, shag Amy Smart in front of 50,000 people at a sports stadium, fight multiple dog owners AND their dog, dodge bullets and survive car crashes, then recover his heart by a roof-top battle from Chinese goons by means of a sex-maniac, drug-addicted, highly unsanitary, struck-off doctor.

          How? He's Chev Chelios, that's how.

          link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2016 @ 4:48pm

        Re: Re: Hmm

        Chev Chelios, the man with two hearts, only his real one had been snatched by Chinese mooks leaving him with a mechanical battery operated one

        That said I can only remember Amy Smart----- can you blame me?

        link to this | view in chronology ]

      • identicon
        Anonymous Coward, 15 Apr 2016 @ 5:15pm

        Re: Re: Hmm

        Haha Bro, got that in one............

        Sad fact - do you get that Crank was nearly a decade ago???

        Feelin' old man, feelin' old

        link to this | view in chronology ]

    • icon
      Ninja (profile), 15 Apr 2016 @ 5:15am

      Re: Hmm

      I'm no doctor here but I can assure you that it does not happen with mechanical pumps if properly installed. You can go for added pressure or added flow depending if you install them in series or in parallel. And even then you can add valves to prevent backflow depending on your needs.

      So if there is backflow or something then the setup isn't correct.

      link to this | view in chronology ]

      • icon
        JoeCool (profile), 15 Apr 2016 @ 10:25am

        Re: Re: Hmm

        Exactly my point. We can tailor a mechanical system with multiple pumps by controlling everything about the system. But who or what is controlling biological systems so finely that they can prevent such problems? I doubt evolution works on such small scales as to alleviate problems, and I don't know about you, but no "higher power" has ever intervened in the lives of anyone I know.

        link to this | view in chronology ]

        • icon
          nasch (profile), 15 Apr 2016 @ 12:53pm

          Re: Re: Re: Hmm

          I doubt evolution works on such small scales as to alleviate problems,

          What makes you say that? It works on a small enough scale to make geckos' feet stick to things, and that's a lot smaller than a heart.

          link to this | view in chronology ]

          • icon
            JoeCool (profile), 15 Apr 2016 @ 10:29pm

            Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmm

            Small scale meaning within an organism's lifespan, not size. Evolution takes many generations to work, but you don't have that time to adjust an unbalanced pumping system.

            link to this | view in chronology ]

            • icon
              nasch (profile), 16 Apr 2016 @ 9:20am

              Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Hmm

              Evolution takes many generations to work, but you don't have that time to adjust an unbalanced pumping system.

              I'm not so sure, it seems like there are a lot of systems that would need to be fully in place before an organism could rely on them. Lungs for example. You can't wander around for long on land without lungs, and there's no time to evolve them in a single generation. Yet somehow animals evolved lungs and discarded their gills. I imagine the same sort of process could manage multiple pumps, and apparently it has:

              http://mentalfloss.com/article/52337/3-creatures-more-one-heart

              link to this | view in chronology ]

  • identicon
    Fiddler on my roof, 14 Apr 2016 @ 7:25pm

    Match box fire

    Match Maker, Match Maker Make me a match find me a Fire, catch me a catch Match maker Match maker, look though your leak, and find me the perfect match

    FIRE ... I Bring you to BURN...

    link to this | view in chronology ]


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