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

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

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.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: alvin roth, lloyd shapley, medicine, organ donation, organ transplant, organoids, stem cells


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. 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 thread ]

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

    Re: Hmm

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. 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 thread ]

  4. 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 thread ]

  5. 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 thread ]

  6. 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 thread ]

  7. icon
    JoeCool (profile), 15 Apr 2016 @ 10:20am

    Re: Re: Hmm

    3 out of how many thousands? Hmm? Thought so.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  8. 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 thread ]

  9. 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 thread ]

  10. 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 thread ]

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

    Re: Re: Re: Hmm

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

    link to this | view in thread ]

  12. 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 thread ]

  13. 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 thread ]

  14. 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 thread ]

  15. 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 thread ]

  16. 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 thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.