/ News
France implants its first artificial heart
An artificial heart that can give patients up to five years of extra life has been successfully implanted for the first time.
The heart, powered by watch-style batteries that can be worn externally, was put into a patient at Paris’s Georges Pompidou Hospital.
It uses a range of “biomaterials”, including bovine tissue, to reduce the likelihood of the body rejecting it.
Unlike previous artificial hearts, created mainly for temporary use, the design by the French Carmat biomedical firm is intended to replace a real heart for as many as five years.
French medics said the unnamed male patient who received the device was awake and responding well after an operation on Wednesday. Marcello Conviti, the chief executive of Carmat, said: “We are delighted with this first implant, although it is premature to draw conclusions given that a single implant has been performed and that we are in the early post-operative phase.”
The artificial heart, developed with the help of engineers from the Dutch-based European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), weighs 2lbs — almost three times as much as an average healthy human heart. It mimics heart muscle contractions and contains sensors that adapt the blood flow to the patient’s moves.
Inside the heart, surfaces that come into contact with human blood are made partly from bovine tissue instead of synthetic materials such as plastic, which can cause blood clots.
The new device could help thousands of people who die each year while waiting for a donor, including many in Britain. Nearly 100,000 people in Europe and the United States are in need of a heart transplant, according to Carmat. The company claims its device should enable hospital patients to return home and possibly even resume work.
Alain Carpentier, the surgeon who performed the implant, said: “It’s about giving patients a normal social life with the least dependence on medication as possible.
“We’ve already seen devices of this type but they had a relatively low autonomy. This heart will allow for more movement and less clotting. The study that is starting is being very closely watched in the medical field.” Heart failure affects more men than women, and the size of the artificial heart means it can fit in 86 per cent of men’s bodies but only about 20 per cent of women. However, Carmat says it can manufacture a smaller version to fit the more petite bodies of women as well as patients in India and China.
The artificial heart will raise France’s reputation as a country at the forefront of medical innovation.
In 2005, surgeons in France performed the first face transplant on Isabelle Dinoire, whose features were badly mutilated by a dog.
Marisol Touraine, France’s health minister, was quick to praise the operation as a sign of the country’s edge in the field of health care.
“This news brings great pride to France,” he said. “It shows we are pioneers in health care, that we can invent, that we can carry an innovation that will also bring great hope to plenty of people.”
Carmat won permission from the French authorities to test the human implants on four patients in three hospitals last September.
All were suffering from terminal heart failure.
While the intention is for each heart to keep a patient alive for five years, the success of the device in the trials will be judged on whether they survive with the implant for at least a month. Carmat hopes to finish human trials of the heart by the end of next year and to obtain approval to market the devices in the EU by early 2015.
It is expected to cost €140,000 (£120,000) to €180,000 (£150,000) if and when it goes on sale in Europe. The company’s shares have risen fivefold since floating on the Paris stock market in 2010. Among Carmat’s competitors in the race to perfect artificial heart implants are the privately-owned company, SynCardia Systems, and Abiomed, both of the United States.
The longest a patient has lived with a SynCardia heart is just under four years.
A spokesman for SynCardia said: “We’re very happy for them and we wish them the best in their pursuit.”
Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/10532427/France-implants-its-first-artificial-heart.html
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Founded by Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov in February 2011 with the participation of leading Russian specialists in the field of neural interfaces, robotics, artificial organs and systems.
The main goals of the 2045 Initiative: the creation and realization of a new strategy for the development of humanity which meets global civilization challenges; the creation of optimale conditions promoting the spiritual enlightenment of humanity; and the realization of a new futuristic reality based on 5 principles: high spirituality, high culture, high ethics, high science and high technologies.
The main science mega-project of the 2045 Initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfer of a individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.
A large-scale transformation of humanity, comparable to some of the major spiritual and sci-tech revolutions in history, will require a new strategy. We believe this to be necessary to overcome existing crises, which threaten our planetary habitat and the continued existence of humanity as a species. With the 2045 Initiative, we hope to realize a new strategy for humanity's development, and in so doing, create a more productive, fulfilling, and satisfying future.
The "2045" team is working towards creating an international research center where leading scientists will be engaged in research and development in the fields of anthropomorphic robotics, living systems modeling and brain and consciousness modeling with the goal of transferring one’s individual consciousness to an artificial carrier and achieving cybernetic immortality.
An annual congress "The Global Future 2045" is organized by the Initiative to give platform for discussing mankind's evolutionary strategy based on technologies of cybernetic immortality as well as the possible impact of such technologies on global society, politics and economies of the future.
Future prospects of "2045" Initiative for society
2015-2020
The emergence and widespread use of affordable android "avatars" controlled by a "brain-computer" interface. Coupled with related technologies “avatars’ will give people a number of new features: ability to work in dangerous environments, perform rescue operations, travel in extreme situations etc.
Avatar components will be used in medicine for the rehabilitation of fully or partially disabled patients giving them prosthetic limbs or recover lost senses.
2020-2025
Creation of an autonomous life-support system for the human brain linked to a robot, ‘avatar’, will save people whose body is completely worn out or irreversibly damaged. Any patient with an intact brain will be able to return to a fully functioning bodily life. Such technologies will greatly enlarge the possibility of hybrid bio-electronic devices, thus creating a new IT revolution and will make all kinds of superimpositions of electronic and biological systems possible.
2030-2035
Creation of a computer model of the brain and human consciousness with the subsequent development of means to transfer individual consciousness onto an artificial carrier. This development will profoundly change the world, it will not only give everyone the possibility of cybernetic immortality but will also create a friendly artificial intelligence, expand human capabilities and provide opportunities for ordinary people to restore or modify their own brain multiple times. The final result at this stage can be a real revolution in the understanding of human nature that will completely change the human and technical prospects for humanity.
2045
This is the time when substance-independent minds will receive new bodies with capacities far exceeding those of ordinary humans. A new era for humanity will arrive! Changes will occur in all spheres of human activity – energy generation, transportation, politics, medicine, psychology, sciences, and so on.
Today it is hard to imagine a future when bodies consisting of nanorobots will become affordable and capable of taking any form. It is also hard to imagine body holograms featuring controlled matter. One thing is clear however: humanity, for the first time in its history, will make a fully managed evolutionary transition and eventually become a new species. Moreover, prerequisites for a large-scale expansion into outer space will be created as well.
Key elements of the project in the future
• International social movement
• social network immortal.me
• charitable foundation "Global Future 2045" (Foundation 2045)
• scientific research centre "Immortality"
• business incubator
• University of "Immortality"
• annual award for contribution to the realization of the project of "Immortality”.
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