A patient whose heart has stopped could potentially live on the machine for months, awake, able to walk and read the newspaper. But he might never leave the I.C

A patient whose heart has stopped could potentially live on the machine for months, awake, able to walk and read the newspaper. But he might never leave the I.C.U. “It’s a trap,” Zitter said. Holy shit. I think we should keep people alive as long as possible, as long as they want to be kept alive. This is awesome. Hopefully in future the cost can be decreased and the safety increased. The pessimistic take is that meaningful improvements in the tech are impossible. I think that's not true. As an aside I think we need to really rethink circulatory system health -- seems a lot of death causes arise from circulatory system: ischemic heart attack, stroke, even kidney related diseases. If we can enhance the reliability / health of circulatory system it should have big effects.