BioMed
The artificial-heart field joins engineering ambition to patients with little time and few options.
Experts were sure a continuous-flow blood pump could not spin blood fast enough without killing the patient, and they were wrong. The engineer who proved them wrong said he would not have tried had he known the actual speed, so not knowing the supposed limit was what let the breakthrough happen.
Witnessing real innovation can make people feel they can do anything. Yet slow, heavy regulation can just as easily make them feel they can do almost nothing.
People at the very top of demanding fields often have others handle the mundane details of their lives so they can concentrate entirely on their work. When the work is caring for critically ill patients who keep no schedule, the expert's own sense of time bends to fit it.
A working new device is usually the end product of years of failed attempts by capable people, each failure teaching what does not work. In innovation, failure is not a detour but a requirement.
If a nation can send a man to the moon, it seems it should be able to build an artificial heart. The heart proved far harder than that confidence assumed, taking fifty years of false starts.
The image of the lone inventor in a room is mostly myth; even the classic examples rarely worked alone. Most innovation now happens through teams, each member solving part of the problem.
Offering very sick patients a few more months or years of life costs both suffering and resources. That raises the question of whether science must do harm in order to do good.
Heart disease kills more people worldwide than all cancers combined. Because treatments and cures were not arriving fast enough, doctors turned to the radical option of replacing the heart with a machine.
Pioneers in risky fields take as their creed that failing while daring greatly is better than never risking either victory or defeat. That creed justifies attempts that cautious people would never make.