Shocking! Government researchers tried to build a nuclear powered artificial heart in 1967
Every
year more than 600,000 individuals die due to coronary heart illness,
which is the primary killer within the US. However, it has been a little
difficult to design a long-term replacement for this important organ in
a society that is inundated with broken, ailing hearts.
In 1967,
researchers believed that they had the right solution to the problem: a
mechanical coronary heart fuelled by radioactive decay. Yes, an atomic
coronary heart.
Two separate government-funded teams of
researchers, the National Heart Institute (NHI) and the Atomic Energy
Agency (AEC) for a decade have been pursuing the dream of designing a
nuclear-powered heart. They stated that this was the only feasible solution for substituting diseased hearts.
While
the other power source for artificial hearts was conventional
batteries, but these had some very huge limitations. Firstly, they
overheated and then they needed daily recharging. Even after this, they
wore out after two years of service.
In comparison, patients could
get as many as ten years with this nuclear-powered approach and keep
them tension free of connecting to outside power sources.
The
nuclear hearts were power-driven by plutonium-238, an element that
releases close to a century’s worth of stable heat due to its natural
radioactive decay. The element has been used to power space satellites
and navigation beacons. According to Popular Science, it powered the New
Horizons spacecraft to Pluto, it drives the Mars rover Curiosity across
Martian terrain, and it thrusts the Voyager probe into deep space.
While
the two teams alleged that they could connect this energy to pump blood
through the human body, they still faced many technological challenges.
They
were required to make a mechanical pump that the human body wouldn’t
discard. They also wanted to include a safe and effective engine to
power the pump by changing the heat to energy.
The NHI and AEC bumped heads about the best way to carry out the research.
According
to the Atlantic, NHI for its part wanted to design a partial artificial
heart which would help a still-beating diseased heart in two stages: a
nonatomic pump system would be built first, followed by a
nuclear-powered engine.
On the other hand, the AEC wanted to
develop an integrated, atomic pump and engine that would totally
substitute the diseased heart for the long-term.
After being in
development for five years, both hearts had problems: While the AEC
heart remained bulky and incompetent, the NHI heart was poked with
technological bugs from overheating to allowing blood clot up the pump.
While
these were simply design flaws, the researchers still required to
address public concern about the ethics and safety of installing atomic
devices inside a human body! However, low the dose, the effects of
extended exposure to radiation were still not known.
Several
people thought that a plutonium-powered heart could put patients at risk
for a number of health problems, including leukemia. Those close to the
recipients such as loved-ones, caregivers, co-workers might also be at
risk of radiation poisoning. It was even recommended that if these
atomic hearts comes in the hands of criminals, they could turn them into
nuclear weapons.
Finally, after ten years, the idea flat lined.
Researchers
continue to chase the creation of a fully functional artificial heart.
Few biotech companies, including SynCardia, Carmat and AbioCor are in
different stages of producing a truly permanent mechanical heart that
could substitute a patient’s diseased heart and carry them through the
rest of their lifetime, the Verge reports.
As of now, they have
yet to make a heart, atomic or not, that works long-term within the
limits of the human body and does not need batteries or external
drivers. However, today’s artificial hearts can be used to buy time for
patients, as they wait their turn for a human heart transplant.