Have a Heart?

Some chilling statistics sited by The Heart Foundation:

1. Heart disease is the number one cause of death for men and women in the United States

2. More people die of heart disease then Aids and all cancers combined

3. 250,000 people die of Sudden Cardiac Death every year

4. Half of the Sudden Cardiac Deaths are under age 65 (YIKES!)

Fortunately, I take care of my heart. I eat right, monitor my weight, and exercise, which is a great start. But even those of us that are heart conscious can suffer from heart disease.

Courtesy Google Images

According to DVICE, Massachusetts General Hospital is researching an option for those circumstances when a healthy lifestyle isn’t enough. Doctor Harold Ott is leading an effort to grow a heart using a donor’s healthy organ cells and supplementing it with stem cells.

What makes this process significant? The chances that the host would reject the transplanted heart are lowered because the heart would be grown from the host’s own cells.

DVICE reports that scientists have already grown tracheas, bladders and noses. NBC reports that scientists at Yokohama City University in Japan “… have found a possible new way to grow a human liver from scratch, using stem cells that form a ‘bud’, then transplanting this growing baby liver into the body.” They’ve only performed the procedure on mice, but the progress is promising.

I think the advances in medical science are amazing. At the rate “They’re” going, all the body parts needed for a human body will be off-the-shelf items available at the pharmacy. What do you think … are you ready to walk into CVS and leave with a bottle of sunscreen and a liver?