161. Artificial Heart
- Rainey Knudson
- Aug 23
- 2 min read
The problem is baked into the name. It’s not just the mechanics, it’s the sense that our soul resides there, the place that represents everything that makes life worth living. To make that—artificial?
Still, the mechanics are no joke. They’re the reason we haven’t come close. The human heart beats over 115,000 times a day, roughly 45 million times per year. Each beat drives two pumps: one on the right that pushes blood to the lungs at low pressure, and one on the left that pushes the same volume to the rest of the body at high pressure. When it works well, it’s an astonishingly resilient little muscle.
And astonishingly hard to replicate. The early models tried to mimic the heart’s action, but the moving parts wore out in months, while clots and infections were a constant threat. Life with one—attached to a large machine—was no life at all, but a misery of strokes, seizures, and eventual organ failure. The longest anybody lasted was 620 days, tethered the whole time. More recent models do not pulse at all, but produce a continuous flow of blood powered by magnets with no touching parts. These raise a new question: do other systems in the body depend on the pulse—does it activate certain responses—or can the body do without it? Nobody knows. Only people facing imminent death are willing to try them.
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This post is part of The American 250, a series featuring 250 objects made by Americans, located in America, in honor of the country's 250th anniversary. 250 words on 250 works, from January 1 to December 31, 2026.
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