The article I picked for this assignment was one from the Monday, September 9 edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I found the article in the national news section, on the 3rd or 4th page, .
The title is "Nearly a Year Later, His Heart is Beating Strong." This article is a story about a 71 year old man named Tom Christerson who on September 13, 2001, received a heart transplant, not a real heart from an organ donor. Intsead he recieved a softball sized mechanical pump made up of plastic, titanium, and batteries. The synthetic heart is called "AlbioCor," and from my understanding is far more advanced than its predecessors in many ways. Perhaps the most important difference is that the implant is totally self contained; there are no wires or tubes that need to be connected outside of the body. From my understanding out of the 5 other people to receive this particular implant Tom has survived the longest, and among all artificial heart recipients the longest survival has been 620 days.
Before Mr. Christerson received the implant doctors said he had only days to live, and walking only a few steps would leave him weak and struggling to breathe. Now after receiving the transplant he is pretty much the typical healthy 71 year old man, other then the fact that he has a mechanical pump in his chest rather then a heart. Tom now strolls each morning to the cafe where he meets his friends for coffee.
I found this article interesting in many ways. The fact that today science and technologies are now capable of so many things, and these types of medical devices are just now starting to emerge, it makes me wonder what types of things we will be capable of when I reach a point in life when I may need some of the same types of heath aides as well as raising a question in my mind if it is even morally right to replace vital organs with machines.
As far as the creditability of this article is, I believe there is really no reason to doubt it's validity because it was a syndicated story that was put out by Associated Press, and to me the Associate Press is a very reliable, and creditable news media source.
