Page 129 - Biomimetics: Technology Imitates Nature

Harun Yahya

ject, describes why:
It’s that the engines we have available, whatever their pow-
er output or efficiency work so differently. Muscle is a soft,
wet, contractile engine, and that’s just unlike anything in
our technological armamentarium. So you can’t im-
itate a heart . . . 87
Like the genuine article, Abiomed’s ar-
tificial heart consists of two ventricles.
There the similarity ends, however. Alan
Snyder of Penn State, a bioengineer who
led the research, explains the difference in
these terms: “In the natural heart, you’re us-
ing muscle as a container and the container pumps on its own.” 88 Pumps
that work along the same lines as the heart contain a container and a sys-
tem that pumps the fluid. In the heart, however, the container carries out
its own pumping. That is the difference Snyder summarized.
Researchers, wondering how to make a heart that contracts by itself,
set the interior walls of the two ventricles into motion by placing a sepa-
rate engine between them. This artificial heart works with a battery locat-
ed in the patient’s abdomen. This battery has to be recharged continuous-
ly by radio waves emitted by a rechargable battery pack patients will
wear in a harness.
Our natural hearts, on the other hand, have no need of a battery for
energy, because they boast an incomparable muscular design capable of
creating its own energy in every cell. Another feature of the heart that
can’t be replicated is the incomparable efficiency of its pulses. In fact, the
heart can pump five liters of blood a minute while at rest, which can rise
to 25-30 liters during exercise. Kung, Abiomed’s director, describes this
extraordinary change of tempo as “a challenge that currently no mechan-
ical device can meet.” The artificial heart made by the company can only

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