Replacing Parts Of The Body

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31052, 6 May 1966, Page 13

Replacing Parts Of The Body

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) HOUSTON, May 5.

Doctors will replace I all parts of the human body, except the brain, either with mechanical subsitutes or with duplicate parts from other people, according to a London heart surgeon, Dr. Donald Ross.

“It may not be in my lifetime or yours, but the time is not too far away,” Dr. Ross told the Houston meeting of the North American Federation of the International College of Surgeons. Dr. Ross, a lecturer in heart surgery at the Institute of Cardiology and a surgeon at Guy’s Hospital, London, said great steps had already been

taken in replacing faulty human organs.

Only the brain probably would never be replaced. Its operations were too complex. There was apparently no ageing process in the brain. Dr. Ross said there was little technical difference between implanting artificial valves in the heart and using substitute human valves, except that the substitute human valves required more stitching. “Any competent heart surgeon can do both,” he said. However, the use of mechanical parts to replace human organs brought the added problem of mechanical stress and strain—the same factors that eventually caused any mechanical appliance to wear out

“When you consider how much these mechanical tissues (heart valves) open and close, the stress must be terrific,” he said. “It’s a credit to United States technology that they perform as well as they do."

Replacement parts for the body would function as well as the original organs for short periods. However, over 30 to 40 years, the quality

of operation would deteriorate below that of the original organs, because the mechanical parts would wear out.