Heart Surgeon Takes Notes from da Vinci

vivekg writes "Leonardo da Vinci probably never thought he had the proverbial Holy Grail to a revolution in heart surgery. Almost 500 years after da Vinci's death, intricate diagrams of the human heart made by him have inspired a British surgeon to pioneer a new way to repair damaged hearts."

how much pure knowledge have we discarded?

[yagu]

Disclaimer: this post is philosophical drivel...

I wonder how many insights from the past we as a "civilization" may be whistling past. In our smug (seemingly) mastery of technology I often feel a sense of something missing, or just not quite in the right place. Today we can instantaneously retrieve and play on our mp3 players any song that tickles our fancy, but to what end? When sales of Britney outstrip sales of the Emperor Concerto something is out of whack.

Base and rank commercialism has overtaken sensibility. Our choices are far less choices and far more subtle (and sometimes otherwise) manipulation of our choices by mass market driven money making machines.

For example, the food industry: did you know that one of the most healthy foods you can eat is tuna? And if you're trying to lose weight it can be a keystone in that goal. Did you know that some brands of tuna have artificially introduced certain appetite inducing chemicals? No intrinsic added value to the food, just a manipulation of you to buy more food (hopefully, their tuna).

Now, to relate all of this back to the original article. What percentage of medical breakthroughs and research have anything to do with cumulative knowledge? What percentage is just purely money driven?

It's only my opinion, but "we" as a civilization will show true evolution when we take use of true knowledge and think less about everything as "business". Business is an artifact. Truth and knowledge serve more faithfully.

different views

[BushCheney08]

Does anyone else here get the feeling from this that doctors have a sort of "well, that's how it's always been done" approach to medicine? I mean, you'd think that at some point, somebody would have stopped and said "is there a better way to do this?" I guess, in some ways, this guy is that "revolutionary" thinker...

Re:Am I missing something?

[mpontes]

I was wondering that as well, what can the Da Vinci drawings of a heart have that a realistic computer model doesn't?

Re:The protection of red tape.

[Ironsides]

It's funny how much you can get done once you blow bureaucracy out of the way. Exhuming corpses for study probably broke a billion laws back then as well, but so much has come from his approach. Then again, I might be confusing the Da Vinci Code with reality. Damned fiction based on facts. It's probably safest to just say that I HEARD that he exhumed corpses. I didn't know him personally.

It's not that he exhumed corpses, it's that he studied them. (Which is partly how he became so good at realistic stone carving.) Ya see, if you studied the corpse, you could eventually figure out how they died. And well, so many members of royalty and people involved with powerful people died under "mysterious circumstances" that the survivors (who in many cases were the next in line for the position) didn't want to be implicated/accused/beheaded, so that anything that could lead to autopsies were pretty much outlawed.

Re:Now medicine is a monopoly

[Edmund Blackadder]

"there was no monopoly; barbers and other people ..." Yeah and numerous people were killed in their dubious attempts at medicine. BTW medicine is not a monopoly ... anybody can join if you (i) finish medschool (ii) pass an exam. If you are not smart enough to do these ... there is no need to involve antitrust law in this.

Re:how much pure knowledge have we discarded?

[the morgawr]

Dear whoever modded me flaimbait,

The post to which I was refering is a traditional Marxist arguement. That's why I linked an example of a book dealing with the very issue. If you don't like what I have to say, respond and prepare to defend your point of view. Don't mod me down because you don't like hearing the truth.

Doing things 'differently' in medicine is the root

[ABeowulfCluster]

... of malpractice suits. If you do something differently, and something goes wrong, the lawyers come out and sue because you were doing something non standard. I find it a bit spooky that a doctor would even need to look at old drawings to know how heart valves work. Isn't this why they are made to work on cadavers, so they know the body inside and out? Doesn't the real thing trump some old drawings?

Re:Science

[fm6]

Of course science isn't bad just because it's old. But even old science that's good is mostly useless now, because it's based on premises that modern scientists just can't work with.

Leonardo's contributions to science and technology are mostly in the form of meticulous observation and clever design. That sort of thing doesn't get invalidated by the passage of time. If he had been more of a theoretician, modern scientists would sneer at him, they way they do at Aristotle — whose theories were the basis of most western science for centuries.

Re:Ahead of his time

[E8086]

Maybe not that far ahead. Good medical knowledge/practices seem to have gotten lost over the years, at least in "western" civilization. The Romans had decently trained medics/doctors with the ability to successfully treat lots of injuries and illnesses. I don't know about heart and brain surgery but they were good at eye surgery. So they missed the observation that discovered penicillin, but they knew it was a good idea to keep hospitals clean, they went with the option of buildings with lots of big open windows to provide plenty of ventalation to carry off the stuff that was coughed and sneezed out could be carried away by the wind instead of sealed buildings covered with bleach a few times a day. Today it seems a common solution for treating people is pump them full of drugs, broad spectrum antiboidics, pain killers and sedatives to the point where they can't think straight and see what happens. Then came the dark ages when everything good was lost of considered bad, the church considered it unholy to examine a body and taking a bath is bad because it removes the layers of protective dirt covering your skin. Advancement in western civilivation was halted or went backwards for a thousand years, The people of DaVinci's time only rediscovered the works of those a thousand years before. Yes, their building material were a little different, basic cement and iron and lead and oil lamps instead of steel reinforced hardened concrete and light bulbs and nuclear power plants but society behaved in much the same way.

Funny you should say that... India.

[Animaether]

It may have come from a bit of a sensationalist reporter, Donal MacIntyre, but I have no reason to doubt his footage.

In India it is not unheard of that doctors will take organs from persons or bodies, such as valves in the case of bodies, for transplantation to 'customers' who need them.
The deceased may never have signed a donor form, and the family is not informed.
Neither is the recipient - they simply aren't told what type of valve they're getting (artificial being the common assumption).

To paraphrase a statement from one hospital CEO/doctor : "We open them up, take out the valves, sow them back up, and no harm is done. The body gets cremated and nobody will ever know."

So, yes... blow bureaucracy out of the way, and a lot of good can be done. But at what cost?

Re:how much pure knowledge have we discarded?

[Grendel Drago]

For example, the food industry: did you know that one of the most healthy foods you can eat is tuna? And if you're trying to lose weight it can be a keystone in that goal. Did you know that some brands of tuna have artificially introduced certain appetite inducing chemicals? No intrinsic added value to the food, just a manipulation of you to buy more food (hopefully, their tuna).

Holy crap! As someone who eats a heck of a lot of tuna, I'd like to know more about this. Alas, googling for "appetite" and "tuna" just gets me some articles about trade wars between the U.S. and tuna-exporting nations. (Oh, and a suggestion to feed anorexic cats tuna juice.) Where did you learn of this from?

Re:how much pure knowledge have we discarded?

[Reality Master 101]

Could it be your own inflated value of classical music that's out of wack?

No, Classical Music (and music of that general category) is provably more musically complex and sophisticated than almost all popular rock-offshoots (with certain exceptions). There is so much irony in that "music geeks" who pride themselves on finding obscure indie bands and having huge music collections are actually unbelievably myopic in their understanding of music. It's all in a very narrow band of genres by bands that are basically the same.

Now, that doesn't mean that simplistic music is bad or not worth listening to, anymore than a bowl of ice cream isn't worth eating. But don't fool yourself that you're eating a subtle, complex and satisfying meal.