Artificial hearts already work since quite a while.

It is amazing, but real organs can sustain themself - artificial mechanical ones not. And need surgery for replacement.

I have my hopes on artificial real organs and see the mechanical ones as a intermediate solution.

A miraculous breakthrough could be on two fronts: artificial "meat organs" for those whose life is at immediate risk and need a transplant, and regenerative biotech/medicine to repair those with damage without requiring surgery.

Either way, implanted devices can be a good bridge from our current situation.

And they are. One of the other 6 finalists were doing "Genetically-engineered pig kidney xenotransplantation". The idea is to "Genetically engineered pig kidneys that will increase the supply of transplantable organs by eliminating the antibody barrier to xenotransplantation."

> Artificial hearts already work since quite a while

Frankly I wouldn't want one for $1B.

IIRC the longest recorded survival with an artificial rate was about 3 months for a continuous flow 'pulse-less' device https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_heart

So yeah, they "work", but are still far from perfect.

Seems that the article is a bit outdated. Carmat total artificial heart already had patient with at least 20 months of survival (it is currently used as a bridge until transplantation). * https://www.bfmtv.com/economie/entreprises/services/carmat-u... (20 months in French) https://www.carmatsa.com/en/news/carmat-feedback-6-years-8-m... (latest study results)

I would like a backup heart, but not sure if it makes sense from an engineering standpoint.

For sudden cardiac death? Isn't that mostly caused by arrhythmia? So a prophylactic pacemaker maybe? Isn't that already a thing?

The threat model could be a freak heart stabbing. In which case a backup heart somewhere else (and some truly earthshattering breakthroughs in fast clotting) might make sense.

My dream technology would be a way to make my body just ... stop, if Something Bad happened, like all my blood falling out, until someone stumbled upon my non-rotting corpse, patched the holes, and filled it back up.

It's such bullshit that if I stop living for even a little bit my body melts into useless slag like an engine running without oil.

I imagined damage to the heart muscles or blocked blood vessel.