Immortality and my brother-in-law's Biscúter
My brother-in-law and friend, Xavier Sardà, has a 1950s Biscúter: a microcar created after the war that, despite its simplicity—small, cheap, and fuel-efficient—was a huge success. And, despite being over seventy years old, the car still runs very well.
The secret? When a piece breaks, Sardà replaces it. And if he can't find it, he makes it to measure. Hypothetically, my brother-in-law's Biscúter could work forever. And here comes the thought: could we do the same with the human body?
Imagine that, like cars, we could replace damaged organs with new ones: hearts, kidneys, livers, stomachs... But manufacturing functional human organs is much more complicated than making a connecting rod or a differential.
Science hopes that the embryonic stem cells that were able to create all our organs and tissues will one day make it possible to build these replacements. For now, however, we must make do with transplants.
The first heart transplants
The first human heart transplant was performed in 1967 in South Africa by Dr. Christian Barnard, proving that heart transplantation was biologically possible. This earned him great international prestige. So much so, that it also generated admiration and envy. Dr. Cristóbal Martínez-Bordiú, General Franco's son-in-law and head of cardiac surgery at La Paz Hospital in Madrid, said: "If Africans can do it, we Spaniards will be no less!".
No sooner said than done. A Spanish heart transplant would be the regime's big news. He convinced a poor sick man to accept a heart transplant in exchange for the assurance that, if the operation failed, he would pay for his burial expenses and take care of his family's future. The director of La Paz told his relatives: ""You have done more for Spain than you think." Years later, the family was still demanding that those promises be fulfilled.
"The operation was a complete success!"
The transplant was performed with great media fanfare. Martínez-Bordiú was enthusiastic: ""The operation was a complete success!" But it seems the patient didn't agree and died a few hours later. The doctor, with a serious face, came back out and said: ""It was a lost cause!" And he was so pleased.
The truth is that Martínez-Bordiú was a very mediocre doctor, who only got to where he was because he was married to the dictator's daughter. Some gossips of the time made jokes like this: "Martínez-Bordiú has killed more people in La Paz than his father-in-law in the war."
A real success… in Barcelona
The first truly successful heart transplant in Spain was performed in 1984 by Dr. Caralps at the Hospital de Sant Pau in Barcelona. The operation was a technical success and paved the way for a pioneering model of transplantation and donation in Catalonia.
But the problem of rejection remains. Research is underway into the development of mechanical artificial hearts. Today, thousands of people around the world have implanted mechanical hearts.
The situation isn't completely resolved yet, as the hearts are still quite heavy and have wires that pass through the skin and extend to a backpack with rechargeable batteries that patients must always carry. And of course, running out of battery on your cell phone is a problem... but running out of battery on your artificial heart, too bad!
But one day we'll overcome all these obstacles, and then, who knows, will we be able to become immortal like my brother-in-law's Biscúter?