Quote:
Originally posted by Not Me
You have obviously never heard of ECMO. No lungs required.
Apparently you have never heard of a lung transplant or cardiac bypass surgery, either, which use the same extracorporeal oxygenation systems intra-operatively.
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I've heard of it, but I admit I've yet to hear of a set of lungs being sucessfully transplanted from a donorcycle accident victim into a 1 1/4 pound fetus, or of anyone, fetus or not, being kept alive on lung bypass for 3-4 months. If anything had been invented that could keep fetuses alive before 24 weeks or so, I'd probably have heard of it (and we'll leave out the severe debility common in most of those that do survive from that early). My impression is that this stuff just doesn't work on something that hasn't developed the ability to abosorb its own oxygen yet. You've pretty much got to work through the placenta until then.
Now, build me a surrogate womb and we're in business. I'm sure that, eventually, it will happen, though I doubt I'll live to see it.
