Let’s imagine that organs can be perfectly grown in a lab and installed into a body without any chance of rejection or other complications usually associated with organ transplant.
You, a perfectly healthy adult human, go to the doctor and have them put a second heart in your chest that is connected to the circulatory system with your original heart.
What would be the effects of this? Could it even be done in this hypothetical situation at all?
Perfectly healthy? Probably the only real advantage is redundancy, but that comes at the cost of complexity, and on balance, I’d guess that it’s a net negative.
Mostly because I can’t think of any organism that normally has 2 hearts. If there were real advantages, it seems, I dunno. Inevitable?
Pretty sure giraffes have 2 hearts, I think the brachiosaurus also had 2 hearts too. I have a feeling there was a fish or other ocean creature with multiple hearts and maybe another mammal?
Heres some info I found real quick. No giraffe, several sea creatures, a couple land animals, one dino maybe, and some vague ambiguity.
Giraffes are mammals and only have 1 heart. It’s freaking huge, though, at 11 kilos.
octopus and cuddlefish and similar frequently have multiple “hearts” but they’re not the same as mammalian hearts. Briachiosaurus probably had an even larger heart than a giraffe, but it was still a singular, 4 chambered hear.
As others have pointed out the issues, I will answer a different question.
It would be cool to have a backup heart. It sits unused and quite until needed. Clearly some issues with experiencing the same conditions as the first heart. If it were biological, then it would weaken without use.
But a small pump to survive a heart attack would be nice.
NAD.
Having said that, if your “primary” heart is having issues it’s usually something that a second heart wouldn’t be able to bypass.
For example, if the heart chambers are just fluttering then your second heart could try to take over, but I imagine that if the primary failing one would cause so much ruckus that the secondary wouldn’t be able to keep up normal blood flow.
I imagine a better system with some electronics that can either work as a pacemaker or take over completely in an emergency situation by just plain stopping the heart and taking over until help arrives, or something like that.
Again, NAD
The proverbial “two hearts in one chest” indicate a split mind, and create much pain.
It won’t do no good. The two would work against each other.
Not only in the holistic meaning, also from a strictly materialistical / technical point of view, there is no way to make them work synchronized. It is the very nature of the heart to determine it’s own rhythm.
And even a singular heart can have some weirdness when it’s own timing signals find alternate paths, like in some arrythmias.
I can only imagine the chaos of trying to keep signals synchronized between two hearts.
I dont think it will be beneficial. It w would probably cause hypertension. And it’s not like bodies have a lot of extra space now where you can fit a heart, so you’d be suppressing other organs.
You’d also have to solve the problems of them working with each other instead of against each other.
What happens to your blood pressure? Do they beat at the same time then how do you mitigate the pressure spike. You now have twice the capacity your blood vessels are meant to handle.
If they don’t beat at the same time how do you make sure blood does not just go back and forth between the hearts, but actually does something useful?
If they’re in series the pressure will increase, if they’re in parallel the flow would increase. Just have a pacemaker organ connected to both to time the pumps. You could reduce blood pressure but increase the amount of blood flowing, therefore less wear and tear on the hearts, arteries, organs, etc.
