Pacemakers are expensive. Though some pacemaker manufacturers have dropped the price down to $800 in poorer countries, that’s still out of reach for many. One to two million people die each year because they don’t have access to this life-saving technology.
So researchers at the University of Michigan’s Cardiovascular Center have investigated pacemaker recycling—harvesting working pacemakers from the recently deceased. According to a position paper in the journal
Circulation, 84 percent of heart patients said they’d be willing to give away their pacemakers after they, well, no longer need them.