Episode 30: An ICU physician on the dark side of mechanical ventilators

When the inventors of the iron lung wheeled their contraption into the hospital for the first time, they likely had one thing on their minds: saving the lives of children with polio. And they did. But there exists a darker side of these machines and their successors: people with persistent critical illnesses — like those with Covid-19 today — tethered to ventilators for weeks, if not longer, living in a "twilight existence" of being kept alive by a machine. This week, intensive care physician Hannah Wunsch explores the history of mechanical breathing, the countless lives it has saved, and the moral dilemmas it created that have only grown with the technology.