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Comment by ajross | Hacker News Reader

Not to belittle the doctor's work, but the truth is this isn't that hard a hack to imagine. Dialysis is a pretty simple process, done with a diffusion membrane. No doubt what he did was take a membrane intended for a normal machine and size it down with "plumbing" appropriate for the patient.

But then, that's kind of an essential quality of all great hacks, isn't it? They all look straightforward and simple when they're finished.

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The very definition of out of the box thinking, no?

I think it's easy to underestimate this. How many times do we hear of something like this. Not often. Most people play the cards they're dealt. He printed a new deck for this girl. This guy is the my-hero type of awesome.

The technical difficulty is almost a side thing I guess. The box is the limitations of the medical profession.

What I think is the interesting part of this is that he did not say: 'not my job' or (more likely) 'I wish that this was someone's job' or ' 'I wish we could do something.' He said 'what needs to be done.

I couldn't see any mention of the time it took to build the device, but I'd hazard a guess that the lifespan of a 6lb baby with failed kidneys could be measured in hours, which would seem to imply that the design was reasonably straightforward.

Not to devalue the doctor's work though. He did save someone's life.

Yes I'm sure it's "reasonably straightforward" to build a dialysis machine in a couple of hours, racing against a dying baby.

I said "design", not "build".

A second possibility is that he is a genius or was inspired enough to be a genius for that duration.

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