Now, this is what I've been waiting for (well, at least until they come up with superior technology to replace it):

As reported in the London Daily Mail, Yacoub's team harvested the stem cells and used a chemical cocktail to coax them into becoming heart cells. Placed on a "scaffold" made of biodegradable plastic, they grew and fused together to form discs of heart valve tissue just an inch wide. As the valves developed, the scaffold decayed, leaving behind solid tissue.

Yacoub, a professor of cardiac surgery at Imperial College London, noted: "Although there has been huge progress in developing mechanical replacements, they still work mechanically and not physiologically — they cannot match the elegant sophisticated functions of living tissues."

Unlike rigid artificial valves that just open and shut, these valves are living tissue that responds to events and changes shape as required. The heart can pump freely and unobstructed by a foreign object. There's no need to replace valves as children grow older — indeed, no need to replace them ever.

And they're planning to grow whole hearts as well. Hey if it's good enough for robots, it's good enough for me.

Rand, can you provide a link to the source of the quote?

"Yacoub": Isn't he the guy who in Farrakhan's Nation of Islam theology is the evil creator of white people?

It was there. What's the matter, you don't know how to "View Source"? ;-)

Nice comeback, Rand.

On another note, I find this interesting:
using stem cells drawn from the patient's own bone marrow

Back when it was something to bash Bush about during the election cycle, I always thought the fight over government funding* of fetal stem cells was a moot point. Not for ideological or religious grounds, as the politicos would have it, but on the point that the technology seemed to move beyond it. Fetal stem cells might be easier, but not necessarily the only means to the end.

*the debate was couched as "banning" fetal stem cell research which was a strawman argument, as President Bush only proposed that the government shouldn't pay for that research.

Leland--and, in fact, IIRC, there have been more actual working results with adult stem cells than with the fetal variety.