Heart Transplant Recipient - MYP Science

Last week, as board members of the “Qingdao Amerasia International Hospital”, MYP 4-5 students had to make a very challenging decision. A human heart had been donated to the hospital, and the students had to decide which patient should receive this life-saving heart transplant.

Ms. Canan Çermen’s MYP Science students are exploring answers to the question “Who wants to live forever?” In this unit, they will be focusing on big ideas such as: What is life? What does it mean to be human? Is it possible to live forever? How can this be accomplished? In order to understand the importance of certain organs and organ replacement, they dissected a pig’s heart. They observed the coronary blood vessels, valves, atria and ventricles. They measured thickness of atrial and ventricular walls. All of this work helps them understand structure-function relationships in living systems. In the following weeks they will be focusing on organ transplants, stem cells, cloning, cryonics, bionics, artificial organs and 3D tissue and organ printing.