Charles C. Hong is a cardiologist and the chair of the department of medicine at Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine.

Former vice president Dick Cheney’s death stunned me this week — because of how extraordinarily long he lived in defiance of a failing heart. His decades-long journey through cardiovascular catastrophe mirrors the triumphant arc of modern medicine, which has turned what was once a death sentence into a chronicle of survival built on relentless scientific progress.

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