A success does not include leaving a victim of failed experimental medicine with a non-functional implant. In contrast to how animal subjects are used as test subjects (often conducted with less oversight than there should be), using experimental medicine on volunteering patients should be done not just to collect better data than the chimps before them supplied, but with the genuine expectation that the product in question will benefit the patient beyond their usefulness as a test subject for continued product development.
I'd imagine they're mostly physically disabled people trying to get control of their limbs or access to the freedom this type of tech is promising. As abhorrent as all of the testing behind this tech is, if I were a quadrapalegic or something similar, I would volunteer because wtf else have I got going for me?
That is very true. It doesn't mean it is ethical. It is quite common for people who are disabled, have a disease, or what not to be overly optimistic about success. Which caused them to be more willing to make poorly informed decisions.
Experiments like these are not inherently bad, but it is very easy to receive informed consent from the participant when they are not fully informed. That is why studies like this in academia require an ethics panel to review them.
To give an Elon musk's track record with his various companies. I think it is completely reasonable to question the ethics of this study.
It's not the tech itself that worries me. It's who in this case is supplying it along with the fact the previous patient had 85% of the functionality just stop and they haven't done a damn thing to address that before they want to try it on another patient.
There are other companies working on the same or similar tech that are far less fucked up.
It's shocking, but not at all surprising, that one of the top comments here is calling desperate sick suffering people "brain dead" for taking a risk to try and get better, or help advance a technology to help people similarly suffering in the future.
I guess our hatred of musk exceeds our compassion for the sick.
Even you think something must be wrong with them if they're agreeing to this. Just because you lean more toward an ailment that would make someone desperate rather than someone being deficient in congestive function doesn't mean you're any better. Like. I get it. It's hard to imagine a regular person just thinking one day it's a good idea to sign up to let a company run by Elon Musk implant anything into their body (especially their brain). But this is a bit of a high horse riding comment, isn't it?
I look forward to the day when they try to mass market this and find out it has a unique problem when put in the heads of humans who aren't complete morons. And they never caught it during testing because all of their test subjects were volunteers.
Luckily the value of SpaceX is not determined by their success, but more by what bullshit Musk can come up with. So if Musk can bullshit his way around this too, there is no harm to the stock.
Nothing, I posted in the wrong place. The 2 stories were together, and after reading it, I must have clicked the wrong one, and posted it here, instead of the story about the SpaceX engine blowing up.
Can we just ..... not keep going down the brain rot rabbit hole we are going down as a society? 24 hours in a day doesn't allow enough screen time? We need to just... funnel this shit straight in somehow?
I used to be excited for this kind of stuff, then I saw what we've done with the technology we have. People are "auto" driving their cars while they wear their apple vision pros, that's what we do with it.... Pretty soon tiktoc titties will be streamed straight to our frontal cortex.
Maybe I am just old, or maybe it would just be better if it was a different company doing it. But maybe a giant meteor should take us out ASAP.
In my 20's I was all for it. I understand where the techbros are coming from. Now with over a decade more experience, I see clearly we need to spend so much more of our energy healing from traumas on the societal level: To dispel imperial-colonialist mindsets. Im thinkin of Bo Burningham speaking about how the empires exhausted all physical territory, and then discovered Data, going on to colonize every waking moment of our attention.
We need to shed the subconcious conquistador, with all it's machismo, all it's tribalism (most agregiously white supremacist nationalism) and covetous paranoia. It is a poison which will prevent us from making the societal leap from which all tides would rise.
Until we do that, all we'll get for this tech will be:
dystopic labor camp colonies on Mars
advertisements when we are trying to dream
Military tech developed under the guise of "medical 🌈 disabilities 🌈 quality 🌈 of 🌈 life 🌈 improvement 🌈 research" [1]
Neuralink, the Elon Musk-funded neuroscience startup, has received approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to implant its next patient with its experimental brain chip.
Neuralink previously implanted its experimental brain-computer interface chip in a paraplegic man, Noland Arbaugh, in an operation that was publicly announced this past January.
Arbaugh’s identity was revealed during a livestream interview in March, during which the patient demonstrated some of the abilities the chip had given him, including the chance to play computer chess with his mind.
However, Arbaugh says that updates to the chip’s software have allowed him to regain many of the abilities that he previously had and that he is still very supportive of Neuralink and what it’s done for him.
This hardware then rests in the portion of the patient’s skull that was removed, right below the scalp, while its tiny wires carry data back and forth between the brain and the startup’s servers.
A large number of the company’s animal test subjects had to be euthanized and some died quite horribly, according to a lawsuit from a physicians group.
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