1y ago

Doctors Concerned About Neuralink's First Patient

• Concerns rise as Neuralink fails to provide evidence of brain implant success, raising safety and transparency questions.

• Controversy surrounds Neuralink's lack of data on surgical capabilities and alarming treatment of monkeys with brain implants.

• While Neuralink touts achievements, experts question true innovation and highlight developments in other brain implant projects.

115 comments

Imo Musk is going to struggle in this space. He's no stranger to opening companies in highly regulated industries, but the medical device industry is a whole different level. The government can easily prevent him from selling anything if his company isn't forthcoming with data, and if he starts mutilating people, civil courts aren't going to care if they signed a waiver if that waiver was signed based on false expectations built on incomplete or false data by the company
- Plus, he likes to pretend he's an expert on the industries of the companies he runs. That's already potentially dangerous with Tesla and Space X, but in this case his hubris is very directly dangerous to the people receiving his services.
  
  The difference is with Tesla and Space X he has actual experts doing the work, with Neuralink he gets the worst of the crop - no successful or ethical medical professional is going to want to work with him on this.
  
  Teslas are already directly dangerous to his customers but our society is numb to traffic violence so people don’t care as much as they should. But “full self-driving” has already killed people.
  Edit: removed “a lot” because while I suspect it is true, it remains unproven.
  
  That didn’t work out for Elizabeth Holmes either.
  
  Elon is a dirty manipulative liar out for power and all the money. It saddens me that there are people stupid enough to trust this guy with their bodies to let them implant a chip whose main purposed is to make him even richer.
- I think the government will be on his side
Finally some news about the first human trial.
The part about them not issuing regular progress reports since day 1 (a month or so ago) is, how these doctors put it, concerning.
Apart from that, I think jumping from monkeys to human experiments when the success rate is low feels either rush work or some high person in charge decided to go all-or-nothing.
- or some high person in charge decided to go all-or-nothing
  I don't see what Elon's drug use and increasingly irratic decision-making have to to with this.
  
  Hahahaha
- "move fast and break ~~things~~ people"
- Agreed. And seems wild to allow that kind of coercion from powerful people to move into the human body stage without air tight everything.
- I think it is unethical to test this technology on anyone who does not consent. It is too invasive and damaging. Our testing framework should be revised for brain interfaces.
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Damn, and no.
I love how no one is ever going to start calling it "X" because it's just dumb. It will forever be "X-formerly-Twitter".
- I like "Elon's Twitter"
- That was my thought when I started reading the piece. "Are we just going to call it XFT?"
  
  The platform formerly called Prince
- You know you can just use twitter anyway, right?
  
  Nobody wants to use Twitter.
  
  Sure, but that disregards the fact that it's owned by a fascist prick.
I really wonder about the Doctors associated with this. How are they squaring things with their Hippocratic oath? This just seems really close to the ethical line, maybe over it. Nothing about how musk is treating this surprises me. But is everyone working on this also an unethical twat? Kind of scary to think that might be true.
- In 1973 the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the Hippocratic Oath saying it didn't cover the latest developments in medical practice.
  I'm just... gonna go scream into a pillow in the corner now.
  
  The Helsinki declaration https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/DeclarationofHelsinki
  Is the reference for health sciences these days.
  
  There's nothing here that would violate it anyway. These people are literally working on tech to help quadriplegics. Even this article is mostly just "I wish they were more open about their research", which is true of basically every research hospital in the world.
- The Hippocratic Oath is not a legally binding oath, and many doctors are not required to take this oath or any oath for that matter. Basically, at the end of the day, oaths only matter to the people who have the strength of character to hold to them no matter the cost and most people do not have that strength of character. Oaths mean nothing to those people when it comes down to it, it's just a thing that you said once, nothing more.
  
  Oh I know all that, but still...
  
  Can’t wait to see the medical drama where one doctor says “you took an oath, god dammt!” And for the other to reply “nope”
- There are way less extreme example of doctors just fucking things up for a bag of money.
  
  And more in general, humans. Imagine if Clarence Thomas had taken medicine instead of law when he was young
- But is everyone working on this also an unethical twat? Kind of scary to think that might be true
  People with the Power to do cruel things always find cruel people to do their bidding. Especially when they can justify it with science or it's "for the better of humanity". Even if every rational out stander is horrified by their doings.
- I wouldn't be surprised if there somehow were a cover-up of safety and efficacy of these devices.
- People are still people. Doctors are just as susceptible to compromising their ethics as everyone else, the only difference is that they probably have a higher bribe threshold.
- Ethics only matters when there's an effort to enforce it. The Hippocratic oath is just a reason your employer can fire you for making risky decisions. It means nothing if nobody holds you to it.
  If you're a doctor working for Neuralink, nobody will expect anything of you but to push the project forward as quickly as possible. For years you only work with monkeys, and when they do finally put a human in the O.R. it's someone who signed away all their rights and accepted all risks to install experimental brain chips. At that moment, that human patient becomes the single most important subject in the entire experiment.
  Of course you do it. You're getting paid more money than you ever have in your life to do it, and the entire system is designed to protect you so long as you do what the boss says.
- Well, it's possible that it was a robot doctor, kinda doubt they took a Hippocratic oath
Stupid article as it implies that doctors are concerned for a specific reason related to the subject’s health but it’s just background about this shitty experiment and how it can be dangerous. Regardless, I can’t believe someone volunteered for this and am unfortunately expecting documented issues in the future.
- Remember how they couldn't get the cyber truck to not rust? Or the bullet proof windows to work? Or how the milage for most Tesla's was impossible, so people thought their cars were broken, and instead of either confessing or fixing the mileage they created an elaborate scheme to cancel appointment so people couldn't get their batteries looked at? These are the people you trusted to put a chip in your brain...
  
  I'm not using it, might as well sacrifice for the good of the many
- I think it would be a lot more reasonable to expect undocumented issues. They have a lot to lose and it's controlled by a billionaire. As if they're not going to try to cover it up.
  
  They will try to cover it up for sure. IMO Either it will “silently end” after myriad health issues or there will be big public exposures.
- I doubt you'll hear any docs about failures. I think that's what this article is about? I.e. a lack of transparency?
- i'd do it for money. Not much to fuck up with my brain
- If my option was never move again and this would let me control a computer then I wouldn't care about the risk
  
  The results are in. You now feel as if you are constantly moving. You aren't, but it sure feels that way. Forever.
  
  I'm sure the guy who had a pig heart transplant thought similar. He died less than a year after.
So the gov wants to claim the FDA did not regulate mifepristone hard enough, but this is perfectly fine. What a world.
- "The government" doesn't want to argue that. Some idiot politicians do.
  
  The courts gave the idiots an injunction, so while you are right they are not exactly claiming it, they are claiming it is likely true.
  And the courts are (a part) of the gvt last time I checked.
- Claiming the schizophrenic US govt WANTS anything is dubious. Most of their attention is focused on fighting each other
  
  As I said, what a world.
I still can't forget the Monkeys.
- JFC
  Additional veterinary reports show the condition of a female monkey called “Animal 15” during the months leading up to her death in March 2019. Days after her implant surgery, she began to press her head against the floor for no apparent reason; a symptom of pain or infection, the records say. Staff observed that though she was uncomfortable, picking and pulling at her implant until it bled, she would often lie at the foot of her cage and spend time holding hands with her roommate. Animal 15 began to lose coordination, and staff observed that she would shake uncontrollably when she saw lab workers. Her condition deteriorated for months until the staff finally euthanized her. A necropsy report indicates that she had bleeding in her brain and that the Neuralink implants left parts of her cerebral cortex “focally tattered.”
  So they fuckin shredded the poor girl's brain.
  
  That’s heartbreaking.
  
  To think humans cause such pain to other sentient beings due to hubris...
- Damn... I've heard that it was bad but I've never read it until now...
- ;-;
- Wait til you find out about animal testing at large.
- Fall of the house of usher shit 💔
Yeah, I wouldn't want monkeylink in my head if it was done by musk's people. I'd rather have an expert neurosurgeon and the ones I know, who work in deep brain stimulation, they wrote off neuralink as bad tech a decade ago.
- Writing off a huge research project you know nothing about before it's even started is a clear sign that their opinion is worthless.
  Musk has hired incredibly well educated people, I don't blame you for hating him but that doesn't tarnish the quality of anyone else
  
  Educated does not mean skilled.
Does this remind anyone else of Theranos?
- Somewhat, but theranos at least didn’t do brain surgery. This is theranos with far higher stakes
  
  And way more obviously vaporware
- Does this remind anyone else of House of Usher?
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Neuralink founder Elon Musk claimed this week that the first human to receive one of his company's heavily scrutinized brain implants was already able to control a mouse cursor with their mind.
"[Neuralink is] only sharing the bits that they want us to know about," Sameer Sheth, a neurosurgeon who specializes in implanted neurotechnology at the Baylor College of Medicine, told Nature.
Leaked documents detailed how the implants resulted in a myriad of grotesque injuries, including rupturing a monkey's brain and causing severe cerebral swelling.
A relevant detail that raises questions about Neuralink's surgical capabilities is another report of a monkey with a botched brain implant.
"A human controlling a cursor is nothing new," Bolu Ajiboye, a brain computer interface researcher at Case Western Reserve University, told Nature.
Meanwhile, other brain implant projects have allowed fully paralyzed patients to communicate through a digital avatar using only their mind, or to control life-changing robotic prosthetics.
The original article contains 480 words, the summary contains 154 words. Saved 68%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
I'm over here concerned for all of Neuralink's patients.
Is this gonna be like that Raelian clone baby?
- I love seeing references to the Raelians in the wild! What a bonkers cult they are. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ra%C3%ABl.
Oh no shit.
Anyway
- There is no such thing as too quickly. People went from shitting in wooden outhouses with no electricity to man landing on the moon and harnessing the power of atoms in one life time, things have slowed down considerably since.
  And you don't have to get a brain implant, nor will such a thing realistically even be available for decades still.
  
  Of course there's such a thing as too quickly. Plenty of railroad workers died because people didn't realize that there's a huge difference between falling off a horse running ten miles an hour and a train going thirty. How many people got sick because someone thought putting lead in gas was a swell idea? What about Thalidomide? Heck, people thought heroin would cure opium addiction.
  Just because people are reckless doesn't mean that it's a good thing.
  I'm sure we'll keep racing ahead, but don't confuse activity with progress.

115 comments