Oh great so even physical ownership doesn't even mean you own something anymore
As much as I share this sentiment in general, in this case its probably more likely that this has something to with liability if something goes wrong with the implant. And I would bet the company never released the schematics and code so that aint helpin.
Could prob be solved if implants would be required to be open source so that third party servicing could happen.
Companies that aren't actively using their IP should be forced to license it to someone who will, or put it in the public domain.
All of their code and specs should be required to be put into escrow in case they go out of business.
That doesn't seem like the best idea with expiramental implants. I doubt anyone would want to take on the liability for some defunct company's implant because there's no upside for them to do so and a lot of downsides.
Doing stuff that makes peoples lives better with no short-term financial incentive? Sounds like a mission for public-funded institutions :)
Liability could be easily signed away by the patient if she felt that leaving it was a better option. And she/the family can't sue if the removal makes things worse now, because the company won't exist. Seems leaving it in was a better risk.
I can't believe they did a surgery on her without already giving her this option. This is basic bodily autonomy human rights stuff, doctors are not going to do any surgery on a human being because a third party asked them to, and the patient didn't consent. It's not something that happens outside of Nazi Germany, with exceptions only in the case where a person's advance directives are activated; or they are completely incapacitated with no AD.
I suspect they told her the risk of the device killing her or making her life worse was either extremely high, or impossible to judge, and she made the decision on her own to get rid of it. To be clear this is a travesty, and the people running the responsible company should face severe consequences, but I think we're going off the deep end if anyone believes she was not given an option in this matter. Doctors will straight up leave stuff in you that will kill you if they can't obtain your consent to fix it.
I am guessing/hoping that the device needed maintenance and since nobody can maintain it, it’s removed for safety reasons. I think They wouldn’t perform surgery without such a safety need.
The BEST timeline.
Sounds like she was in a trial so probably didn’t pay for it and doesn’t own it.
It’s still kind of fucked up that she has to have surgery to remove it but she probably agreed to these terms before it was installed.
Clickbait title for extra sensationalism. Nobody physically forced her to have the surgery to remove the implant.
I sympathize with this woman however it was part of the trial for it to be switched off and removed at the end of the trial, which is what she agreed to, though it does raise a lot of questions about medical trials/procedures involving implants.
If the company no longer exists but let her keep the implant, what happens when something goes wrong? Who is responsible, who do medical professionals trying to help with what went wrong contact for context, who bears the cost, what happens if it's hacked, etc etc. If it was left in and she ended up dying, it's guaranteed that headlines will talk about it being irresponsible and medical malpractice.
Fwiw, reading the MIT review, this device didn't prevent her seizures, but monitored brainwave activity and used an algorithm to predict the likelihood of an imminent seizure. She seems to have been an edge case in terms of successi in the trial.
It seems the issue is that this gave her confidence to leave the house to do things. Prior to that she very rarely left the house because of the unpredictability of her seizures. It must suck to have that confidence, and therefore freedom, taken away.
It must suck to have that confidence, and therefore freedom, taken away.
It does, yeah.
Thanks for the comment, I was sitting here shitting, thinking how exactly did a company force someone to have brain surgery. Very sensationalist indeed.
Did you read it?
She and her husband attempted to fight the demand, attempting to buy the implant outright and, as University of Tasmania ethicist and paper coauthor Frederic Gilbert told the Tech Review, remortgaging their house to do so. They were unsuccessful, and she was the last person to get the Neuravista BCI removed.
As a nurse I find it very problematic that they could force her to have brain surgery to retrieve their property.
It might be understandable that they turn it off or stopp support, if it was experimental and the device didn't pass the necessary aprovals.
But forcing her to have an invasive procedure on her brain with so many dangerous risks. This should be illegal.
Yeah theres a lot here that stinks, I'm going to have to find more sources on it.
This clearly violates informed consent, and a whole bunch of study related laws, and laws involving patient care and risks of invasive procedure.
She had to agree to the surgery to remove it at some point, and it could not have been in informed consent documentation, because she could have revoked that agreement before the surgery.
I doubt this story. I really doubt this.
However, I don't know shit about fuck about Australian law.
One relevant detail is that this was not a self contained device, it was for monitoring likelihood of seizures and had an external wireless interface. So my guess (this is pure speculation) on what happened is, the company owned the monitoring device, and the signals from the in-brain device were proprietary and encrypted. They couldn't force her to have surgery but they could take back the external interface which was their property, and without that the in-brain device did nothing. Then the patient agreed to surgery because there was no further benefit to keeping it in her head and probably greater health risks to doing so.
An awful lot of EULAs (software or otherwise) include odious clauses or terms easily misused. I daresay even most, since US and international contract law is heavily biased towards industrial corporations being permitted to include and enforce such terms.
Often, court cases are about arguing that a clause in question is, in fact, odious and unenforceable without causing undue suffering.
If the patient dies or suffers permanent health effects from the extraction surgery, I anticipate a wrongful death lawsuit may well follow.
She and her husband attempted to fight the demand, attempting to buy the implant outright...
It was compulsory brain surgery for a repo.
In other words the company interests superceded the patient's
This is the sort of inciting incident that triggers cyberpunk dystopian adventures that conclude in a blaze of electrical grid collapses, warehouse explosions and mass spiritual awakening. Then the protagonist moves to Amsterdam.
It was compulsory brain surgery for a repo. ... This is the sort of inciting incident that triggers cyberpunk dystopian adventures
That was my first thought as well. Glad to see it posted, because it’s sort of a niche cult classic.
I still can't believe how good it is.
Paris Hilton is a good actress in this film.
Fuckin' wild.
Fingers crossed this woman doesn't end up with a Zydrate addiction. It comes in a little glass vial, you know.
I feel like maybe research on medical implants like this should be done by the state.
At least, when the company goes defunct, they should be forced to sell it to a company that's required to maintain the upkeep for products using the IP they bought or the government should eminent domain
So should a lot of research, for public benefit. Medical absolutely, space absolutely.
The problem with that model is no one acquires immoral levels of wealth, which means those that set policy don't get as large of bribes.
And as a species, our actions have spoken on no uncertain terms, we'd literally rather destroy our only habitat and ourselves then let go of the dream of living like modern Pharoahs on the backs of others.
I'm kind of in that boat. I mean not really, and it's not life-changing like it is for the lady, but it's the same sort of issue.
I have implants inside of me. They're RFID and NFC transponders of various kind made by Dangerous Things. They're not essential to my life in the sense that I could very well do without them, but they're immensely useful and handy on a day-to-day basis.
One of them is a payment implant. The implant was made in 2020 and is not in fact allowed by Mastercard - meaning if the payment processor figures out it's under my skin, they'll strike it off the EMVCo network and I'll lose the ability to make payments with my hand. It expires in 2029, and I already know after that date that there probably won't be a replacement available. So I will lose that ability in 2029.
And you know what? It really does feel like a loss: this is my second payment implant because the first one failed a year in, and that's what it felt like. Similarly, I have other implants that I use all the time to open doors and authenticate with online services, and when those fail (and some of them did, I had to have them replaced), it does feel like losing a bodily function too.
I'm an amputee, so I know what it feels like to lose bits of myself, and when one of my implant fails, it feels very similar. Not the same and not as terrible of course, but it's the same kind of feeling: you feel less yourself and less able than you used to be.
The other question that arises is whether implants become part of your body, and whether anybody is legally allowed to take them away from you. In other words, nobody is legally allowed to remove your heart or your spleen without your consent, but are implants treated the same way?
Like for example, suppose I go to court and a judge reckons my cryptographic implant was used to encrypt evidence on my computer: can the judge order it removed from my body against my will to send it to a forensic lab? I mean after all, it's now part of my body and providing me with a new bodily ability of sorts: it could be argued that removing my implant can be construed as disabling me - which, as I said, really does feel a bit like that.
This has never come up in court, and I'm an honest, nice guy so I won't be the one breaking that particular ground. But the question is intriguing.
Liar. You're not a dullard at all.
This is a fascinating perspective, thanks for sharing your experience. It makes me really happy to hear first hand how this new technology does improve quality of life for people.
On the bright side, she no longer has Johnny Silverhand living in her head and complaining about all her decisions.
The fun thing is that half the time Johnny complains, you gain approval with him anyway. He may bitch about you stopping to save random folks and talk about how it won't actually change anything, but he still approves deep down. He also approves if you call him on his bullshit, which is a nice change from most RPGs requiring you to be absurdly supportive of your party's awful decisions to top off that approval meter.
Forced? What are the logistics there, what if she runs, and forcefully refuses? Are they going to literally get ppl to hunt her down and drag her to the operation room?
Even worse. They would sue the crap out of her.
The article isn't clear on if they didn't have enough money to buy it or if the company refused for liability and safety reasons.
Regardless, we really need stringent laws about this. Anything needing surgery should irrevocably become yours, both hardware and software wise, and the company should be setting up trusts for maintenance in case of bankruptcy.
For instance if your hip implant manufacturer went out of business you wouldn't expect them to come take your hip.
What should have happened it would have been regulatory capture where when they went out of business the government should have stepped in and taken their source code and made it public domain.
I'm sure some enterprising people would have been glad to host whatever servers were needed to keep this woman's seizures from working and her brain implant operational.
So the government can force you to go into surgery to remove something from your brain now?
It's not the government though. It looks like the company.
This was a trial and the implant likely required to communicate with their servers and without them it wasn't able to work.
The real issue is that probably anything that's installed in humans needs to have schematics and software made public domain when company goes out of business so someone else could maintain it to avoid these issues.
We need orphan technology program like for orphan drugs. I can't imagine it would be very costly to keep this one woman's device running, but it does take someone somewhere being responsible for it.
I expect it would in fact be hugely expensive to keep the woman's implant going: anything medical is even more expensive that aeronautical stuff. And also, who bears responsibility when the company tanks and the woman has an issue with her implant?
But here's what I think: innovative startups that want to run tests of experimental implants (looking at you Elon) should be legally required to set money aside to support the test subjects' implanted hardware until the end of their natural life or until the implant fails, whichever comes first, if the company tanks.
The money should pay for a skeletal crew of the original engineers working for a government-owned company set up and dedicated solely to that support after the original company disappears, and it should pay for the test subjects' medical expenses related to their implants.
Kinda similarly, my brother was taking a drug (interferon) for treatment of a rare cancer that not many people need anymore (a better drug replaced the main use case the drug was developed for, which is different from my brother’s use case). The manufacturer discontinued the drug and noone makes it anymore so my brother and others who were relying on it simply lost access. I never knew this could happen.
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