Regulators rejected Musk’s bid to test brain chips in humans, citing safety
reuters.com
reuters.com
I agree but think Elon and the shareholders should be free to volutarily implant this in their own heads. Skin in the game is a great way to sell a product if they truly believe in it.
It could be a generational schism. You can imagine some parents starting to do this procedure if it's similar to cochlear implants, but most adults would refrain from doing it, and after a while all the youngsters communicate and think at their own super speed.
That's why there is heavy regulation about it now.
Amateurs. He shall do like every pharma company does: go in Africa. /s
I'm extremely skeptical of Musk's efforts working perfectly here, but I think that the concept of self-ownership of your body is important. It might be a dying person's greatest wish to have a legacy of directly contributing to the future in some way, so I could see some people wanting to try if there was a mechanism for it.
That last bit sounds like a powerful and perverse incentive for abuse.
2) Who owns a body and ought to have the agency to decide what happens to it? Does the State own you or does an Individual own himself?
That's absolutely bonkers
And is it the same organization that is regulating this that once was considering that for U.S. government doctors it was fine to experiment on disabled people and prison inmates?
A system of donating one's body after death is not as ripe for exploitation when compensation isn't involved
I can understand feeling a bit uncomfortable at this whole thing. It's a bad situation all-around to think of somebody dying younger than they should and even leaving a family behind. But if you're going to die no matter what and want the best thing for your surviving family, which of these things would you rather leave them?
> $0 and a pile of funeral expenses and little hope for the future
> Many dollars, more options in life, and having the family have the knowledge that their parent gave everything they had to care for them
If I was faced with that choice in a situation of poverty, I'd rather at least have this as a choice. Why is it better for a desperate family who just lost the family breadwinner to have $0 rather than many dollars?
While poverty and lack of financial resources can certainly create difficult situations for families, it is not ethical to suggest that selling a loved one's body for experimentation is a valid solution. Such a practice would further perpetuate systemic inequalities and injustice by exploiting those who are already vulnerable.
There are alternative solutions to addressing poverty and supporting families in difficult situations, such as providing social welfare programs and assistance, education, and job opportunities. It is important to approach these issues with compassion and respect for human dignity, rather than resorting to exploitative practices that violate basic human rights.
2) Please note that I didn't suggest selling a loved one's body for experimentation: I suggested that an individual has the right to choose what happens with their own body. That is an extremely important distinction in this matter.
3) I don't see how a poor family having the option of a financial windfall when they're losing their family breadwinner does anything but alleviate whatever "systemic inequalities" might exist. If somebody is dying either way, isn't their family having some money putting them in a better situation for their future than having no money? You can still disagree with the ethics of this of course, but just as far as the financial situation, I cannot understand any logic that says that a family is financially better off with no money rather than money.
You seem to view everything through the lens of money and nothing else, you don't consider the externalities of having a system where capital owners can further exploit those in precarious situations and you don't seem to understand that that creates incredibly perverse incentives
2) We might use slightly different language, but we're both viewing reality through a lens of money, because that's an important part of life. The difference is that I'm trying to think of a system that might be able to help some people, while all everybody who is opposed to this is able to provide is an impression of moral superiority.
3) Please explain the perverse incentives that exist in this arc of a story. Say that a father is painfully dying of cancer and is completely broke. He's very soon going to leave his wife and kids alone without even enough money to bury him, let alone live afterwards. If he had an opportunity for some cash for some medical tests to give his family a chance afterwards, isn't this a better situation for them than not having this option?
4) I'm sure we both wish there were some different systems for living and helping people. But really as a practical matter, I'm thinking through a lens of families that lose the breadwinner. Without both money and guidance, the kids can sometimes have their entire lives spiral out of control. I've known some families that lost the working father at a very young age. It takes a substantial support network for the children to not become degenerate twerps in this case. Money would help these survivors' lives immensely more than having nothing.
5) Speaking of incentives, one of the worst conceivable effects on society comes from not recognizing the absolute sovereignty of an individual. This is how we get the war on drugs which features all kinds of horrific things (throwing people in cages, gang violence, and many more troubling things), which IMO have an impact that should be far more shocking to the conscience than anything you can imagine with some rich guy paying a dying guy to do legitimate medical research that, oh yeah, might also be able to advance the state of the world significantly.
Capitalism is a system in which workers are exploited and have the value they produce extracted by capital owners who provide no value. We have a system which exploits those who have no choice but to work for low pay high risk jobs. Capital owners already have captured the regulatory mechanisms which are supposedly intended to protect workers and consumers.
If you allow someone to sell themselves for experimentation when they're dying, the people who already have incredible influence over workers and their conditions along with regulatory mechanisms intended to keep people safe you now provide an incredibly perverse incentive for capital owners who want experimental subjects to ensure that conditions for workers and consumers are unsafe as possible while continuing to suppress wages.
There are far better ways to help workers who may be in dire straits but that requires making systemic changes instead of focusing on some gain for one individual. It's the same reason why charity is a bad mechanism for actual change
Okay, but would you oppose the legality of such an arrangement?
In any case, not sure why the family, instead of individual directly, is compensated.
How can you prevent people from harming themselves to qualify for compensation? It's not about the rights of the individuals, it's about stopping companies from doing things that will kill people.
If I said I'll pay $1,000,000 to anyone who drinks a shot of bleach, certainly it's well within anyone's rights to drink bleach. But it's reckless (and arguably should be illegal) for me to encourage folks to do something which is almost certainly going to kill or maim them.
If I say that I'll compensate terminally ill people to get an experimental brain implant that has a high likelihood of failure, I'm literally encouraging folks to find a way to qualify as terminally ill.
You are strawmanning by providing worst-case scenarios.
Is it reckless and arguably illegal to offer jobs on an oil rig? As an x-ray technician? A vascular surgeon?
When does risk become so great that consent is unlawful?
When is compensation so large it’s compulsion?
The safety of those jobs is regulated and overseen by OSHA, and OSHA can force changes or shut down operations if they are unsafe. Which is exactly what the FDA is doing here, for the same reason. GP's comment was basically "yeah but what if the life-threatening job only used terminally ill people and paid them a whole bunch of money?" It's unconvincing that that should be an exception.
> When does risk become so great that consent is unlawful?
When a regulatory agency, following due process according to its mandate, says so. Like in this case.
Begging the question.
No: deferring the question. To a regulatory agency. Staffed with hundreds or thousands of intelligent professionals in the discipline. Mandated by congress to deeply study and understand the issues. Spending decades improving and refining their process. Occasionally getting captured by industry or special interests, which we should fight hard to prevent, but won't always win. Often not quite keeping up with the technological edge, but slowly improving.
What's the alternative?
Why is the function you’re describing better served by government?
For alternatives, see Underwriters Laboratories.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/UL_(safety_organization)
Note that it predates OSHA by ~75 years.
You started this conversation off with a series of seemingly rhetorical questions where you apparently just hoped everyone would shrug along with you and wait for you to bless them with your divine wisdom on what the real answer is (which you never actually said, strangely. Don't leave us hanging.) I'm not sure what conclusion you were hoping we'd all draw from them (some libertarian rich-worshipping Ayn Randian bullshit is my guess), but the wind was rather taken out of your sails when I pointed out that you are not the first the pose these questions and the best answer we have is a regulatory agency.
> Why is the function you’re describing better served by government?
Because government is the only entity with the power to actually enforce regulatons. Underwriters Laboratories is backed by the power of 300 insurance agencies who banded together for the benefit of all of them, recognizing that many problems are too large for individuals to solve and require collective action. Another word for that is "government". You weirdo Libertarians would be invited to the dinner table more if you were willing to just entertain the idea that "GOVERNMENT" is not one big monolithic shadow cabal that we must resist at all costs, but is simply any case where individual entities have come together in order to enable the possibility of collective action on hard problems. Government happens whether you want it to or not. I don't know why all you Lone Wolf Libertarian house-cats think a government made up of whichever mega-corporations happen to win at capitalism is going to be more benevolent than a government that everyone has a say in creating and improving over time.
They have yet to demonstrate, afaik, a better than 90% success rate. And plenty of news reports have been published suggesting they haven't hit a 50% success rate in monkeys. From the outside looking in, this is Russian roulette.
What if the success rate for currently available devices is 0 percent?
Should we not make available something which succeeds in some fraction of cases?
What is the magnitude of benefit in cases that do succeed?
"Success" is literally just "doesn't kill and/or horribly maim you". It's not a treatment for a disease. It doesn't give you super powers. It offers no tangible benefit to the patient.
There should be an exceptionally high likelihood that the procedure will go well before any human trials are allowed to take place. They can't even demonstrate that they can reliably perform it in animals, so there's really no reason to press ahead in humans except to be able to claim some ridiculous velocity.
Is it impossible to imagine that some process could be vetted closely by doctors to only apply this system to people with verified terminal illnesses, not to people that injure themselves intentionally?
> If I said I'll pay $1,000,000 to anyone who drinks a shot of bleach, certainly it's well within anyone's rights to drink bleach.
1) I'm not suggesting I'm happy with the idea of anybody being paid to harm themselves, but at the same time, what right does any human have to control anybody else's body?
2) People already pay athletes millions of dollars for a pretty large chance of brain damage and other injuries intentionally, and society cheers that on with roaring approval. People take on very risky jobs for a very slight increase in pay. People are paid to get blown up in literal war zones for pennies. Why is self harm for money ok in some contexts but not others?
You can do anything you want to your body. Someone shouldn't be able to pay you to do dangerous things to your body. You can consent to whatever you want, you just shouldn't be able to be compensated for it.
> Why is self harm for money ok in some contexts but not others?
I'd love to hear you name a profession that's so risky that, as the ancestor comment suggests, it should only be available to people with terminal illness.
I don't necessarily disagree with your point that it's sometimes necessary to protect people from themselves, and particularly that it's important to consider what incentives you're creating. But it is funny that you should choose "drinking a shot of bleach" as your example of "something which is almost certainly going to kill or maim a person".
The LD50 for 5% sodium hypochlorite (i.e. bleach) is 6600 mg / kg in mice and 4090 mg / kg in rats[1]. I don't think anyone has established an exact LD50 value in humans (I sure hope nobody has done that), but per [2]
> Accidental human data are reported for ingestion and parenteral route: it can be concluded that the effects of accidental ingestion of domestic sodium hypochlorite bleaches are not expected to lead to severe or permanent damage of the gastrointestinal tract as recovery is rapid and without any permanent health consequences.
Guidance from the Arizona Poison and Drug Information Center[3] has the following to say:
> What is important is to NOT force vomiting to try and rid your body of the chemical. This is definitely more harmful than helpful. Your stomach can handle the small amount of swallowed bleach. We run into problems when people try to force vomiting, because they put themselves at risk for aspiration. Aspiration is the inhalation of either secretions from the back of the throat and nasal cavity or stomach contents into the lower airways of the lungs. This can potentially lead to an acute, chemical lung injury resulting from the inhalation of the contents.
> Obviously if someone is trying to intentionally harm themselves, and drinks more than a mouthful, then an immediate evaluation by an ER physician is needed. Large amounts of swallowed bleach can produce more significant, potentially life-threatening problems.
So ingesting a large amount of bleach is dangerous, but taking a shot of standard household 5% bleach is actually pretty unlikely to cause permanent damage (though I would still not particularly recommend it in the absence of someone offering you a million bucks).
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[1] https://fscimage.fishersci.com/msds/91020.htm
[2] https://echa.europa.eu/registration-dossier/-/registered-dos...
[2] https://azpoison.com/sites/default/files/poisonology_bleach....
You willing to take that bet for a million dollars? ;)
The people volunteering for it won't get heavily compensated. It's just not financially feasible.
Trials for the second are still important to be done safely. Plenty of people diagnosed as terminally ill are misdiagnosed. Just this week, the story about plutonium told of the Manhattan project injecting terminally ill folks with plutonium to see what it did. One of them turned out not to be terminally ill. A procedure like this also feels mutually exclusive with any sort of real palliative care, which feels like a really terrible thing to do to someone who is dying. You don't have a lot of terminally ill folks up and walking around, living a normal life.
It's not just about not killing someone, either. Brain implants can cause horrifying effects: intense pain, confusion, hallucinations, memory issues, and more. None of these folks will have any tangible benefit from being implanted with these test devices (the killer app, no pun intended, seems to be "hands free pong"). And yet, there's a risk that the last remaining days (or not!) are filled with irrecoverable torment, and that starts to bring up questions of euthanasia. How many people are you willing to have to put into a chemically induced coma and euthanize because you didn't do enough animal testing first, even if those folks were maybe going to die anyway?
There are also mechanisms for people to volunteer for approved medical research studies, in exchange for some compensation. This also happens all the time, and is part of the approval process for new medications and procedures. The caveat being that the medical research must be approved by the FDA or the EU's corresponding regulatory body, and it is extremely unlikely that a Musk company would ever receive approval for trials involving human subjects given their wanton disregard of the much easier and laxer rules involving animal subjects.
However, the people on the other end -- the ones conducting the research -- can't an test an unregulated device on you (I'm coming at this from the Medical Device aspect, since that's what I'm familiar with), without following certain procedures to ensure that it's safe and efficacious.
As a result, it really doesn't matter whether or not you're dying.
This may not be the free pass it sounds like, and does come with problems, such as poor access to broader medical services, as well as generally guaranteeing that all US, EU, G7/G20 country regulators will permanently give you a hard time when you want approval for general sales. The question is whether he wants to sell it, or if he's just developing it for a hobby.
Wouldn't be surprising to see him get some kind of test approval to go ahead in China or India...
Politicians and business leaders do whatever is popular/profitable no matter the morality. Scientists are prevented from doing anything that even might be considered questionable by someone.
Then people wonder why our society makes so little progress scientifically and why we make so much immortal but profitable "progress". Why we have endless abuse of workers but no treatments for dementia or depression...
Anything socially useful can be vetoed by a tiny minority. Anything socially harmful but privately profitable is a RIGHT, beyond question.
If you want to give a 14 tear old a beer expect prison. If you want to give a 14 tear old a job that ruins their education and costs them a limb, a 5k fine...