85% of Neuralink implant wires are already detached, says patient | Hacker News Reader

85% of Neuralink implant wires are already detached, says patient

popsci.com

45 pointsjrflowers50 comments

> implant threads are now completely detached

When it comes to the problems of human augmentations, I've always been impressed with how the Deus Ex series [0] managed to maintain a certain amount of realistic grounding (for sci-fi games, that is) in weaknesses of the plot tech-du-jour.

In particular, the Deus Ex: Human Revolution prequel from 2011 (set in 2027) involves a worldwide boom in human augmentations, marred by chronic problems in the neural interface. Host tissue would "scar" from glial tissue buildup around the "PEDOT electrodes", and the only treatment was (of course) tightly controlled by the nefarious powers-that-be.

The original game from 2000 was set further in the future with a similar dilemma involving cellular nanotechnology, and contained a large amount of discoverable reading material, including semi-plausible stuff like:

> As a medical specialist, you will be required to repair and modify the systems of our nano-augmented agents. This briefing is intended merely as an introduction to the technology.

> The cells of every major tissue in the body of a nano-augmented agent are host to nanite-capsid "hybrids." These hybrids replicate in two stages: the viral stage, in which the host cell produces capsid proteins and packages them into hollowed viral particles, and the nanotech stage, in which the receiver- transmitter and CPU are duplicated and inserted into the protective viral coating. New RNA sequences are transmitted by microwave and translated in to plasmid vectors, resulting in a wholly natural and organic process.

> Additional augmentations can be added through the use of microscopic ROM modules -- shaped a little like flying saucers -- that diffuse through the blood and attach to the long spine of nanite CPUs. These additional augmentations are software "upgrades" in the most literal sense of the word.

> We hope this report gets you started; you will find a full technical design document attached. Please read and thoroughly understand this information so that you will be better qualified to administer care to this most exciting new breed of augmented-human agent.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deus_Ex

I saw a brain surgeon talking about something like this. Evidently the brain moves around a lot more than most people think and with the implantation there will be inflammation that is likely to increase/decrease over time causing location and detachment issues.

Do brains also have an "organ rejection" mechanism, could it consider the implant a foreign object and try to evict it?

IANAD but I’d imagine with all the knee/hip/everything replacements, metal plates in heads, pins in wrists, pacemaker implants etc that it’s a manageable issue.

Ultimately everything Involving medical implants like this are a rocky road on the way to success.

Hopefully they eventually fix it as it's pretty ground breaking in what it allows.

https://web.archive.org/web/20240521193946/https://www.popsc...

This product just feels like it's way ahead of its time, and not in a good way. There's at least a half dozen fundamental problems with this sort of implant; they really shouldn't be used outside of medical necessity until we have a better grasp on... everything.

Why shouldn’t people be able to submit themselves to experimentation?

I could imagine that in practice you end up with a bunch of vulnerable people submitting themselves to experimentation by powerful companies, which is an unhealthy dynamic.

I agree that it could be an unhealthy dynamic but who should ultimately have the power to make that decision? The patient who wants to participate in a trial because it may offer a chance of improving his quality of life, or us?

Beyond that, allowing for these experimental trials, regardless of their success or failure, can accelerate medical progress that can enable better care for many more people in the future.

That's what I see a lot with Cancer drugs. People are dying and want to take a chance on really experimental stuff but the FDA will deny it. They want to try it because it could help them, or if not, at least help others by eliminating useless paths.

It's so strange that people feel it's wrong for patients to make their own choice on this, but they are okay forcing others to not have treatment. It's a "My decision is better than yours, I can decide what is better for you.

There are regulations in the us to protect human subjects from undue influence.

Agreed. People should have a strong right to repair that gives them liberty over hardware and software in their property especially in their body. Anti-cirumvention ought be illegal by default. The law should protect people from being prayed up on by controlling interests. Would that.

Because desperate people will be taken advantage of by people trying to make a quick buck. That includes pharmaceutical or medical device manufacturers who are answering to investors.

This is why universities have institutional review boards and it’s broadly forbidden to conduct experiments on prisoners.

That's FDA's role, to be the gatekeeper to make sure trials and experiments meet acceptable safety standards. Worth noting that FDA has allowed Neuralink to have the 2nd patient in the coming month.

Experiments on prisoners are nonconsensual, so it doesn't map to cases like this.

Why shouldn't people be able to submit themselves to ride on an experimental rocket ship that has known issues and is not expected complete its mission?

If they're aware of that, I don't see the problem?

It's not so much allowing people to sign up for it, it's preventing companies from killing and maiming people in the interest of profit. Because that's literally what it is. There's not a big asterisk in our laws next to murder that says "oh, unless they're cool about it".

You have some very confused ideas about risk and the concept of voluntary behavior.

All of the animals that Neuralink killed would beg to differ.

That is a good question, people should absolutely be allowed to do that if they want to. Sign a consent form, why not?

You can consent to be murdered but that doesn't make the company murdering you free and clear to murder you.

Ever heard of euthanasia?

1. Euthanasia is supposed to work and not have a chance of horrifically painful outcomes.

2. Companies don't get to benefit from you being a test subject as a result of you being euthanized.

3. The upside of euthanasia is getting to die. The upside of what's happening here is maybe getting to have a cool gadget for a little while until your brain implant falls out, and then who knows what kind of terrible injury you'll suffer!

Neuralink and similar tech has substantial life changing implications for its users. It’s not a gimmick

Those life changing implications would be great if the devices didn't kill their hosts or fall out. Being life changing doesn't give Neuralink a pass.

>The upside of what's happening here is maybe getting to have a cool gadget for a little while

That’s not a good faith statement of the upside of a neural implant.

The upside of having a neural implant is that the quality of life for a quadriplegic person is greatly improved for as long as the implant lasts, which is potentially indefinite, if the device works correctly. It’s not a “for fun” project, see the video here for a real demonstration of this man’s life being improved: https://youtu.be/5SrpYZum4Nk?feature=shared

A man who is paralyzed from the neck down being able to use a computer fluently again and do things like play his favorite video games is a huge upside.

You mean “experimental submarine.”

But the steering wheel is a cool joystick!

Well, they do, down to the titanic..

Do you think broader society should be able to impose any limits? Is there any experiment too stupid to countenance?

There are limits in place. All human testing in the US is reviewed by an Institutional Review Board and covered by numerous regulations.

So just wait forever? That's why they do the trials, to figure out. I guess this comes to what is more important, his desire to take a chance or your desire to prevent that, ostensibly 'for his best interest'

What we need is to understand more about how the brain actually works and we do that with animal models not jamming half assed devices into the heads of humans

Wait forever? No, do the grounding research first. They didn't even know how much the brain was likely to move, for pity's sake. Nor do we have a good handle on scar formation, any necessary immune therapy, ...more or less anything that would be needed if anything at all goes wrong.

You make it like you are there and know all the details. Obviously the regulating bodies approved it so they felt there was enough to go forward with it.

The way you discover a lot of problems is because of the trial patients. This happens ever day in medicine.

> The way you discover a lot of problems is because of the trial patients.

I don't think that's the case with medical researches at all. They have good ideas of outcome with petri dishes and chimera mice before verifying the result with human trials. They didn't made COVID vaccines by trial and error on living humans, that could have taken a century.

Especially with neural stuffs. If they can't make it work not with cultured cells and guinea pigs, there's nothing to be gained from scaling it out to an explosive failure on a launchpad.

That doesn't even make any sense. Most cancer drugs that go for human trials never get to market. That's true for most drugs.

Most cancer drug candidates don't even make into human trials. Human trials are only done after they've figured it all the theories and simulations and animal testing and everything out over decades and it's all verified it won't kill people, then they run RCT and find out it actually does and cancel it.

Your assertion is that drugs are discovered on fuck-around-and-find-out basis on live humans, which is simply false and stupid.

Literally all of this is wrong. Those mechanics and risks are well understood

DBS exists and works. It saves people's lives who have essential tremors.

Except, as was expected even by Neuralink, it's ultimately going to be a failure. He'll lose whatever cybernetic abilities he has and probably be ineligible to participate in a follow-up surgery to fix it. He got to play some chess for a few months, and all he has to show for it are whatever (likely permanent) side effects he'll be enduring as his brain implant falls out. So yeah, he ultimately got fucked by Neuralink.

He was, in your words, pretty “fucked” before Neuralink.

Did you read the interview from Bloomberg?

“Arbaugh had talked with Bain about how he would be receiving what was probably the worst Neuralink implant that anyone would get. But Arbaugh had agreed to the trial precisely because these types of issues could occur. He wanted to be a means for helping other people by aiding Neuralink in its quest to root out any of the implant’s flaws.“

> receiving what was probably the worst Neuralink implant that anyone would get

Yeah let's hope that they figure out how to design them to have a track record of literally any of the recipients not dying

They have endless animals that have been perfectly fine after the implant, and their first human patient is also entirely fine

1. I don't believe they do have endless animals that are in any way fine. I've never read anything supporting this, and in fact, I've read lots of stuff suggesting the exact opposite.

2. He's objectively not, and the implant will become entirely detached probably before the end of the summer. He's also experiencing side effects, according to sources online.

> they really shouldn't be used outside of medical necessity until we have a better grasp on

It's a medical study whose purpose is just to get a better grasp of things.

From the patient himself:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2024-05-16/neuralink...

you'd think they'd know about this from the money and pig experiments. what made them think jumping to a human would be any better?

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