Neuralink Can Implant Second Person With a Brain Chip, FDA Says

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.
- 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.
  
  They did try to fix the problem the best they could. Its also a very intense procedure so I doubt it's smart to go back after so little time. It's probably better to wait until they fix all the kinks anyways. The man did enough, he doesn't need to be a debug guinea pig with his head open every month imo.
  
  I'd actually be mad if they used the same guy tbh.
  
  I also think it's important to seperate the tech from the persona. There's a lot of smart people behind this and I think it's sci-fi as fuck.
- Look we all hate Elon and how neuralink is developing their tech that's not in question here.
  
  People are taking issue with your referring to desperate people with very very poor quality of life due to injuries or medical conditions as "brain dead"
  
  They aren't "brain dead", dumb or stupid, they are reaching for what looks like the only potential light in their life. A life that is probably impossibly difficult for any of us typically healthy people to imagine.
You would have a life and people who care about you, regardless of use of your legs.
- I'm pretty sure not everyone has a life and people who cares about them.
  
  Then you are wrong.
  
  Is that exclusive para/quadriplegics in your mind? Only that you are countering a statement that essentially says that losing one or more limbs doesnt make people stop loving you, by saying not everyone has people that love them. Which would be a good point if people not loving you was exclusive to people who have lost a limb or limbs...
  
  Did you just try to angle my comment to be about people with disabilities being less capable and/or of less value?
  
  What I countered was a claim where the first part stated that everyone has a life, which is just not true. For the second part of the claim to have any value in the sentence, the first part has to be true. Which it wasn't.
  
  Whether I read it wrong or not doesn't change the fact that I never limited my statement to be about people with disabilities or disabilities automatically taking the life away from people.
  
  So I stand by my claim, that not everyone of the 8 billion living in this planet has a life and people that care about them.
  
  You were responding to a comment about quadriplegics which painted context to your response. If that's not what you meant, then gine. Im sorry i misunderstood your response. You could have been more clear that you were generalising and not directly responding to the claim being made.
  
  To your point. No not everyone has a life and people that love them but i would argue that a blanket statement that started this thread, that if you were a quadriplegic then you would volunteer to have experimental surgery with unknown side effects and effectiveness because you have nothing else going for you is not inherently true.
  
  You dont need to be quadriplegic to want to volunteer. You dont have to not have anything else going for you, and you dont need to have a life or people that love you.
  
  If all you are saying is not everyone has a life or people that live them, then i fail to see how its relevant to the point made in this thread.
I mean...I'm more or less normally functioning. I'd give it a whirl then start building a drone army.

Fuck. We could have a real Rat King even!

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?
- The first implant was in a paraplegic man. The FDA is not approving this experimental procedure for otherwise healthy people.
  
  It's not hard for me to believe some healthy person would be a dope and want to experiment with this, but it's not what is being considered.
  
  The top level comment is shitty on severely ill people for being willing to take a risk to improve their life and the lives of others.
  
  It's either pure trash, or the poster is so blinded by their hatred for musk that they aren't thinking rationally. I suspect the latter.
  
  I don't know that the top comment assumed the people signing up for this trial were sick or medically unwell.
  
  I am not arguing the why or who of clinical trials. My comment had nothing to do with the why or who. It had to do with the judgements made by both comments about the who.
  
  I can understand why you'd feel that comment was insensitive if you have the context you provided. But an assumption about the motives without necessary context does not equal guilt on the original commenter. This person may not have considered the health of someone willing to join such a trial at all. It may never have occurred to them that unhealthy people were signing up.
  
  His hatred for Musk is kind of justifiable in the way Musk has accrued his wealth and the actions of his companies under his direction. And given that track record the logic of not wanting to become the next Hyperloop that is now just an underground tunnel.
  
  This is the internet. People gonna people.
  
  Pretty much all of the misconceptions you listed could have been solved by simply reading the article, or even being slightly informed about the process of approval of experimental evidence.
  
  Judging from a place of ignorance isn't really any better.
  
  See number 5. People really are going to people, but compounding that is also not any better.
  
  And when people are mindlessly and unfairly judging people, we shouldn't call them out? If I see someone being racist should I just throw up my hands and say "well people are going to people"?
  
  And why aren't you following your own advice and allowing me to people without being challenged?
  
  People are naturally going to have the reactions they do to Elon Musk. If the news outlets didn't constantly put him in the spotlight more people would probably be willing to read the article and learn about the trial and the science. As it is I'm not surprised people didn't read the article.
  
  I'm not particularly invested in either side of this which makes me a pretty unbiased third party simply pointing out that neither of you is making the community better with these kinds of comments. If you had quoted relevant parts from the article that would have been a better way to convey what you meant.
  
  And mostly because you responded to me.
  
  This is hilarious. You responded to me first, I only addressed you have you jumped in. You are also not "unbiased" because you didn't read the article either and defended the assumption, accusing me of assuming too. But not only that but making false assumptions about my position and then accusing me of being on a high horse. And you're trying to pretend youre some neutral party. Lol
  
  Whatever, my man. You want to let ignorant judgments go unaddressed, be my guest, but I'm going to people over here and call it out like it should be.
  
  My comment had nothing to do with the article. So I didn't need to read the article.
  
  Perhaps you should read the other comments where I explain that the company's track record of ethics and success sucks ass, and isn't the only one doing this kind of research. They're just the only ones willing to go through human trials with garbage that falls apart.
  
  Them using desperate people doesn't help with the ethics here. It actually is much worse, taking advantage of people.
  
  My point has nothing to do with the company, but you calling sick people who want to make their own life better, and hopefully better the world at the same time, "braindead."
  
  I won't let you gaslight us and try to pretend your original point was solely about the company. Sorry.
  
  Move fast and break things should never apply towards human trials.
- The FDA is only approving this for clinical use, so yes, there is something wrong with them. Healthy people won't be installing chips into their brain. Probably not in our lifetimes at least as the tech is not safe enough
  
  This comment is not arguing in the spirit of the original comments or my own. Healthy people absolutely do want this technology for the sheer amount of convenience it could provide. Hence the number of science fiction stories about it. The thing is though, assuming that anyone who would sign up for a clinical trial must be sick is an interesting take especially in response to someone else positing that anyone who would do it is stupid or crazy. People can be perfectly healthy and still participate in clinical trials. For lots of reasons to include simply wanting to progress the science.
  
  There is a lot of legal limits for medical procedures not in the pursuit of documented illnesses. You will have a very hard time finding someone willing to take off a working arm for a protestic for example.
  
  I mean. That's also not what I was arguing although I did bring up that healthy people do want this technology too, so I can see how we got here. We aren't arguing the motive of the people signing up for or participating in this or any clinical trial. We are arguing whether or not we can judge others for assuming the motives of those signing up, and whether our judgements are any better.

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.

We call that selection bias.

They're only testing on people that are on their death bed right now.