this post was submitted on 25 May 2024
174 points (87.8% liked)
Technology
59589 readers
3024 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
"We managed to not kill the first subject, but we're hopeful to succeed in the future"...
Not killing patients is a success.
A success does not include leaving a victim of failed experimental medicine with a non-functional implant. In contrast to how animal subjects are used as test subjects (often conducted with less oversight than there should be), using experimental medicine on volunteering patients should be done not just to collect better data than the chimps before them supplied, but with the genuine expectation that the product in question will benefit the patient beyond their usefulness as a test subject for continued product development.
Through software updates, they were able to alleviate the problem. They are a bit vague in the article but it's not a total loss and more than he had before the operation.
Tbh though, the real test is how his brain accommodates it over the years and if it starts getting complicated later.
Also, this was the very first test implant into a human. At this point in testing "doesn't harm the patient" is a perfectly good result to call a success.
Honestly, people calling Neuralink a failure because the first patient didn't get up and start dancing are just showing themselves to be either ignorant of the process or ridiculously biased.