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'Brain Pacemakers' Being Tested
meshmar writes "Shades of 'The Terminal Man'? Rob Stein of The Washington Post has reported, via MSNBC, that: 'A handful of scientists around the world have begun cautiously experimenting with devices implanted in patients' bodies to deliver precisely targeted electrical stimulation to the brain in hopes of treating otherwise hopeless behavioral, neurological and psychiatric disorders.' A lot of good can come out of this - potentially. But I can see a the potential for misuse too."
Didn't the bad dudes in Battle Field Earth have implants that caused them to be extra agressive and bad actors.
Dr. Vosknocker: Now, I want you to say "doggy".
Cartman: Doggy.
Dr. Vosknocker: [to audience] Notice, that nothing happens. [to Cartman] Now, say "montana".
Cartman: Montana.
Dr. Vosknocker: Good. Now, "pillow".
Cartman: Pillow.
Dr. Vosknocker: Alright. Now I want you to say "horse f*cker".
Mrs. Cartman: Go on, honey. It's alright.
Cartman: Horse fu-- [gets shocked by the V-chip] That hurts, god damn it!
[gets shocked again]
Dr. Vosknocker: Now I want you to say "big floppy donkey dick".
Cartman: No!
Dr. Vosknocker: [to audience] Success! The child doesn't want to swear!
Cartman: This isn't fair, you sons of bi--
[gets shocked repeatedly]
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The possiblities are astounding! Buy a Microsoft product, get an orgasm!
they can have control over my brain when they pry it out of my cold, dead skull!
Any technology can be used for good or evil. A board with a nail through it can be the beginning of a house for the homeless, or an instrument to bloody someone to death.
I'm a huge fan of new technology and was wondering when someone would start to broach this area. I've read several pages of different universities that were playing with this including my favorite Caltech. This is great as it's a step away from just having the patient hardwired into a computer system.
*DrugCheese rants*
Some things about living still weren't quite right, though. April for instance, still drove people crazy by not being springtime. And it was in that clammy month that the H-G men took George and Hazel Bergeron's fourteen-year-old son, Harrison, away.
It was tragic, all right, but George and Hazel couldn't think about it very hard. Hazel had a perfectly average intelligence, which meant she couldn't think about anything except in short bursts. And George, while his intelligence was way above normal, had a little mental handicap radio in his ear. He was required by law to wear it at all times. It was tuned to a government transmitter. Every twenty seconds or so, the transmitter would send out some sharp noise to keep people like George from taking unfair advantage of their brains.
I have a brain pacemaker and it sucks...*ZAP*
I mean they're fantastic.
I think the concern is that people would do precisely that. After all, it happened on both Futurama *and* the Simpsons, so naturally it's of grave concern to the Slashdot editors.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Moreover, researchers say, the treatment has the advantage of being able to be simply turned off or removed if it does not work or if problems occur.
Nevertheless, the research arouses fears of reviving the reckless use of brain surgery, about the wisdom of poking around in what some consider the font of a person's humanity, about oversimplifying mental illness as a purely biological problem, and the temptation to move too quickly to try out new technologies.
and then I read this
A lot of good can come out of this - potentially. But I can see a the potential for misuse too.
My question is this: what technology has been created in the past that COULD NOT have potentially been misused? Sure, you invented a pencil... a whole lot of good could come from this--but some dejected office worker could jam it in someone's ear too...
This technology has the potential to be fantastic. Sure, a crazy mad scientist somewhere could definitely mess someone up pretty bad with this stuff--but how many medical procedures are already performed now where the doctor Doesn't have to power to seriously mess the patient up?
I support this technology... Yeah, sure... Doctor's may be able to kill someone with it... but they also may just run someone over on the sidewalk driving home. And before anyone starts ranting about thousands of armies full of pacemaker brain-people... cut me a break. (although it would probably make a pretty cool book) There's too many things that are not directly related to science for that to happen... so the argument isnt' exactly with the science but with the implementation of it... There are more holes... also, but they're not on-topic to this discussion....
Give science a break... this stuff could save lives and help out a lot of people.
Buy a Microsoft product, get an orgasm!
:-)
You're under the mistaken assumption that people have an orgasm every time they're screwed
I'm a candidate for ECT. I'd like to get it done sooner rather than later, as years of all kinds of therapy & drugs have done absolutely nil. It gets tiring going over some similar variation on the drugs/therapy routing, working up a little hope for just a slight improvement, to still go no further.
I wouldn't like to see ECT or probes in the brain used as a first resort for someone who'd been depressed for a couple of weeks, as a little help can go a LONG way in many people.
The shocks used in ECT are quite controlled, with muscle relaxants to minimise any muscular contraction that goes along with the shock. It works for some reason, and that reason isn't exactly known. Personally I don't give a shit why it works or how, or even if it wipes 20 years from my life. Chronic treatment resistant depression has laid waste to the last 20 years of my life, doing nothing isn't going to make the next 20 any better.
OK, we have a "computer" here in the lab that's crashing a lot, and losing people's data, and we have this new theory for how to fix it. I don't exactly know how these "computers" work, of course, so we can't be sure... but we have some ideas gleaned we from when we used to just get rid of them when they broke. A lot of times, we'd take a computer out of the garbage pile and see what was inside. They're mostly green plastic in there. Lots of very small, small parts - too small for the eye to see. No one knows how they all work together, yet, but we put one in an X-Ray and gave it an MRI and we notice that certain parts are hotter than others when the computer is doing different tasks. Also, we put a computer in the blender and then studied the little chunks under a microscope. So we're definitely making progress.
Based on all this we figure Jim in maintenance can insert some electrical probes into the "chips" and send in little shocks with just the right voltage to stop Microsoft Word from crashing so much. Plus we think it might really help our Quake 3 framerates.
We think this could be better than the best idea we've had so far, having computer therapists sit with them and press different keys to try to recreate past successes we've had by trial and error. It couldn't be worse than our previous attempts, which involved just putting unruly computers in the closet until they got better on their own, or administering electric shocks to the outside of the case, or (my favorite) just taking the sucker down to the shop and really giving it a good whack on the drill press.
Somebody call Discover Magazine.
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I work as a software engineer for the second biggest medical electronics company in that field (Medtronic being the biggest). I can't speak for them, but nothing goes into an implant that is not supposed to be there for functionality of what it's designed for. With the FDA constantly looking at us, we verify and validate the heck out of these things. My boss actually developed the Epileptic Stimulator pretty much all by himself back in the late 80's and early 90's. It's gone though through testing since then. It takes forever for this stuff to get put into a human. And these things are real simple. If you saw the code in these, there is no way they could do anything "evil". There is just enough code to keep time and shock the nerve ever so often, and some user settings. In order to make these last longer than a few months, the processor is clocked down into the khz and just enough code to get the job done and that's it. In this business it's all about how long the device will last till it has to get explanted. There is no way we would give up longevity for having some government mind control v-chip or something. And I'm not a Dr. but I think the electrical shock doesn't trevel that far, it starts getting "absorbed" as it traveles, so danger to the heart from a nerve stim is pretty much nil. In fact they even see that people who use the Epileptic Stimulator also seem to have a better mood. They think that no only will it help against tremmors, and parkenson's but depression as well. I suppose that if you let your mind run away with you, you could see the potential misuse in just about anything. But with how simple these are and how we want to sell these to help people (and profit) we don't want any bad press, we want people to want these. And there is no way something "bad" could be put in these with no one noticing. And if it got out, it could ruin a company. And I know that we woudln't want that to happen. I feel bad, cause I see how these help people in Europe and the FDA takes such a long time to convence that people suffer while we are jumping though hoops for them. I know people who could be helped now. I guess it's good for lots of testing though. :)