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FDA OKs Brain Pacemaker for Depression
Duke Machesne writes "On Friday, the FDA approved a new therapy for the severely depressed who have run out of treatment options: a pacemaker-like implant that sends tiny electric shocks to the brain. The Food and Drug Administration's clearance opens Cyberonics Inc.'s vagus nerve stimulator, or VNS, as a potential treatment for an estimated 4 million Americans with hard-to-treat depression - despite controversy over whether it's really been proven to work."
Wuhoo! Now I can be a wirehead with FDA approval.
I wonder how hackable they would be to send 'pleasure' signals... Kinda like a star trekkie thing that keeps your brain in extacy for hours upon hours... That would be the life... who cares about money after that implant.
Seriously, Depression is a dissease that affects almost everyone at some point in our lives. Those who cant be helped with alternative methods could serously benefit from such. Whats needed now is a way to determine if someone is clinincally depressed even if they are denying it. This might have pain and suffering of a local 13 year old who tried to take his own life last winter, but only succeded in making himself worse off.
(for whomever labelled this as flamebait)
This is a reference to Niven's universe, I've heard it first mentioned in the book "Flatlander." Basically, a wirehead is somebody who has become a current addict. A hole is drilled into the skull, and a wire inserted into the pleasure center of the brain.
The end result is that the person becomes addicted to the pleasure supplied by the device, worse than a cokehead or heroin addict.
Addiction should be something we should be careful of, we don't need "wireheads" outside of book-worlds.
Why is medicine so uninternested in treating the cause? Cause they can't make money. And it is all about money.
Check this out: http://www.eeginfo.com/
This stuff might sould a little quacky, but it works and it works very well. And you don't need to cut into the brain to fix the brain. Look a little searching on labotimies and see what a disaster that was.
You must be a Tom Cruise fanboy. I suppose you don't believe that there can be chemical imbalances either. How about people that were litterally torquered as a child by someone they loved. Should they "just get over it" as you say. Your lack of empathy is why the world is so screwed up. No one gives a shit about anyone else and then wonders why there is so much violence.
The advice we ultimately adopted was that the VNS had too low a success-rate in reducing seizures (even in some cases increasing seizure ativity). That it would help those suffering from various physiological depressions was mentioned as a passing thought.
The VNS is implanted under the skin with leads connected to the vagus nerve -- the device could be manually activated by positioning a magnet over the implant. For epileptics, this was the thing to do when the aura (premonition) came. However, my wife has never had aura before a seizure, so the ultimate benefit was moot (what with my time machine being broken, and all.)
Personally, mild electric shock therapy *could* be of benefit, but mostly I suspect the manufacturer, having lost the "VNS cures epilepsy" headline, are going for a second (but much larger) market.
Your mileage will vary.
Except this isn't approved for many instances of depression. It is only approved for severe cases of clinical depression which most definately aren't caused by external causes.
This wouldn't be used to treat those people, though. This is a severe measure which would be used to treat people who have actual, chemical things wrong with them, who despite having EVERYTHING in their life going right, can still be thinking about suicide.
Anybody who's known someone with REAL depression knows that it can be completely non-situational.
There's a difference between depression which everyone gets and major or chronic depression which has nothing or very little to do with one's environment.
The idea that treatment will stop progress is pretty ridiculous and the pollyanna-types have been screaming this Brave New World. Doesn't seem to be happening at all and the idea that its moral to deprive very sick people of treatment for the greater social good is kinda disturbing. If your society is at that point, then "social justice" has long left you.
Also, I'd like to point out that in every democracy people tend to vote against their best interests and the interests of others over party loyalty, hot button issues, or just plain old fashioned ideology regardless of how they feel. In the US, the poorest states vote for the party which wants to dismantle the very social programs they depend on to get by. So the thesis itself sounds highly flawed to me.
Here's another theory:
Youve so indoctrinated children and (now) adults into thinking that wishing makes it so, and that self-esteem is more important than objective results, or that no matter what, you're entitled to a 'fair' life, and a 'good' job.
Guess what. Life isn't like that. So what does a college graduate do, when he finds that the world is a cold, hard place? Many things, becoming depressed is one of them.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Yeah, I did as well. As did the previous two parent posts about this book. (Which I replied to instead of starting my own post) Please read posts beforehand (or do a find) before posting on a certain topic :/
-SaNo
Zoloft, IIRC, took 3 tries to find a study where it performed better than placebo, and when it did it wasn't all that much better (has *some* effect on 70% of cases, or the like). I may be misremembering, but the point is sound -- *all* depression treatments at this point have pretty high fail rates, and if you've seen serious depression, you know that *any* new tools are welcome.
...
Elsewhere it's been pointed out that truly successful depression treatments could mask problems in our society, the same way that truly successful cancer treatments could mask pollution problems. That's true -- but if your mother is dying of cancer, it's sure hard to care
If I say I believe Windows XP is insecure because the little XP elves that live inside my computer always forget to lock the door behind them, would you say I am "not entirely incorrect" too?
I'm a depressed person. While I've not been officially diagnosed, I think the recent suicide attempts have proven that.
I'm not sure how much they "prove" at all, except that you want them to "prove" something.
Now, I don't fucking want help. I rather like being this far below the average person. It's easier down here. No one understands that, and I'm expected to "get better" so that my friends and family will "feel better" about me.
No, you're just a self-indulgent kid who wants to exploit some of your alienation and loneliness to make yourself feel better than everyone else.
Depression isn't fun, and it doesn't make most people cool or interesting.
It's like having a damn weight round your neck, slowing you down, and the more you slow down, the more weight gets added. It's being surrounded by a fog such that you can't even see what "normal" is, destroying your motivation further, because you can't see that making the effort to work your way out of the depressive rut your in will get you anywhere worthwhile. So you do nothing and it gets worse.
That's not to say that I'd want to be a blindly optimistic person; being less than blindly happy can be a good thing and stop you being a brain-dead zealot. The experience, I'd guess, could be used for constructive purposes.
But depression is not fun, it's not interesting, in fact it's bloody boring and (real depression) is just as likely to turn you into a boring person to be with as it is to make you a poetic genius (which requires some motivation, in short supply).
It needs some will-power to actually say "fuck it, this does not apply to my life", externalise your depression and frankly to not indulge it.
Why does depression have to be cured?
I'm very sceptical that it *should* be "cured" in the way that many would like it to be. Yeah, pop your angsty teen some pills when they start feeling less than satisfied with your messed up, materialistic values, stick something in their head, yadda yadda.... sometimes it's a natural reaction to the environment someone's in, and "curing" it with science is frankly loathesome.
And on the other hand, the boring, unfashionable, (but very destructive) drizzly fog-like depression that some people have is just likely to be unbearable, and my guess is that anyone depressed to that extent (I've never been that bad, but I can at least imagine it) would not ask "why does depression have to be cured?".
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Just last month my son had a VNS inserted. This was for epilepsy, and not for depression, and it was quite a trial to be approved for the device. But this was the last resort after years of drug therapy and before major brain surgery for the child. Here's a few observations that might help clarify the whole VNS system:
It is an automatic device that delivers a specific frequency, amplitude, peak duration and general duration of electric shock. There is a "always on" mode where the shock is delivered for 60 seconds, followed by 66 seconds off, repeated indefinately. There is also a mode that is activated with a magnet. This mode is usually programmed to deliver the same frequency and duration, but more amplitude to the shock. The setting of these attributes is done via a PDA and a "wand".
Hackable, I suppose. My curiosity had me wishing for a signal meter to find out the attribute-setting protocol (but dang if I left it at home). But will it solve depression? The only results I've seen are children 10 to 18 who have a life because of this little device. Other than helping regulate seizure behavior, the only obvious side-effect is a slight warbling of the vocal cords. If anything, my boy thinks it's cool that he's now a cyborg and shows off to his friends. He's happy so far, but the real results will come with time.
As was the case for my son, I feel there should be a real medical need before having the VNS surgically inserted. In the case of seizures, it is difficult to operate without some method of control. I have never liked the amount of medications my son needed to refrain from regular seizures, and this seems like a reasonable alternative to having chunks of his brain surgically removed.
If a subject has debilitating depression, then maybe the VNS would be worthwhile for them. But from my perspective, the VNS is a good thing.
H0ek
Think you're smart? Prove you've got brains!
The problem is that neither of these drugs are in practice suitable here. Heroin has too much risk associated with it, even if pharmaceutical-grade and not injected, because the overall effect it produced is too context dependent (which means that people often overdose if they take a dose that they're normally used to, but take it in an unfamiliar environment). Furthermore, heroin makes you more lethargic, not less lethargic, which would definitely be a problem in the case of individuals with depression, as lethargy is one thing that very regularly is a significant part of it. As for marijuana, it can often produce (sometimes quite severe) anxiety and paranoia, especially in individuals who already have preexisting psychological problems. Even though depression itself may not necessary predispose one that much to getting very bad reactions from marijuana, depression is very often comorbid with things like anxiety disorders and like, which aren't necessary diagnosed per se (but that doesn't mean that they aren't there), and anxiety disorders very significantly predispose one to having very adverse reactions to marijuana. And likewise, marijuana is likely to make one more lethargic rather than less, which would not be exactly helpful for individuals with depression.
Well, heart pacemakers are certainly treating symptoms rather than curing the disease. Does that make them worthless?
There is a point where treating the symptoms is valid. If you remove all the symptoms, then you don't really _need_ to cure the cause, do you?
Politas
Based on personal experience, this is blatantly wrong. Depression, or at least some 'kinds' of depression, are not caused by thoughts, and are not improved or worsened by thoughts.
The real trouble is that there is a kind (or kinds) of depression that is caused by negative thoughts. (loss of loved one, personal failure etc.) And this depression looks a lot like the other kind. To complicate matters, they can both occur at the same time, and the first type can cause the second. In addition, like you said, "there is no PET scan or any kind of thing that would tell you definately, 'this person has depression'." So diagnosis is done on the basis of asking the person how they feel and what they do. This is just not good enough to tell the difference. And they need different treatments.
Laws are horrible moral guides, moral guides make even worse laws.
Sorry to hear about your disease. Nevertheless, you cannot deny the objective evidence with regards to NE and 5-HT (in the locus coeruleus, etc.). With that in mind, we have seen clear objective evidence that drugs such as SSRIs have significantly improved the lives of (and "cured") many people.
I assume that you know some of the drug treatments available; Effexor, Wellbutrin, Zyban, Celexa, Prozac, etc. I also assume that you know that ECT is another treatment option for major depressive disorder refractory to other treatment.
You simply cannot take your single example and suggest that your self-medicating is a solution that will work for everyone. It may (appear to) work for you, but suggesting that you do not have a neurochemical imbalance isn't necessarily objective.
Do you what one of the major causes of death is with people who have major depressive disorder? Suicide. Not a good thing.