Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
Actually, as far as classes of addicts, wireheads would be the easiest to deal with. There is no illegal supply chains for the trafficers to maintain. No one needs to be killed over a few miliamps of electricity. And the wireheads tended to conveniently remove themselves from society, and wither away in privacy, starving themselves to death in a state of bliss. Compare with heroin, crack, meth. converting all our addicts to this would be a boon to society.