Using Sound Waves For Outpatient Neurosurgery

eldavojohn writes "Got a piece of malfunctioning brain tissue in your head? Want to avoid messy lobotomies and skull saws? Well, you're in luck; a study shows that acoustic waves can do the trick and will hopefully treat patients with disorders like Parkinson's disease. A specialist said, 'The groundbreaking finding here is that you can make lesions deep in the brain — through the intact skull and skin — with extreme precision and accuracy and safety.' They focus beams on the part of the brain needing treatment and it absorbs the energy, which turns to heat. The temperature hits about 130 F, and they can burn 10 cubic millimeters at a time. Using an MRI to see areas of heat, they can watch the whole time and target only what needs to be burned. The study consisted of nine subjects suffering from chronic pain that did not subside with medication (normally they need to go in and destroy a small part of the thalamus on these patients). After the outpatient procedure, all nine reported immediate pain relief and none experienced neurological problems or other side effects after surgery."

Comments

I can see...

[Anonymous Coward]

...this becoming an easy-to-use, new, important tool in our government's management of us.

(As an aside I notice that more and more of my posts are made as AC due to my increasing paranoia.)

Re:Very cool, but...

[PachmanP]

Try taking ethics. If we followed your slippery slope logic we'd start killing people when they hit retirement age. After all, they'll never again go back to work and 'pay back' their value after they start collecting social security. Same for the mentally retarded, just drown them right?

Ethics smethics. They're pretty arbitrary and fluid. And what's wrong with letting the old people die when they get old. The evolutionary biological argument that I've heard is that having old people around is good for knowledge transmission. We have other decent ways of doing that now, and the old are not providing a benefit to the young breeding population much anymore. Mostly they're a drain. As for the mentally retarded, they're pretty much evolutionary dead ends and burdens.
I guess if you subscribe to some other ethical code beyond the biological basis, you might not agree, but you'd better have a basis for it beyond "but but it's wrong!"

"Realistically we need to start realizing that not every person DESERVES the best treatment". And who decides that?

Whoever is footing the bill. If society is paying, then society should expect a ROI. I wouldn't argue that the ROI can't come in some form that's not monetary, but it should be there. If someone else decides that X deserves it and will pay for it, all power to them.

"so costly that society can never regain that investment". Public education is costly, if a kid isn't learning and behaving by second grade should society perform a retroactive abortion? After all without an education they'll just be a burden on society, and its not worth paying for the education if they aren't being productive, why not save the money for the other years of school?

The net value to society of educated members generally is worth it even accounting for some "loss" through bad outcomes, but maybe you're right. I wouldn't set the bar at 2nd grade though just because they may not be a total loss by then.

Did you have a 4.0 GPA in school? what about college? How much are you contributing to society now? I'm not so sure I am getting back my investment in you. Most of the education system in the world are funded by tax dollars.

See now you're just stabbing outwards. The net benefit for society doesn't require everybody to be rocket scientists, just to have a basic education.
As for what benefit I provide...I correct people on the internet ;)