2023-05-26 17:40:39
Always controversial. Always on the vanguard. Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink, has received the green light from the FDA for a first-in-human clinical trial. The objective of this technology is, according to its developers, to take human-machine interaction to another level. It also aims to eradicate, at the same time, problems such as obesity, autism, depression and schizophrenia, in addition to helping people with amputated limbs or spinal injuries to control prostheses or computers just by thinking about it.
Neuralink es un chip cerebral the size of a coin that is implanted in the back of the brain and that, Musk himself explained, could allow disabled patients to move and communicate again, or to restore their vision “even people who have never been able to see before,” he explained. years ago in the presentation of the product.
We are excited to share that we have received the FDA’s approval to launch our first-in-human clinical study!
This is the result of incredible work by the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and represents an important first step that will one day allow our…
— Neuralink (@neuralink) May 25, 2023
Until this 2023, the chips have only been tested in primates, making promising advances since their launch in 2016. They are designed to interpret the signals that the brain transmits through neural impulses and transmit them via Bluetooth to the device to which they are connected. If the FDA had not authorized human testing until now, it was because of the risk of overheating the system with the possible leakage of chemical elements that this entails, and the challenge of removing the wires from the implant once it is inserted into the brain.
animal suffering
The concern of the federal agency (authorizing officer the introduction of medical products to the market) is at least well founded. A report from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in the United States in February 2022 accused Musk’s company of subjecting its test animals to “extreme suffering.” According to the organization, 15 of the 23 monkeys used died or had to be sacrificed during the testing of the implants. Neuralink always denied such accusations.
Even so, Elon Musk’s confidence in his product is maximum and he has even stated that he would be willing to pass it on to your children. There are many, however, who take such a statement with tweezers since if the tycoon has demonstrated something apart from his business vision, it is his talent for marketing. The latter has greatly influenced his career, even going so far as to list his electric vehicle company Tesla above giants like Mercedes or Toyota when he was not even generating income.
Neuralink is not exempt from ‘smoke’ either and the start of human trials has been announced up to four times since 2019, but setbacks have been emerging. For now, the most the company has boasted is the nice video of a primate controlling a simple video game with the mind. Something that despite the spectacular achievement is not as much an “unprecedented advance” as it could be what happened this week, when a team of Swiss and French researchers managed to use a brain implant to make a paraplegic patient walk again.
Marketing genius
The benefit that Musk’s high ambition will bring to science is unquestionable (he has already done so with the development of reusable rockets or the democratization of the electric vehicle). But none of this omits the fact that the tycoon is something given to bombast in their public statements. As of today, to give an example, it has announced that it will send manned missions to Mars this decade (something that according to NASA does not make sense, so early) and will colonize the red planet during this century.
Space conquest aside, Musk’s plans for Earth are far from humble. The tycoon boasts a wide range of companies focused on innovation and development that range from electric vehicles (Tesla), urban mobility through underground tunnels (The Boring Company), solar energy generation (SolarCity) or the arrival of internet to all corners of the map through low-orbit nanosatellites (Starlink), in addition to having been a co-founder of PayPal and OpenAI, a company ChatGPT developer. Almost nothing.
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