A woman whose epilepsy was greatly improved by an experimental brain implant was devastated when, just two years after getting it, she was forced to have it removed due to the company that made it going bankrupt.
As the MIT Technology Review reports, an Australian woman named Rita Leggett who received an experimental seizure-tracking brain-computer interface (BCI) implant from the now-defunct company Neuravista in 2010 has become a stark example not only of the ways neurotech can help people, but also of the trauma of losing access to them when experiments end or companies go under.
I’m kind of in that boat. I mean not really, and it’s not life-changing like it is for the lady, but it’s the same sort of issue.
I have implants inside of me. They’re RFID and NFC transponders of various kind made by Dangerous Things. They’re not essential to my life in the sense that I could very well do without them, but they’re immensely useful and handy on a day-to-day basis.
One of them is a payment implant. The implant was made in 2020 and is not in fact allowed by Mastercard - meaning if the payment processor figures out it’s under my skin, they’ll strike it off the EMVCo network and I’ll lose the ability to make payments with my hand. It expires in 2029, and I already know after that date that there probably won’t be a replacement available. So I will lose that ability in 2029.
And you know what? It really does feel like a loss: this is my second payment implant because the first one failed a year in, and that’s what it felt like. Similarly, I have other implants that I use all the time to open doors and authenticate with online services, and when those fail (and some of them did, I had to have them replaced), it does feel like losing a bodily function too.
I’m an amputee, so I know what it feels like to lose bits of myself, and when one of my implant fails, it feels very similar. Not the same and not as terrible of course, but it’s the same kind of feeling: you feel less yourself and less able than you used to be.
The other question that arises is whether implants become part of your body, and whether anybody is legally allowed to take them away from you. In other words, nobody is legally allowed to remove your heart or your spleen without your consent, but are implants treated the same way?
Like for example, suppose I go to court and a judge reckons my cryptographic implant was used to encrypt evidence on my computer: can the judge order it removed from my body against my will to send it to a forensic lab? I mean after all, it’s now part of my body and providing me with a new bodily ability of sorts: it could be argued that removing my implant can be construed as disabling me - which, as I said, really does feel a bit like that.
This has never come up in court, and I’m an honest, nice guy so I won’t be the one breaking that particular ground. But the question is intriguing.
Liar. You’re not a dullard at all.
This is a fascinating perspective, thanks for sharing your experience. It makes me really happy to hear first hand how this new technology does improve quality of life for people.
Holy shit. What an amazing story you have. Have you written more in depth about your life and all these things?