Woman Had Brain Implant Repossessed Against Her Will
Sticking an electrode inside a person’s brain can do more than treat a disease. Take the case of Rita Leggett, an Australian woman whose experimental brain implant changed her sense of agency and self. She told researchers that she “became one” with her device.
She was devastated when, two years later, she was told she had to remove the implant because the company that made it had gone bust.
The removal of this implant, and others like it, might represent a breach of human rights, ethicists say in a paper published earlier this month. The issue will only become more pressing as the brain implant market grows in the coming years and more people receive devices like Leggett’s. “There might be some forms of human rights violations that we haven’t understood yet,” says ethicist Marcello Ienca at the Technical University of Munich, a coauthor of the paper.
Call me old fashioned but I believe that if something is inside your brain, it's yours. There's not much more to it than that. Listen. Science is important and I would never suggest otherwise. That being said, science has an ethical obligation to tell you, "Hey there fucked-up brain, just need you to know something real quick before we put this shit right in the ole stem; we might need to rip that sucker out one day if we go outta business." You never think about your doctor or pharmaceutical company going outta business but I guess anyone can have the signs up out front in this economy.
If that was me with the fucked up brain, I would want to know. I just would. If I knew that one day you'd have to "open up the hood to take out the radiator," my answer to this experimental surgery might have been different. I'd let the folks at the brain implant factory know that I wanted to buy and not rent this rod going into my many-lobed organ.
Hell, I asked my friend and longtime stoolie ChatGBT what they had to say about removing a brain implant. Here is the response:
Brain implants are often designed to enhance or restore certain functions, such as deep brain stimulation for movement disorders or cochlear implants for hearing loss. Removing such implants can result in a loss or reduction of the benefits they provided. For example, if a deep brain stimulation device is removed, the symptoms of the underlying movement disorder may resurface.
NOT GOOD!
So, let this be a warning. Do not sign a lease for your brain implant. They come take that shit faster than a 2017 Ford F-250 King Ranch if it falls behind on payment.