A Boring Dystopia

Oh great so even physical ownership doesn't even mean you own something anymore

Clickbait title for extra sensationalism. Nobody physically forced her to have the surgery to remove the implant.

I sympathize with this woman however it was part of the trial for it to be switched off and removed at the end of the trial, which is what she agreed to, though it does raise a lot of questions about medical trials/procedures involving implants.

If the company no longer exists but let her keep the implant, what happens when something goes wrong? Who is responsible, who do medical professionals trying to help with what went wrong contact for context, who bears the cost, what happens if it's hacked, etc etc. If it was left in and she ended up dying, it's guaranteed that headlines will talk about it being irresponsible and medical malpractice.

Fwiw, reading the MIT review, this device didn't prevent her seizures, but monitored brainwave activity and used an algorithm to predict the likelihood of an imminent seizure. She seems to have been an edge case in terms of successi in the trial.

It seems the issue is that this gave her confidence to leave the house to do things. Prior to that she very rarely left the house because of the unpredictability of her seizures. It must suck to have that confidence, and therefore freedom, taken away.

As a nurse I find it very problematic that they could force her to have brain surgery to retrieve their property.

It might be understandable that they turn it off or stopp support, if it was experimental and the device didn't pass the necessary aprovals.

But forcing her to have an invasive procedure on her brain with so many dangerous risks. This should be illegal.

She and her husband attempted to fight the demand, attempting to buy the implant outright...

It was compulsory brain surgery for a repo.

In other words the company interests superceded the patient's

This is the sort of inciting incident that triggers cyberpunk dystopian adventures that conclude in a blaze of electrical grid collapses, warehouse explosions and mass spiritual awakening. Then the protagonist moves to Amsterdam.

I feel like maybe research on medical implants like this should be done by the state.

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.

On the bright side, she no longer has Johnny Silverhand living in her head and complaining about all her decisions.

Forced? What are the logistics there, what if she runs, and forcefully refuses? Are they going to literally get ppl to hunt her down and drag her to the operation room?

The article isn't clear on if they didn't have enough money to buy it or if the company refused for liability and safety reasons.

Regardless, we really need stringent laws about this. Anything needing surgery should irrevocably become yours, both hardware and software wise, and the company should be setting up trusts for maintenance in case of bankruptcy.

So the government can force you to go into surgery to remove something from your brain now?

We need orphan technology program like for orphan drugs. I can't imagine it would be very costly to keep this one woman's device running, but it does take someone somewhere being responsible for it.

Anyone remember repo men? Getting a bit tired of fiction becoming reality...

Kinda similarly, my brother was taking a drug (interferon) for treatment of a rare cancer that not many people need anymore (a better drug replaced the main use case the drug was developed for, which is different from my brother’s use case). The manufacturer discontinued the drug and noone makes it anymore so my brother and others who were relying on it simply lost access. I never knew this could happen.

Repo man isn't fiction.