For those not reading the story, which appears to be many, the company that services the implant went bankrupt. The implant was experimental. There exists no one to service it any longer. It will pose a health risk down the road without someone servicing it.
The only thing that forced her to have the implant removed is the fact that it would eventually lead to her untimely death if it remained in with no one to take care of the device.
Even if her death is guaranteed by leaving it in (and I’m not sure it is without more information), does that make it ethical to remove? Perhaps the patient would prefer a shorter life with greater quality in regards to her seizures. After all, don’t we allow and accept cancer patients to forgo treatment and enjoy the time they have left?
She was advised to remove it.
I think “forced” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. People use it to refer to unpleasant decisions, like “I was forced to leave New York City after I lost my job”.
Others have speculated that she may have been denied health insurance coverage unless she had it removed. That’s not much of a choice when you’re an old disabled woman.
In the US, you can’t be denied health insurance based on your medical history. Thanks, Obama! No really, thank you.
She’s Australian. They have universal healthcare, so @MadMenace’s theory probably isn’t the case here.
I somehow doubt elective, experimental electronic implants are classified as a “pre-existing condition.”
Classify them however you want, they have nothing to do with your eligibility for health insurance.
In fact, ACA health plans must enroll anyone who wants to enroll. They cannot decline an individual renewal. A premium can only be adjusted according to age and tobacco use. And they cannot charge old people more than three times what they charge young people.
Sure, but insurance companies regularly deny claims for any reason they can find.
For those not reading the story, which appears to be many, the company that services the implant went bankrupt. The implant was experimental. There exists no one to service it any longer. It will pose a health risk down the road without someone servicing it.
The story doesn’t directly say that’s why it had to be removed (and she talks about wanting to buy it). I found another source that explains that the device came with a three-year battery life.
deleted by creator
This story was described more accurately by The New Yorker. No, they did not do anything without her consent.
For three years after her operation, Leggett lived happily with her device. But in 2013 her neurologist gave her some bad news. NeuroVista had run out of funding and ceased operations. Leggett’s neural device would have to come out.
Leggett felt grateful that everyone involved was sympathetic to her plight. They let her keep the implant as long as possible. But the demise of NeuroVista—after spending seventy million dollars to develop the technology and conduct the trial, it struggled to find further investors—made removal inevitable. If the battery ran out, or a lead broke, or the site of implantation became infected, the company would no longer be there to provide support. She remembered a solemn drive to Melbourne for the surgery, and then coming back home without the device. It felt as if she had left a part of herself behind.
These days, when she gets a funny, flip-floppy feeling inside, she takes anti-seizure medication. She’s not always sure. Sometimes she gets her husband to weigh in. He says, “Go with your first instinct,” and usually she takes a pill. She is now seizure-free.
The article also suggests that other patients had problems with the device, which may have contributed to the failure of the clinical trial and recommendation for removal.
Yah. My BS counter is clicking quite a lot with this one.
You can’t force someone into surgery against their will. No hospital or doctor would do that. It would be a major crime. The surgeon, anesthesiologist, who knows how many others, would go to prison! That kind of crime.
The company may have coerced her, with threats of lawsuits. But that’s very different. And the article completely avoids any mention of exactly how she was forced to go through with it. If that information was included, it would only make the company look worse. I can’t think of why it would be left out, given the narrative they’re creating here.There is a lot missing from this story.
I’d bet she took a some kind of settlement that included payment and a form of NDA.The company may have coerced her, with threats
in other words - forced
No. Force is when there are no threats. The “or else” goes away. There are no other options. It’s only “this is happening”.
If a toddler is refusing to wear their shoes. Taking away their toys isn’t force. It’s coercion. Force would be, grabbing their leg and putting their shoe on, no matter how much they scream or cry.
Forcing an adult to do something, is a very extreme action. Reserved exclusively for police, and even they have limits. Even the police can’t force you to have surgery.
Hair splitting
Forcing someone, is a massive escalation. It’s often the difference between physical violence and not.
I hope it never happens to you. It’s a very different kind of experience.
Your bullshit counter is broken, Steven
here’s the link from MIT technology review : https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/05/25/1073634/brain-implant-removed-against-her-will/
here’s their imprimatur from the MIT itself : https://news.mit.edu/1995/tech-review-0201
I’d have that clicking checked out
That has no additional information. I’m not saying the story is made up. Just that it leaves out a lot of important details about what exact mechanism was used to “force” her.
If she’s insured, she would lose her insurance, if her medical care is being provided at no cost from the state through medicare she would lose that, so, they really leave the person no choice. Show up and have this fucking thing removed, or lose any future medical care whatsoever. I mean, it’s still a choice, sure. No one forces anyone to eat or drink either, Steve.
That’s speculation. They seem like reasonable possibilities, but we don’t know because it wasn’t explained.
At worse, all that is coercion. Well mostly just natural consequences really. Still not force.People can absolutely be forced to eat or drink. It’s been done in the past, when inmates go on a hunger strike. Half a dozen people strap them down, force a feeding tube down their throats. If lucky, they’d be sedated first.
They aren’t reasonable possibilities, because Medicare covers everyone over 65 regardless of their medical history and ACA health insurance plans are required to enroll all applicants regardless of age or medical history.
The latter can raise your premium if you smoke tobacco. That’s literally the only power of “coercion” they have available. All your other choices are off-limits.
I think you and @Steve@communick.news (and @downpunxx@kbin.social ) might have missed the part where the woman is Australian and this whole thing took place in Australia, where there is universal healthcare.
I did miss that.
Seems there are fewer reasons for her to give it up.
In the US, you can’t lose your health insurance based on your medical history.
Pretty much the only way for an individual to lose their health insurance is by leaving their employer, if they have employer-provided insurance.
Non-employer-provided plans are required to enroll anyone who wants enroll.
The articles point out the company went bankrupt and her doctors advised her to remove the implant. It says she was willing to pay to keep it, and suggests this could have been avoided if another company could have taken over device maintainance.
All of which suggests that the device was removed because it could no longer be maintained, despite her willingness to pay.
Insurance can totally refuse future medical care until the implant is removed, especially if leaving it in poses a serious risk. Perfectly valid way to get her to have it removed without physically forcing someone to undergo surgery.
No, they can’t do that. Insurance can’t just randomly decide to change all of their contracts on a whim.
Insurance companies are shitty, and dealing with them sucks, but there are legal rules they have to follow, and just deciding unilaterally to not cover healthcare isn’t an option for a paying customer.
So while governments can bailout big companies that are able to serve their greater interests, medical companies with cases like this and the bionic-eye one slip away without any kind of intervention?
We have multi-million-dollar VC funds for an app and this shit is allowed to happen.
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
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.
Leggett was, as a recent paper in the journal Brain Stimulation about her situation explains, 49 when she was recruited for the trial, though she’d suffered from epilepsy since she was just three years old.
Leggett, who declined to be interviewed by the Tech Review after a recent stroke, also developed a symbiotic relationship with the implant, and told the researchers behind the Brain Stimulation paper that she and the BCI “became one.”
In fact, it calls to mind a similar incident last year in which the manufacturer of a bionic eye decided the units were obsolete, leading patients who’d had them implanted to lose their vision again.
It sounds like dystopian fiction that biotech companies could play takesie-backsies with patients’ implants, in other words, but the reality is we’ve already crossed into that world.
And if devices such as Leggett’s BCI can, as she suggested to researchers over the years, become part of a person, then their removal “represents a form of modification of the self,” Ienca said, and he and his coauthors are arguing that there need to be updated patients’ rights when it comes to these sorts of outcomes.
Saved 62% of original text.
Formatting tip: It would be great if there was a line break after you explain that you’re a bot and before your summary starts.
In my app and the web it appears to have a line break and I also have to tap through a spoiler tag to view the summary.
Weird. Maybe there’s something incompatible with wefwef then. Mine shows the intro statement and then the article starts immediately after the “click here” text (which I can’t actually click lol).
Edit: So I just checked on Memmy and it comes up with the “I am a bot…” and the “click here” works, but after clicking it it’ll only show the first paragraph of the summary… 🤷♂️
One step closer to Repo Men becoming reality.
Zydrate Anatomy is an absolute banger though.
yours is not the Repo Man I think of when I think of Repo Man
I’m guessing the patients were required beforehand to sign forms consenting to the device being taken out in the event of ___________ (in this case, the company going under). Because otherwise I don’t understand how it’d be legal to force someone to have brain surgery against their will.
But if the company can’t continue maintenance and support for the device, why not have her sign new forms exempting them from liability and just let her keep it? Is potential liability not the only limiting factor here? And would this be ethical?
why not just let her keep it
It could also be for patenting reasons.
Every implant legal agreement must include a clause allowing the patient to keep the device in the event of company bankruptcy.
