If you’re curious about who would sign up for a Neuralink implant, as I am, you will discover that the volunteers have been seduced by lies.
“I would love to be on the cutting edge of medical science, to be able to bridge the gap of humans and technology,” says Adam Woodworth, a 40-year-old security manager for a museum in Indianapolis who suffers from short-term memory loss due to a military injury. He is swayed by the notion — one Musk promotes heavily — that Neuralink’s device may be used to treat Alzheimer’s disease and brain disorders like his. “I understand there are risks, but someone has to be willing to step up and take that risk,” he says. “I am willing to be one of those people if Elon and the Neuralink team will be willing to allow me to participate.
“Also not sure if it will be possible right off the bat,” Woodworth adds, “but I am also a Tesla owner, and it would be pretty rad if I could communicate with my car using just my mind.”
Dear god. It will not help with short term memory loss. It will not treat Alzheimer’s. I imagine this is, at best, a Phase 0 trial — they’ll plug the widget into this guy’s head, and if his brain doesn’t bleed out and he doesn’t have seizures, they’ll chalk it up as a great success. That’s it.
If Musk is telling volunteers that they’ll treat Alzheimer’s and memory loss, that’s fraud, plain and simple. Medical fraud. He’s making false promises he can’t keep, that will trick people into getting invasive brain surgery.
Of course he’s lying at a phenomenal rate. He’s Elon Musk.
Yet Musk, who has poured at least $100 million of his own money into the venture, makes far broader and fantastic claims about the capabilities of his company’s implant. Apart from declaring that it “will enable someone with paralysis to use a smartphone with their mind faster than someone using their thumbs,” and “paraplegics to walk again,” he’s speculated it could eventually treat blindness, schizophrenia, depression, autism, obesity, and insomnia, and one day meld human consciousness with AI. This is in addition, of course, to creating a direct channel between minds and machines, not to mention the global internet. Oh, and did we mention that Neuralink could, according to Musk, allow for telepathic communication? (Neither Musk nor Neuralink responded to a request for comment as to whether these claims were somewhat hyperbolic.)
It will do none of those things.
Here, I have a pill that will reverse aging, restore libido, make you lose weight, increase your brain power ten-fold, and give you the power to read minds. (In small print on the label, it mentions this pill can’t do all that yet, but research is continuing that will eventually produce a pill with those powers.)
Am I a quack if I peddle a pill, claiming it has those powers, even if it has that tiny disclaimer? Should I be arrested, fined, and possibly imprisoned for that kind of fraud? I think so.
Why aren’t the police on Musk, or at least the consumer protection office, or even the better business bureau? This quack is taking advantage of people with real illnesses!
I would even question how much of his own money he has put in. Acting like you have put your own money in when you have not is a pretty common tactic for wealthy scammers. E.g. Trump.
You left out blatantly open racist and all around hater.
For all of Musk’s claimed intelligence and creativity, he is completely unimaginative when it comes to culture war politics. It is all just typical right wingnut fascism. Quite literally, a robot mind “AI” could come up with the same list of hates.
So, who does Elon Musk hate?
It is almost everyone, women, nonwhites, Trans, Progressives etc.
It would be easier to just say Elon hates everyone except…Elon Musk and people like him i.e. cis het white ultra rich oligarchies.
I wouldn’t buy a Tesla car, SpaceX rocket, or Starlink from someone who hates me.
Or anything else even remotely associated with Elon Musk.
LMFTFY: … if his brain does bleed out and he does have seizures, they’ll chalk it up as a great success.
Just like his rocket & TwitterSpace launches.
Elizabeth Holmes with a ton more money and better PR.
Maybe it could cure my gullibility..
@4: And the number one thing that helps his credibility over hers: a penis.
“You’ll be able to remotely operate can openers and communicate with infants — there’ll be a six-limb mode and the option to download vast amounts of wrong information and propaganda — and since you won’t need to (rare cases may be unable to) sleep, you can make so much more income.
Note that WFH is not currently supported and security updates will only be packaged for the first decade post-installation. Further security enhancements will be pending the launch of our subscription service.”
“Oh, and did we mention that Neuralink could, according to Musk, allow for telepathic communication? ”
So thats how Trump declassified things with his mind.. Clearly the link is defective if his cognitive decline is any guide.
And if those things do happen, it’s a “rapid unscheduled disassembly.”
The BBB has absolutely no enforcement powers at all, one literally could make an equally effective complaint to Dear Abby.
The police are powerless in this, not their jurisdiction.
Consumer protection can’t do anything, as there is no product being sold.
But, he is making medical claims and promises that cannot be kept, which is supposed to get an FDA cease and desist order and if he continues, litigation by the FDA in federal court, where having a sense of humor is unknown. Once it gets to court, anything from fines to cease operations immediately can occur. Remember Theranos? The CEO just finally went to the house of many locked doors.
So, who wants to make an official complaint to the FDA?
Where’s Ray Kurzweil? Shouldn’t Mr. I Take Dozens of Pills a Day So I Can See
The RaptureThe Singularity be helping them do this?Alright, this is getting real.
The FDA did give an approval for the first clinical trials:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/04/elon-musk-neuralink-approved-human-testing-concern
so, if EM really wants to go ahead, we’ll get to see the whole train crash up close.
Best outcome: it’s all hot air, nobody implants anything, ’cause they are indeed dumb, but not that dumb. The story goes away and everyone forgets.
Second-best outcome: they wire someone, nothing happens because we are not living in a Marvel comic with soopah-pawah.
Probable outcome: they wire someone and it goes pear-shaped, probably with short-circuited brains and rotting ‘trodes.
At this point, it all depends on the magintude of the trouble. Rather likely, EM gets sued out of existence, unless he has already deployed some really, really good weasel-word disclaimers and reinforced his lawyer army.
But if they do go ahead, it won’t be pretty.
For all of Musk’s claimed intelligence and creativity, he is completely unimaginative when it comes to culture war politics. … Quite literally, a robot mind “AI” could come up with the same list of hates.
See?! HIs mind has already melded with an AI thanks to his Theralink implants! He’s getting results already despite all you doubting Luddites! We will all be assimilated! Resistance is futile (and will result in extra fees).
Seriously, this clown’s promises aren’t based on any actual progress or accomplishments in the field of neural implants, or even on any particular set of real-world needs. It’s literally all science fiction. All he’s doing is taking old sci-fi tropes and pretending his company can do all those things, without even processing the ideas or thinking at all critically about what they might really entail. And the sci-fi isn’t even new, it’s all old space-opera stuff from the original Star Trek era. #QElon isn’t even up-to-date on the fantasy, let alone the reality.
This guy is a fraud to be avoided like the plague. Someone with actual power needs to call him out and totally debunk all of it, like yesterday.
The first person to test the first polio vaccine, the Salk vaccine, was Jonas Salk.
The idea here is to walk your talk and would you take a drug or vaccine that you developed yourself. If the answer is no, then why and what good is it?
Does anyone think Elon Musk will ever get a Neuralink implant?
So why would anyone else get one?
That isn’t all that surprising and doesn’t tell anyone much.
The FDA seems to approve phase 1 clinical trials on automatic pilot without looking too close at what the drug or device is, and/or what the data is behind the treatment.
The Elongated Muskrat, just like all our rtwingnut politicians, is lying his ass off: this time by promising medical miracles he will never deliver. Meanwhile, we can’t even keep people from starving or those with mental health problems from being shot to death in public by the police or preventing anyone who isn’t a WASP from being harassed and pushed toward extinction by Rtwingnut xtian terrorist gov’t officials.
I’d also question (a) how much actual money he’s put in, and (b) how much of “his own money” is either actually his own or actually money.
The FDA probably gave approval because it isn’t novel technology. Similar brain implants – called deep brain stimulation – are used to treat a number of disorders (from the Mayo Clinic):
Deep brain stimulation is commonly used to treat a number of conditions, such as:
Parkinson's disease
Essential tremor
Dystonia
Epilepsy
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
and is in testing stages for a number of other conditions.
Of course, Musk probably wants to use it to make women horny enough to sleep with him.
As you were, the FTC can and does also issue cease and desist letters for medical device claims that aren’t backed with scientific studies. So, Muskrat will likely be getting a nastygram from the FTC (again, he’s gotten threats of pee-pee smacks over stock maniplation repeatedly) and the FDA.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2021/09/ftc-sends-cease-desist-demands-10-companies-suspected-making-diabetes-treatment-claims-without
Both are notorious for litigation successes against snake oil hucksters.
So, if he persists, he’s biting into an immense turdburger.
Especially, given he’s apparently achieved reaching 1970’s technology levels and well, deep brain stimulation’s a wee bit more advanced, as is the spinal bypass technology being more advanced. He’s only up to move a computer cursor with the brain, which is entirely 1970’s.
I guess he’ll next want to build Moonbase Alpha…
OT: A Cessna Citation jet flew from Tennessee to Long Island, NY, where it was scheduled to land. Instead, it turned and overflew Washington, D.C. at 34000 feet. Military interceptors went supersonic to intercept, but neither they or ATC was able to contact the pilot. The aircraft subsequently crashed in a forest in Virginia.
Sounds like a repeat of Helios Flight 522, loss of pressurization incapacitated the passengers and crew, the aircraft flew until fuel extinction, then crashed.
Or this case, where another pilot and ATC recognized a hypoxic pilot and were able to get him to descend to a safe altitude.
The aircraft owner speculated that it was depressurization. Aboard was his daughter, granddaughter, nanny and pilot, there were no survivors.
Somehow I imagine the employees standing around clapping when the guy’s head explodes. It was supposed to do that!