Mastodawn

Marmoset Dec 12, 2022

"Earlier this year, many people with Argus optical implants – which allow blind people to see – lost their vision when the manufacturer, Second Sight, went bust.

"Nano Precision Medical, the company's new owners, aren't interested in maintaining the implants, so that's the end of the road for everyone with one of Argus's 'bionic' eyes. The $150,000 per eye that those people paid is gone, and they have failing hardware permanently wired into their nervous systems.

"Having a bricked eye implant doesn't just rob you of your sight – many Argus users experience crippling vertigo and other side effects of nonfunctional implants. The company has promised to 'do our best to provide virtual support' to people whose Argus implants fail – but no more parts and no more patches."

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/12/unsafe-at-any-speed/#this-is-literally-your-brain-on-capitalism

Pluralistic: Orphaned neurological implants (12 Dec 2022) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Show thread

Scotchfairy Dec 12, 2022

@Marmoset @pluralistic And the next company you'll likely hear about is MediTech. They make a variety of implants, including cardiac ones meant to help people survive the transplant waiting list. The FDA just recalled that one last weak for safety issues.

Proprietary software is a heinous problem with medical equipment, where devices were often made by tiny specialist companies who don't have enough expert programmers to push out software ir firmware upgrades for hardware that *must* work.

Show thread

Cory Doctorow Dec 13, 2022

@scotchfairy @Marmoset Do you mean Medtronic? They're pretty terrible. I've been writing about them for years:

https://pluralistic.net/tag/medtronic/

medtronic – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow

Show thread

@pluralistic
My wife tried out their insulin pump for a couple of months. She hated it so much that when they told her the insurance doesn't allow replacing it with a different model, she chose to have no pump at all until the warranty on the thing expires, which takes four years. We're still waiting.
@scotchfairy @Marmoset