by Rolfe Winkler, Wall Street Journal, January 30, 2024
Elon Musk said that the first human received a Neuralink brain implant, a potential milestone in the development of “brain-computer interface” technology that could one day help those suffering from debilitating conditions such as paralysis to interact with their surroundings.
Elon Musk announced over X that Neuralink has implanted its first brain-computer interface (BCI) in a human subject. Several variations of BCIs are in human trials, but Neuralink has been getting the most media attention because, as is the case with many of Musk’s projects, Neuralink pushes the boundaries of current BCI technology. Neuralink’s device has hair-thin wires that are integrated into brain tissue, unlike Precision Neuroscience and Synchron’s BCIs, which are either a surface interface or a stent placed in a brain artery. Neuralink’s first human patient, Noland Arbaugh, has demonstrated his ability to play video games, browse the internet, and move a curser with his mind, which Musk called “telepathy.”
In May, however, some of the device’s wires retracted. Reuters reported that Neuralink knew this was a potential problem based on the company’s animal studies but went ahead with human trials anyway (“Exclusive: Musk’s Neuralink Has Faced Issues with Its Tiny Wires for Years, Sources Say”). Despite this setback, Musk has been open about the ultimate goal of using BCIs for human enhancement so human beings can keep up with AI (“Elon Musk’s Neuralink Wants to Make ‘The Matrix’ a Reality. It Has a Lot to Prove First.”).
by Jonathan Moens, New York Times, April 17, 2024
The companies behind such technologies have access to the records of the users’ brain activity—the electrical signals underlying our thoughts, feelings and intentions. On Wednesday [April 17], Governor Jared Polis of Colorado signed a bill that, for the first time in the United States, tries to ensure that such data remains truly private.
While BCIs are still in the trial stages, there are other non-invasive commercial neuro-devices that, when coupled with AI, can translate some types of thoughts into text, help the user stay focused by detecting when their attention wanders, or make suggestions on who to date when scrolling through a dating website. The data from these commercial devices could be sold to tech companies as one more way to commodify personal data and target ads. Colorado was the first state to legally expand the definition of “sensitive data” to include data from brain signals.
by Mayo Godlman, Axios, February 5, 2024
A push to let physicians prescribe life-ending drugs to terminally ill patients is getting major attention in statehouses this year, with lawmakers in 19 states considering bills to allow the practice.
According to Axios, even though physicians are largely against prescribing lethal drugs, more people in the U.S. are interested in passing aid-in-dying laws. One factor is the influence of the Covid-19 pandemic and the way many people died alone in the hospital. However, both those who are for and against aid-in-dying laws have expressed the need for good palliative and hospice care to be available to patients at the end of life.
In states where aid-in-dying is legal, there has been an increase in the use of the law. The Oregon Health Authority’s 2023 report showed a 30% increase in the number of life-ending prescriptions that were written for patients. Experts attribute the increase to a change in the law that allows non-residents to qualify for aid-in-dying.
by Ian Austen, New York Times, January 29, 2024
The announcement by Mark Holland, the health minister, and Arif Virani, the justice minister, came after a special parliamentary committee looking into the plan concluded that there are not enough doctors, particularly psychiatrists, in the country to assess patients with mental illnesses who want to end their lives and to help them do so.
Canada decided to delay offering medical assistance in dying (MAiD)—the term their laws use for voluntary euthanasia—to people who are mentally ill. This is due, in part, to a lack of psychiatrists to assess patients who want to end their lives. However, this begs the question: Is the lack of help for people with mental illness part of the reason why some of these people are seeking assisted suicide? Even though MAiD has not been expended to cover intractable mental health conditions, CBC reports that a 27-year-old woman on the autism spectrum was cleared by two out of three physicians for assistance in dying, even after her father fought for the courts to review the approval (“Father Asks Court to Stop 27-Year-Old Daughter’s MAID Death, Review Doctor’s Sign-Off”).
by Cat Zakrzewski, Nitasha Tiku, and Elizabeth Dwoskin, Washington Post via MSN, April 10, 2024
OpenAI has been hit with more than a dozen high-profile lawsuits and government investigations since Silverman’s complaint. Top authors including Jodi Picoult and media companies including the New York Times have also alleged that the company violates copyright law by training the algorithms that power popular services like ChatGPT on their work. Billionaire Elon Musk sued OpenAI for diverging from its original nonprofit mission. And government agencies in the United States and Europe are investigating whether the company ran afoul of competition, securities and consumer protection laws in multiple regulatory probes.
One of the most immediate ethical concerns with commercial large language models, like ChatGPT, is the use of copyrighted material to train their proprietary algorithm without obtaining permission for use of the copyright materials. OpenAI has said that it is impossible to create AI models without copyrighted material (“OpenAI Says It’s ‘Impossible’ to Create Useful AI Models Without Copyrighted Material”), meaning the product is based on using others’ work. OpenAI has been the target of several lawsuits and investigations, including a lawsuit brought by Scarlett Johansson accusing the company of stealing her voice for its ChatGPT-4o after she had refused their request for it (“Behind the Scenes of Scarlett Johansson’s Battle with OpenAI”). One of OpenAI’s justifications for being allowed to use all available online data, including material under copyright, is to outcompete China, stating that it is a matter of national security that American companies beat China in the race to build the world’s most powerful AI. However, Wired reports that it is possible to make an ethical AI that only uses public domain materials (“Here’s Proof You Can Train an AI Model Without Slurping Copyrighted Content”), and Vox explains why all the employees at OpenAI who were concerned about making AI safe left (“‘I Lost Trust’: Why the OpenAI Team in Charge of Safeguarding Humanity Imploded”).
by Kim Chandler, Associated Press, February 21, 2024
The Alabama Supreme Court has ruled that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law, a decision critics said could have sweeping implications for fertility treatment in the state.
by Jan Hoffman, New York Times, March 6, 2024
But though the measure is likely to bring enormous relief to infertility patients whose treatments had been abruptly suspended, it will do so in exchange for limiting their ability to sue when mishaps to embryos do occur. Such constraints in a field of medicine with limited regulatory oversight could make the new law vulnerable to court challenges, the experts said.
On February 16, the Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen embryos are children under the “Wrongful Death of a Minor Act.” The court case was brought about after a patient at a fertility clinic accidentally destroyed frozen embryos belonging to three couples. Alabama eventually passed a law that protects IVF, but in so doing, the court may have limited patients’ abilities to sue in the event of mishap or malpractice.
The Alabama case has brought about a much-needed discussion on the ethics of IVF among Christians and the broader public. Christian author Ericka Anderson wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal on how she came to regret creating extra embryos and how the enticement of IVF overshadowed the questions she had about how it comports with her Christian faith (“Did I Need to Make Extra Embryos to Have a Baby?”). In June, the Southern Baptist Convention voted to oppose the use of IVF, although the New York Times reports that there are varying views within the Southern Baptist denomination on whether IVF is ethical or not (“Southern Baptists Vote to Oppose Use of I.V.F.”).
Additionally, The Atlantic and The New Atlantis had articles criticizing the lack of regulation for IVF in the United States, while The Washington Post reported that the industry, which is largely self-regulated, does not report errors and accidents to anyone, including patients. (See “Taming IVF’s Wild West,” “America’s IVF Failure,” and “Inside the Opaque World of IVF, Where Errors Are Rarely Made Public”).
by Roni Caryn Rabin, New York Times, April 3, 2024
The first patient to receive a kidney transplanted from a genetically modified pig has fared so well that he was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, just two weeks after the groundbreaking surgery. The transplant and its encouraging outcome represent a remarkable moment in medicine, scientists say, possibly heralding an era of cross-species organ transplantation.
Associated Press, May 11, 2024
The first recipient of a genetically modified pig kidney transplant has died nearly two months after he underwent the procedure, his family and the hospital that performed the surgery said Saturday [May 11].
Richard “Rick” Slayman became the first patient to receive a kidney from a genetically modified pig. After an initial rejection episode, Rick was able to go home just two weeks after his surgery, feeling better than he had in years. However, two months later, he died of complications that surgeons believe are not due to the pig kidney. A second patient, Lisa Pisano, also received a pig kidney, but died for other complications soon after the transplant.
Heather Zeiger, “Bioethics News Stories (January-June 2024),” Dignitas 31, no. 1–2 (2024): 25–27, www.cbhd.org/dignitas-articles/bioethics-news-stories-january-june-2024.