Infowars.com |
February 28, 2005
Violet Jones
There's little fanfare
in the mainstream media about the FDA's approval of
Cyberonic's implanted Anti-depression device. What's the big deal?
As Businessweek reports:
"The use of implantable mini-generators is more widespread than you probably
think. Already, 190,000 patients are wearing electrodes in their heads to
control Parkinson's disease tremors or spinal-cord stimulators to relieve
pain or prevent urinary incontinence.... These numbers are likely to grow --
and quickly"
The number of Americans on anti-depressants has skyrocketed in the past decade In December 2004 the Washington Post reported that "One in 10 American women takes an antidepressant drug such as Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft, and the use of such drugs by all adults has nearly tripled in the last decade."
With so many Americans looking for a quick fix for the depression illness they have been told that they have, it is no wonder the Cyberonics' stock has soared on the announcement of its implant approval.
Is it really
troubling, the thought of hundreds of thousands of Americans being implanted
with a neurostimulating device to cure them of the blues? A device that
could control their minds?
The first thing that came to mind was
DARPA's extensive
funding of Brain Machine Work. According to a 2003 Boston Globe report,
DARPA is funding a" $24 million enterprise called Brain Machine Interfaces
is developing technology that promises to directly read thoughts from a
living brain -- and even instill thoughts as well."
The dark implications of the general FDA approval of brain implants in 2003 was well stated by the Associated Press:
What's next? Brain implants for dieting? Soma for the masses? Who knows, as the public consumption of neuro-stimulating implants becomes mainstream, accepted, and normal.
Cyberonics soars on FDA OK
Shares up 30 percent after firm gets
conditional approval to sell anti-depression implants.
Reuters | February 3, 2005
LOS ANGELES - U.S. regulators have given conditional approval to Cyberonics Inc.'s bid to sell an implanted device to treat chronic depression, the company said Wednesday, sending its shares up over 30 percent.
Houston-based Cyberonics (Research ) said it expects full U.S. Food and Administration approval by May.
The VNS Therapy System is a pacemaker-like device implanted in the chest that delivers electrical impulses to the brain through an electrode attached to a nerve in the neck. Cyberonics already sells the implant for reducing seizures from epilepsy.
It costs about $20,000, including surgical and hospital expenses, said Cyberonics Chief Executive Skip Cummins.
The FDA said approval was conditional on final labeling, protocols for a post-marketing dosing study and patient registry as well as resolution of manufacturing issues and any outstanding clinical trial issues.
"The conditions are straightforward. We are making good progress on resolving them," Cummins said.
The device is the only product Cyberonics sells. Annual sales are about $110 million. Some analysts estimate the device's market for depression -- about 4.4 million Americans are estimated to suffer from treatment-resistant depression -- would be as much as ten times larger than the one for epilepsy.
Last June, an FDA advisory panel voted 5-2 to recommend approval of the device for chronically depressed patients who had failed other treatments. The agency, however, turned down the company's application in August.
Cyberonics then submitted an amended application, hoping to overcome FDA concerns about the device's safety and effectiveness for relieving severe depression.
The conditional FDA approval is for patients who have failed at least four other treatment regimens, Cummins said.
Side effects of the device include hoarseness and throat tingling.
Shares of Cyberonics were up $9.19, or 33 percent, higher at $36.67 on the NASDAQ.
The company said it is building its organization to support a potential late May launch of the product for depression.
Cyberonics also said its sales and earnings for the fiscal third quarter ended in January will likely beat previous guidance of $25 million in sales and a net loss of $3.3 million, or 13 cents a share.
Analysts on average expect a quarterly net loss of 11 cents a share, according to Reuters Estimates
Rewiring The Body
Businessweek | March 7, 2005
First came pacemakers. Now exotic
implants are bringing new hope to victims of epilepsy, paralysis,
depression, and other diseases
Reed S. Kohn has donated his brain to science. An epileptic since he was 8
years old, Kohn has tried everything from experimental drugs to harrowing
surgery to control his seizures. Time and again, neurosurgeons have taken
out bits of his brain that spark his hallucinations, or auras, and have
severed nerves that enable aberrant electrical impulses to arc from lobe to
lobe and generate a full-blown seizure. They have also run filaments to a
nerve in his neck and to the core of his brain to microshock the disease
into submission. Inevitably, though, the illness reemerges, corrupting a new
clump of brain cells, and he is disabled once again. A college grad and
certified computer programmer, Kohn lives with his parents at age 34 and has
never had a job. Since his first seizure in 1978, he figures he has had
10,000 more.
His life
may get better. Last fall, Kohn underwent his 12th operation. First, doctors
scrutinized images of his brain as it malfunctioned. Then, guided by these
scans, they wired electrodes to eight "hot spots" deep in his brain, and
implanted under his skull a pacemaker-like device from NeuroPace Inc. in
Mountain View, Calif. About the size of a microcassette tape and only a bit
heavier, it houses a microprocessor programmed to detect the brain-wave
pattern that precedes a seizure. Whenever this pattern arises, it
immediately zaps the trigger sites with tiny jolts of electricity. The goal
is to override his abnormal synapses and restore normal brain activity
before Kohn is even aware that a seizure is brewing.
Since the operation on Oct. 14, Kohn has been averaging 10 to 15 seizures a
month, down from 50 to 70. As a veteran guinea pig, Kohn knows that it takes
at least six months before anyone can truly gauge how well a treatment
works, so he doesn't want to rush to judgment. "I'm feeling pretty good," he
says. His doctors, who believe they can lower that rate by tinkering with
the device's settings, are less guarded. "We've been looking for solutions
for a long time," says Dr. Richard W. Byrne, a neurosurgeon at Rush
University Medical Center in Chicago who installed the device. "This could
be it."
Forty-five years ago, doctors successfully implanted a cardiac pacemaker for
the first time in the U.S., providing long-term hope for millions of people
with heart disease and creating what has become a hugely profitable -- and
still fast-growing -- $10 billion-a-year business. Now, electrical therapy
may be approaching an historic transition. Using advances in pacemaker
technology, researchers and doctors are finding that rapid-fire bursts of
low-voltage electricity can alleviate symptoms in an astonishing number of
illnesses in many other parts of the human body. Scourges such as
depression, post-stroke paralysis, migraines, sleep apnea, angina, obesity,
tinnitus, and digestive tract disorders all may be treated with
neurostimulators by the end of the decade. If early-stage experiments pan
out, Alzheimer's disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Tourette's
syndrome, bulimia, and other brain ailments could be next.
Mysterious Ways
Many doctors are thrilled by this emerging vision of the body electric
because it provides fixes beyond the ken of the medical mainstream. Life
sciences today are heavily swayed by recent advances in molecular biology.
The Human Genome Project and other well-funded efforts have cracked some of
the inner workings of genes and the biochemical pathways of disease. In
contrast, science has paid less attention to the role of electricity, which
governs everything from the ethereal transmission of thought to the rhythmic
music of the heart. The race to design and test new implantable devices
could help correct this imbalance.
The high-tech implants are neither cheap nor risk-free. For one thing, they
must be replaced every 5 to 10 years. Why they work is also still something
of a mystery. What's more, neurostimulation won't cure most diseases, even
though it eliminates or alleviates some symptoms. Doctors note that much of
the research is in an early stage. It could be 10 years before they can say
for sure if some devices are a fix -- or a flop.
But the potential upside is great. Unlike most drugs, these implants produce
few side effects. And while they might be a burden on insurers initially,
studies show that they should save big bucks on hospitalization over time.
The devices also are aimed at prevalent diseases that can't always be
treated with drugs. As a result, medical-products executives and their
surgeon partners predict that such implants could one day become as common
as cardiac devices, which are currently helping 2 million Americans.
Little wonder, then, that some of the biggest names in health care are in a
scramble to get into the market. Most recently, in December, Johnson &
Johnson ( JNJ ) bought implant-maker Guidant Corp. ( GDT ) for $23.9
billion. "Any organ that a nerve can influence -- and that's every organ in
the body -- can be affected using this technology," says Dr. Ali R. Rezai,
who is director of functional neurosurgery at the Cleveland Clinic. "It's a
new era in neurology."
The use of implantable mini-generators is more widespread than you probably
think. Already, 190,000 patients are wearing electrodes in their heads to
control Parkinson's disease tremors or spinal-cord stimulators to relieve
pain or prevent urinary incontinence. Some 30,000 have wires threaded to the
vagus nerve in the neck to treat epilepsy, while 60,000 have
microtransmitters in the inner ear enabling them to hear. These numbers are
likely to grow -- and quickly. One of the most promising devices is a
$15,000 neurostimulator for chronic depression from Cyberonics Inc., which
the Food & Drug Administration conditionally approved on Feb. 2.
Candy Bradshaw can testify to the power of neurostimulation. She had a
gastric pacemaker implanted in her abdomen in 1999 at Tufts-New England
Medical Center in Boston as part of an early-stage trial sponsored by
Transneuronix Inc. Today, Bradshaw, 47, weighs 200 pounds, down from 280
before surgery. She still has to watch her diet and exercise regularly. But
the device makes her feel full sooner than before, so she eats less. "What
it has done is fantastic," says Bradshaw, an office manager in Worcester,
Mass. Executives of Transneuronix in Mt. Arlington, N.J., say the implant,
now in a pivotal trial, could be available as a less-invasive alternative to
stomach stapling within three years.
At Indiana University Medical Center in Indianapolis, researchers hope
neurostimulators might enable paraplegics to walk again. Their device beams
microvolts of electricity through six surgically installed electrodes to the
site of a spinal cord injury. The electric field reverses direction, or
oscillates, every 15 minutes. In a just-completed experiment on 10
volunteers, oscillating stimulation helped nerves regenerate after 14 weeks
of treatment, say doctors in the study, a joint venture between Indiana
University and Purdue University. Two patients even recovered some movement
in their legs, and one man who had been impotent regained sexual functions.
Doctors, fully aware that earlier efforts in this area failed to achieve
results, now are screening paraplegics for a second round of trials.
Infection Risk
As neurostimulators get even smaller and their microchips more powerful,
researchers foresee new uses for these implants. Advanced Bionics Corp., a
startup that Boston Scientific Corp ( BSX ). acquired in 2004, is testing a
rechargeable device so tiny that it can be injected almost anywhere in the
body to treat pain or muscle dysfunction. Implants also could act as
sensors, telling a miniature pump when to deliver a drug or customized
protein to a precise location in the body. "The body is on fire with
electricity," says Dr. Stephen N. Oesterle, chief medical officer at
Medtronic Inc ( MDT )., the No. 1 maker of implantable electrical devices.
"If you start with that concept, then all you need is imagination."
As with any invasive procedure, there are dangers in implant surgery. When a
cardiac device is implanted, for example, the rate of infection is 3% to 4%,
which is twice the average rate for surgery in general. Batteries in these
devices last only 5 to 10 years, which means patients may need a second
implant. (The second operation is generally easier and less costly, since
the electrical leads can be left in place.) Some device experts have
expressed concerns about airport scanners interfering with implants. And the
devices can fail. Last year, Medtronic had to recall thousands of
defibrillators after discovering that their batteries were running low too
quickly. At least four people died as a result of the product defect. On the
other hand, sick people die after undergoing other therapies, or doing
nothing. All in all, "these are low-risk products," says Dr. Stuart M.
Portnoy, a former cardiac-device specialist at the FDA and now an industry
adviser with PharmaNet, a Princeton (N.J.) consultant.
The neuromodulation market is potentially enormous. There are up to 3
million Americans with chronic migraines and 4 million with depression who
do not respond to drugs. The number of morbidly obese American adults is
also estimated at 4 million. An additional 5 million Americans have been
crippled to some degree by stroke, and the number grows by about 750,000
each year. Most of these people won't rush out and have surgery. But if only
a fraction get an implant, executives at medical-device companies project
that overall sales of noncardiac pulse generators should balloon from $1.6
billion today to $10 billion in 10 to 15 years, depending on how quickly the
FDA approves new uses. "Ultimately," says Todd K. Whitehurst, vice-president
for emerging indications at Advanced Bionics in Valencia, Calif., "this is
going to be as big as cardiac-rhythm management."
The returns for investors may also be substantial. Today, most
neurostimulators don't make money because years of research and development
and marketing outlays overwhelm what are, in the beginning, only trickling
revenue streams. Still, Advanced Neuromodulation Systems Inc. ( ANSI ), of
Plano, Tex., averages gross margins of 70% on its spinal-cord device for
chronic pain. Houston's Cyberonics, Medtronic, and Boston Scientific -- the
other companies with FDA- approved neuromodulators -- all boast even fatter
margins.
As sales grow, device makers will be able to spread their expenses over a
wider base and become more efficient manufacturers. If the FDA approves
their new treatments, says Jan D. Wald, a medical-device analyst at A.G.
Edwards & Sons Inc. ( AGE ) in Boston, pretax earnings at the smaller
companies should rise to 20% to 30% of revenue, equaling the return on more
established products such as pacemakers. "The market is close to an
inflection point," he says. Mark Landy, an analyst at Susquehanna Financial
Group in Bala Cynwyd, Pa., also sees the market growing by 20% for the next
several years. For now, though, he cautions against buying these stocks,
saying the share prices are already based on outsize returns.
Nevertheless, as more patients request implants for conditions that drugs
can't treat, the creaky health-care system will have to brace itself for yet
more financial strain. Today, a patient with migraines might get by on $10 a
day for drugs. A neurostimulator, by comparison, typically costs $15,000, or
about as much as a heart pacemaker or defibrillator. The total bill can hit
$50,000 with doctors' and hospital charges. Equipping just 10% of the
estimated 500,000 Americans with epilepsy that drugs can't help could cost
$2.5 billion. Even amortized over the average 7 1/2-year life of a device,
that $50,000 would cost about $17 a day.
Too Much of a Good Thing?
Beyond the sticker shock, officials at the government's Centers for Medicare
& Medicaid Services (CMS) also worry that, as with other glitzy treatments,
too many of these devices might end up in patients who don't really need
them. Sean Tunis, the agency's chief medical officer, points out that the
nation might get more bang for the buck if physicians did less expensive
things first -- for instance, routinely screening people for depression and
putting them on medications before their conditions become untreatable.
"There's no end to the numbers of new devices that are being developed, but
there is a limit to how much employee-benefit plans can absorb," warns Karen
Ignagni, chief executive of America's Health Insurance Plans, a trade group
representing the major health insurers.
Over time, however, these devices may restore more than lives; they could
save money, too. In a comprehensive review of spinal-cord stimulation, a
doctor and an economist at Maastricht University Hospital in the Netherlands
reported in 2002 that the cost of implanting the device was offset by
savings on physical therapy and other expenses in 2 1/2 years. The study's
authors, who tracked 54 patients over five years, also extrapolated that
over a lifetime, each patient would save $60,000. CMS and most major private
health plans such as Blue Cross Blue Shield Assn. cover implants for
FDA-allowed devices, although reimbursement rates and prerequisites for
surgery vary.
Neurostimulation has another selling point: Because the implants alter
tissue only at their points of contact, side effects are generally
negligible. In epilepsy patients with electrodes implanted to pulse the
vagus nerve, the most dire side effect is hoarseness, sometimes accompanied
by the desire to clear the throat. Only 3% of such patients report this
minor complication. Most say they can't sense the stimulation at all.
Contrast that with the most common drug treatment, Dilantin, which can cause
dizziness and nausea and can lead to liver damage. "Think of the device as a
smart bomb,"says Advanced Neuromodulation ( ANSI ) CEO Christopher G.
Chavez.
Medical-device executives and surgeons point out that today's implants are
not generally intended to be a first-line treatment. Someone with heart
trouble, for instance, would start off on a cholesterol-reducing drug and a
stricter diet before getting outfitted with an implantable defibrillator.
The same goes for neurostimulators, which are meant for patients with
illnesses or disabilities for which there are no other treatments. People
like Judith Walsh of Elmwood Park, Ill. In 1999, when Walsh was just 54, she
suffered a stroke that paralyzed her entire left side. Thanks to aggressive
physical therapy, she recovered the ability to speak -- and also learned how
to walk again. But her left arm remained atrophied, with her left hand
permanently clenched in an almost-useless fist.
Last February, Walsh began electrical-stimulation therapy. In a clinical
study sponsored by Northstar Neuroscience Inc., doctors at Northwestern
Memorial Hospital in Chicago implanted a pacemaker in her chest and tunneled
wires up her neck to her head. They drilled through her skull to place an
electrode patch about the size of a postage stamp on the protective membrane
surrounding her brain, close to the swatch that had been killed by the
stroke. The surgery took 90 minutes. For the next six weeks, even though she
couldn't feel it, the device bathed the target site with electricity as she
willed her left arm and hand to move during 3 1/2 hours of supervised rehab
every day. Then the implant and electrodes were surgically removed.
Today, Walsh can make a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich and grip the
steering wheel of her car with her left hand. More gratifying, she says, she
can feed and dress her five-month-old granddaughter, Emma, things she
couldn't do with her three older grandchildren when they were babies. "It's
hard, as a grandmother, not to be able to hold the grandchildren -- and now
I'm able to do that," she says. "It's the thrill of my life." Executives at
Northstar, a Seattle startup financed by J&J and Boston Scientific, among
others, are now negotiating the parameters of a final-stage clinical trial
with the FDA.
The question remains: How do these devices alleviate symptoms? In the case
of rehabilitating stroke victims, doctors aren't sure whether the
stimulation enables brain cells in proximity to the stroke site to learn new
functions or whether the pulses instead are helping cells in stroke-damaged
tissue regenerate. Similarly, doctors are baffled as they test pacemakers to
treat obesity. They know the device stimulates nerves in the stomach to tell
the patients they are no longer hungry. But they're not sure which organ is
being tricked: the stomach itself or the brain. "There must be a central
mechanism," says Dr. Jay B. Prystowsky, chief of gastrointestinal and
endocrine surgery at Northwestern Memorial, "but the bottom line is we
really don't know exactly how this works."
Burst of Uses
For such basics still to be a mystery is odd, considering how long science
has been studying electrical stimulation of the body. As far back as the
late 1700s, experimenters showed they could make muscles twitch with shocks
from static-electricity generators. By the 1930s, as engineers perfected how
to control the frequency and flow of electricity, scientists were dabbling
with battery-powered pacemakers to pulse the heart. These early devices were
bulky, requiring patients to be anchored to an external contraption. Then in
1960, electrical engineer Wilson Greatbatch patented the first successful
implantable pacemaker. Finally, in the mid-1990s, the FDA began approving
pacemakers for uses outside the heart.
Now, after that initial burst of approvals, a raft of new treatments may be
around the corner. On Feb. 2, the FDA cleared Cyberonics' vagus-nerve
stimulator for chronic depression, pending some clarification on the
labeling of the device. Chairman and CEO Robert P. "Skip" Cummins says
Cyberonics analyzed results from 240 people with long-term depression after
two years of neurostimulation. All of the subjects had failed to respond to
drugs. The analysis found that half the patients were markedly better, with
18% reporting they were no longer depressed. With the FDA's go-ahead,
Cummins says, Cyberonics will begin pilot studies on Alzheimer's disease,
headache, anxiety disorders, and bulimia. Medtronic also may be closing in
on a number of new therapies. Its products are in clinical tests to pulse
the thalamus to treat epilepsy; another region of the deep brain to treat
migraines, depression, and obsessive-compulsive disorder; the hypoglossal
nerve in the neck to treat sleep apnea; the sacral nerve to treat bowel
disorders; and the stomach to treat obesity. Medtronic may have a deep-brain
treatment for epilepsy in two or three years.
New treatments may become feasible as device sizes shrink and rechargeable
batteries evolve. Advanced Bionics, for example, has developed a
rechargeable implant that is about the size of an ink tube from a ballpoint
pen cut to a one-inch length. Its first use, already permitted in Europe, is
to prevent bladder incontinence by stimulating the organ directly, rather
than through the sacral nerve. The Boston Scientific subsidiary also has
begun a stage-one trial to see whether the device can alleviate chronic
headaches by injecting it into the base of the skull to stimulate the
brain's occipital lobe. And soon, company executives say, they hope to start
testing the device in the leg and arm as a therapy for pain or carpal-tunnel
syndrome.
The leading cardiac-device makers are packing their newest implants with
enough computing power to sense the environment around them and alter a
patient's treatment as needed. A next step would be to link sensor-laden
neurostimulators to miniature drug pumps. In this way, a patient could be
dosed exactly when needed and at the precise site where the medication is
most effective. Researchers say this could reduce dosages by a thousandfold
and avert side effects. Such systems would also enable a patient to be
treated with bioengineered drugs and proteins too large to be absorbed by
swallowing a pill. The combined therapy seems most promising in the brain,
where many disorders might be tackled with protein drugs complemented by
electrical pulses.
As these new therapies move closer to reality, the medical-products
companies are putting down their markers. Last June, Boston Scientific paid
$740 million in cash to acquire Advanced Bionics. Boston Scientific also
holds a 14% stake in Cyberonics. Then in December came J&J's megadeal with
Guidant. Although Guidant does not have any neurostimulators in clinical
trials, the Indianapolis company has been earmarking an increasing share of
its R&D budget for these devices. Some medical-products executives predict
J&J or Boston Scientific could buy Cyberonics or Advanced Neuromodulation
next.
Implants won't cure everything that ails us. The Parkinson's treatment, for
one, stops tremors but can't halt the deadly disease. Yet the list of
therapies is growing. And they all benefit from advances in microelectronics
and our deepening understanding of the brain and nervous system. "These de-
vices were science-fiction dreams 20 years ago," marvels Dr. Robert Levy, a
Northwestern Memorial neurosurgeon who has seen neurostimulation give stroke
victims like Judy Walsh use of their hands and arms again. The body, as
medicine is learning, truly is electric.
Antidepressant Use By U.S. Adults Soars
Cost and Risk Questions Mount in Face Of Overall Surge in Prescription Drugs
Washignton Post | December 3, 2004; Page A15
One in 10 American women takes an antidepressant drug such as Prozac, Paxil or Zoloft, and the use of such drugs by all adults has nearly tripled in the last decade, according to the latest figures on American health released yesterday by the federal government.
Those numbers are among a broad array of changes in health and health care use in the United States identified in the report. It confirmed that prescription drug costs are soaring faster than any other area of medical care as ever-increasing numbers of Americans take drugs for psychiatric conditions, to lower their cholesterol, to control asthma and for a wide range of other reasons.
In 2002, the latest year for which data were available, the total tab for health care soared to $1.6 trillion -- of which prescription drugs accounted for $162 billion, the report found. Drug costs rose by 15 percent over the year before, driven by a combination of more expensive medicines and increased use.
The report comes at a time when questions are growing about the costs and safety of many prescription drugs. The Food and Drug Administration recently concluded that antidepressants can increase the risk of suicidal behavior among children, and the manufacturer of Vioxx abruptly recalled the popular painkiller for safety reasons. A senior FDA official testified in Congress last month that he believes five other approved drugs are dangerous and should be taken off the market.
Antidepressant drugs called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) showed some of the largest increases in use, the report said. By 2000, the proportion of adults using such drugs had nearly tripled, compared with the data set that ended in 1994.
In 2002, more than one in three doctor's office visits by women involved a prescription for an antidepressant, said Amy Bernstein, project director for the report issued by the Center for Mental Health Services of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"It gives you an idea of what is happening during these visits," said Bernstein, who explained that the statistic included patients already on the drugs and those getting a new prescription.
The number of children getting psychiatric drugs also soared. In 2002, about 6 percent of all boys and girls were taking antidepressants, triple the rate in the period 1994-96. And about 14 percent of boys -- nearly one in seven -- were on stimulant drugs in 2002, double the number in 1994-96, the report found. Stimulant drugs are usually used to treat attention deficit disorder.
The number of adults taking cholesterol-lowering statin drugs nearly quadrupled from 1995-96 to 2001-02, the report found.
Overall, 44 percent of all Americans, including children, were taking at least one prescription drug in 1999-2000, a statistically significant 5 percent increase since 1994. The proportion taking three or more prescription drugs increased from 12 to 17 percent during that same time, Bernstein said.
"Factors affecting the recent increase in utilization of medications include the growth of third-party insurance coverage for drugs, the availability of successful new drugs, marketing to physicians and increasingly directly to consumers, and clinical guidelines recommending increased utilization of medications for conditions such as high cholesterol, acid-reflux disease, and asthma," the report concluded.
Julie Zito, a pharmaco-epidemiologist at the University of Maryland at Baltimore, said it is difficult to characterize as good or bad the increased use of drugs without studies that ask how people are faring as a result.
"As the numbers keep growing year after year after year, and larger proportions of the population appear to be suffering from conditions or getting treatments they may or may not be benefiting from, that would be an argument to follow large cohorts of patients in community studies to assess effectiveness and safety," she said.
The drug industry's umbrella trade group said the increased use of medications is a good thing.
"We have more medicines and better medicines for more diseases, and patients are being more effectively treated," said Jeff Trewhitt, a spokesman for the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America. "They are living longer largely because of new treatments, and that is good news."
Trewhitt said there are numerous examples of how increased use of drugs -- such as cholesterol-lowering statins -- reduce overall health care costs by controlling heart disease and reducing more expensive hospitalizations.
On the increase in antidepressant use, Trewhitt said, "I don't know how to read that. We just don't have any information -- it's not something we have studied."
(Propaganda Piece from
Cyborg Proponent Warwick): What Types of Cyborg Implants Are Available Now?
While today's implants are pretty basic,
several hold promise for linking the brain to a computer
By Kevin Warwick -Special to Betterhumans.com 3/8/2004
I was wondering if you would be able to tell me a little more about the types of implants that we have available at the moment. I also am curious about what kinds of possibilities there are for neural networks such as the ability to create a human who has remote access to the Web without need of a computer.
James Kraska
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
Firstly there are a lot of implants for restorative purposes, such as heart pacemakers and cochlea implants. You could even count such things as implants for artistic purposes and artificial hips. There are also a number of tagging type of implants that can be read either barcode reader style or from a remote receiver station.
However, the most exciting type of implants are those linking the brain and nervous system electrically with a computer—and thence onto the Internet.
In this latter group exists a wide range of implants:
- Collar electrodes : These fit snuggly around nerve bundles and make a good contact when firmly crimped around the nerves.
- Single electrode connections : These can be inserted externally to make a direct electrical connection.
- Electrode groups : Single electrode connections grouped together, these are often silicon tipped and can be used in such things as retina arrays.
- Microelectrode arrays : These can be etched arrays that lie flat against a neural surface. They come in several variations. There are also spiked electrodes that look something like a hairbrush and can have several electrode connections on each spike. There are also spiked electrodes with only tipped electrode points. All electrodes can be the same length or they can be wedge shaped.
Many of these different types of implants have been used for short-term culture and slice tests, usually with nonhuman tissue. For long-term human use and experimentation not involving repair (as with retina arrays), as far as I am aware there is only one reported experiment, from October 2003 ( Archives of Neurology, Vol. 60, No. 10, pp. 1369-1373).
As for computer-less remote access to the web, presumably to include bidirectional memory exchanges, I feel that this has to be seen as a long way off—10 years at the very least.
250,000 People Die Every Year because of doctors!
100,000 People Die Every Year Just from the Drugs Alone!
| All information posted on this web site is the opinion of the author and is provided for educational purposes only. It is not to be construed as medical advice. Only a licensed medical doctor can legally offer medical advice in the United States. Consult the healer of your choice for medical care and advice. |
"...whoso trusteth in the LORD, happy is he" -Proverb 16:20
