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.
As the MIT Technology Review reports, an Australian woman named Rita Leggett who received an experimental seizure-tracking brain-computer interface (BCI) implant from the now-defunct company Neuravista in 2010 has become a stark example not only of the ways neurotech can help people, but also of the trauma of losing access to them when experiments end or companies go under.
That’s not what regulatory capture means. Regulatory capture is when the industry being regulated basically owns the agency writing and enforcing the regulation. Nothing they don’t want regulated gets regulated and they can use regulation to prevent new competitors. How the FAA in the US defers to airlines and airplane manufacturers is often used as an example.
Okay, so I used the wrong phrase but I think we all agree about the spirit of what I was attempting to communicate, right?
Yeah.