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posted by martyb on Sunday March 06 2022, @12:27AM   Printer-friendly

Their Bionic Eyes are Now Obsolete and Unsupported:

Barbara Campbell was walking through a New York City subway station during rush hour when her world abruptly went dark. For four years, Campbell had been using a high-tech implant in her left eye that gave her a crude kind of bionic vision, partially compensating for the genetic disease that had rendered her completely blind in her 30s. "I remember exactly where I was: I was switching from the 6 train to the F train," Campbell tells IEEE Spectrum. "I was about to go down the stairs, and all of a sudden I heard a little 'beep, beep, beep' sound."

It wasn't her phone battery running out. It was her Argus II retinal implant system powering down. The patches of light and dark that she'd been able to see with the implant's help vanished.

[...] These three patients, and more than 350 other blind people around the world with Second Sight's implants in their eyes, find themselves in a world in which the technology that transformed their lives is just another obsolete gadget. One technical hiccup, one broken wire, and they lose their artificial vision, possibly forever. To add injury to insult: A defunct Argus system in the eye could cause medical complications or interfere with procedures such as MRI scans, and it could be painful or expensive to remove.

[...] After Second Sight discontinued its retinal implant in 2019 and nearly went out of business in 2020, a public offering in June 2021 raised US $57.5 million at $5 per share. The company promised to focus on its ongoing clinical trial of a brain implant, called Orion, that also provides artificial vision. But its stock price plunged to around $1.50, and in February 2022, just before this article was published, the company announced a proposed merger with an early-stage biopharmaceutical company called Nano Precision Medical (NPM). None of Second Sight's executives will be on the leadership team of the new company, which will focus on developing NPM's novel implant for drug delivery. The company's current leadership declined to be interviewed for this article but did provide an emailed statement prior to the merger announcement. It said, in part: "We are a recognized global leader in neuromodulation devices for blindness and are committed to developing new technologies to treat the broadest population of sight-impaired individuals."

The in-depth IEEE article investigates the promise and ultimate demise of Second Sight. Can you imagine this happening to you? What would you do?


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday March 06 2022, @12:44AM (9 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 06 2022, @12:44AM (#1227009) Journal

    It appears that they actually sent a kill signal, to shut down the remaining units? The article doesn't make it clear why the unit suddenly stopped working, while the lady was in mid-stride. I guess it's alright that your device is suddenly unsupported, but sending a kill signal to any devices that are still working is criminal. It would be criminal if Apple did it, it's even more criminal in the case of medical devices.

    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @01:27AM (5 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @01:27AM (#1227015)

      That's not what I got from the article. Either the thing ran out of batteries (? I'm assuming it operated on batteries) or stopped working due to normal wear and tear or a malfunction or a defect of some sort and is no longer supported. Were the batteries somehow rechargeable/being recharged?

      I mean, does the thing have a way of receiving a kill signal from some random location? Does it have an antenna? Does it connect to a cell tower? Does it connect tow WiFi? Bluetooth?

      If it was intentional the other option would be it has an internal clock that somehow managed to keep track of time until it was time for it to shut off? Or it was somehow designed to break after a certain amount of time/usage or was designed not to last that long. Planned obsolescence?

      It's interesting how all these companies are trying to go to a subscription model. It would be interesting how they would try to tie in your vision and your hearing to a monthly plan or regular payment plan. I guess they kinda already do. By law, in California at least, I am told that you need to renew your driving glasses like every two years if you don't want liability in an accident that's not otherwise your fault. So you have to keep paying for new prescriptions.

      (A part of me wants to argue that if it's important enough for the government to require then it's important enough for the government to pay for themselves? ie: New driving glasses and eye exams? I figure if you can pass the DMV eye exam with your old glasses then why do you need to keep getting new ones every two years? Also should you have to pay the monetary costs for a license to drive or should the government? Or any other license. At least the initial driving test can be free to you but then if you need to keep getting retested because you keep failing eventually you pay out of pocket? I guess it would reduce the number of potentially frivolous licenses the government imposes on us to get in order to do anything and require that the government be more frugal/prudent about what licenses should be required. Then again I hear that the U.S. gets criticized, or at least used to get criticized, for having high accident rates compared to Europe partly because our driving tests are too lenient. I guess I went on tangent).

      Plus hearing aids tend to break over time and need to be readjusted because either your hearing changes or the things just stops working as when you first got it or the batteries stop functioning (I guess they're rechargeable now but how long does it work for?) so you keep on having to pay to either maintain or replace them. Do they really want to find a permanent solution? Much of medicine seems like it's about keeping you on the treatment instead of curing you so that you keep on having to pay for the treatment. (even if the government is the one paying it's still the companies that benefit from the income).

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:07AM (4 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:07AM (#1227021)

        Then again, if your glasses break and you are unable to obtain new ones you can make the argument that you aren't necessarily worse off than you would have been had you never had glasses.

        "A defunct Argus system in the eye could cause medical complications or interfere with procedures such as MRI scans, and it could be painful or expensive to remove."

        Here it might be the case that you are worse off than you were before had you never had the device. So tying you in to a subscription or else making you worse off is a future we need to avoid and one companies would have no problems trying to push for.

        • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Common Joe on Sunday March 06 2022, @10:04AM (3 children)

          by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday March 06 2022, @10:04AM (#1227092) Journal

          Here it might be the case that you are worse off than you were before had you never had the device. So tying you in to a subscription or else making you worse off is a future we need to avoid and one companies would have no problems trying to push for.

          What's sad is that it's easier for people to see this kind of example where a person's vision is on the line, but our lives are already loaded with examples like this and very few people seem to realize it. All those vendor lock-ins with subscriptions? Yeah. Those.

          • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @06:22PM (2 children)

            by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @06:22PM (#1227171)

            To some extent that is true. If you already dedicated a lot of time and effort and money into typing or making all your documents/pictures/code/videos in word, excel, other proprietary software that you paid for, posting tons of stuff/content on Facebook, YouTube, the cloud without a backup or way to export it to a more universal format and later they change their terms, lose the data, stop supporting the platform/software your work is on, go out of business and stop supporting the platform/software your work is on then you lost time, effort, and money to something that has now lost value.

            We should try to push for the more widespread use of open standards. Companies try to lock your work into their proprietary system by making it incompatible with other systems so you have to go through them to share your work with others and let them share their work with you.

            Surveillance cameras (ie:ring and many others) are a good examples. Surveillance camera servers should use open standard protocols so that if ring goes out of business I can tie my device to any other server.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2022, @03:06AM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2022, @03:06AM (#1227288)

              That's also not to mention that phones often no longer come with expandable memory. They want you to lock everything either on the device or on the cloud so that they can spy on your data and/or charge you for so much cloud data perhaps past a limit instead of letting you back it up locally.

              It's also interesting how they can now search your data without you even knowing.

              Surveillance Firm Says Apple Is 'Phenomenal' For Law Enforcement
              "Secret recordings of a surveillance firm's presentation show how much iCloud data Apple surrenders to law enforcement with a warrant"

              https://apple.slashdot.org/story/22/02/25/223211/surveillance-firm-says-apple-is-phenomenal-for-law-enforcement [slashdot.org]

              At least if the data is with you they need to get a warrant to obtain it and convince a judge that they can come in and search it without prior notice and at least at that point you are made aware of the search so that you can start responding to the situation ahead of time and perhaps start seeking legal advice, seeking media attention if perhaps warranted, and otherwise positioning yourself to defend against possible allegations ahead of time and trying to figure out what they might trying to get you for instead of just having it thrown at you last minute. Now you can make phone calls, ask questions, etc...

              The argument for allowing them to seize your data or evidence without prior notice is so that they can seize the data before you have a chance to delete or destroy it.

              What should happen, though, is that they should be required to get a warrant to seize the data or evidence before you have a chance to destroy it, proving reasonable suspicion to a judge, and then you should be given a chance to have their case presented to you in front of a judge as to why the data/evidence should be searched before the data/evidence is actually searched so that you can actually have a chance to explain to the judge why you don't think they should be allowed to search said data in the first place (and you should be given the option of having the hearing made public as well). Then the judge (or perhaps the jury ... maybe you should have the right to let a jury decide this as well?) can decide if the data/evidence should be further searched and to what extent.

              The same thing should be true if your data is on the cloud. If they want to search it they should be allowed to ask the company holding the data (ie: Apple or Google) to make and freeze a separate copy of the data. Then you should be immediately alerted, ahead of time, that the government wants to search through your data. You should then be allowed to have an adversarial hearing where you present your case explaining to a judge/jury why you don't think the government should be given the right to seize and search your data while the prosecutor should present their case on why they should be allowed to seize and search the data. If the data is to be seized/searched you can work with the judge/jury and prosecutor on what should be allowed to be seized/searched and what's being looked for (to avoid fishing) and why.

              This nonsense where you can have your data seized/searched without any notice, chance to contest, or adversarial hearing needs to be looked at and perhaps changed.

              • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2022, @03:20AM

                by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 07 2022, @03:20AM (#1227292)

                (that is, they perhaps give you a limited amount of free cloud storage because they know that you may eventually fill it all up and then when you do fill it up you are forced to either pay for more cloud storage on a monthly basis or delete some of your old stuff that may be important to you. They don't want to give you the option to simply back it up locally).

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by captain normal on Sunday March 06 2022, @03:39AM (1 child)

      by captain normal (2205) on Sunday March 06 2022, @03:39AM (#1227044)

      Where did you see any indication that they actually sent a "kill signal"? It does seem the company was mismanaged, not unheard off in this age of Limited Liability Corporations, but proving malice over incompetence is a stretch.
      However I've sure there are Personal Injury Lawyers chomping at the bits to get involved.

      --
      When life isn't going right, go left.
      • (Score: 2) by choose another one on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:58PM

        by choose another one (515) Subscriber Badge on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:58PM (#1227130)

        > However I've sure there are Personal Injury Lawyers chomping at the bits to get involved.

        To sue what entity exactly? Sounds like the sight implant part of the business wasn't taken on by the new owners, probably resides in a defunct shell with zero assets.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @01:06PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @01:06PM (#1227110)

      Doesn't look like they sent any kill signals. Barbara Campbell's unit stopped working in 2013, and Second Sight's implosion occurred from 2018 to 2020. Second Sight did try to fix it, but failed. So I don't see it being caused by the company going under. The rest of the article is just worries over lack of tech support and lack of rehab support.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @12:55AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @12:55AM (#1227010)

    You mean insult to injury?

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:11AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:11AM (#1227022)

      I guess it is injury to insult. They insulted you when the thing stopped working and then they injured you by making you worse off than you would have been had you never had the device in the first place.

      Uhm ... it seems like the FDA or some government body failed here. It should be the job of government to consider and perhaps plan for/account for these contingencies (ie: the company going out of business and the patient being worse off than they would have been had they never got the device in the first place) before allowing for this? Were these possibilities properly disclosed to the patients ahead of time? Somehow I feel like this is partly a failure of government to do its job as well in terms of regulating for things like safety and the longer term consequences of various possible contingencies.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @01:11AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @01:11AM (#1227014)

    These are not set top boxes which have little impact on a person's life. These are life saving devices that should not be held at the whim of a corporation. Guess if you don't pay your fee they shut off. What if this shut off while they were crossing a street? Imagine some company doing this with an artificial heart or lung.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @01:40AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @01:40AM (#1227016)

    What are you going to do? Ban optical implants? You can take my Kiroshis from my cold, dead hands.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:12AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:12AM (#1227024)

      Easier to pluck you Kiroshis from your cold, dead eyes, I would think.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:04AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:04AM (#1227020)

    They've been putting artificial parts into people for decades now. How does it work for, say, a heart pump or valve? What happens if the company behind it goes out of business? Has it happened, or has those companies just been bought up by larger companies? From the company standpoint, should they be required to support them in perpetuity?

    • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday March 06 2022, @05:28AM

      by mhajicek (51) on Sunday March 06 2022, @05:28AM (#1227065)

      Things like bone plates can be left in, or removed by just about any surgeon. Heart valves are generally expected to last the life of the patient, but I do know companies that have removal plans and instrumentation.

      --
      The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
  • (Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:12AM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:12AM (#1227023) Journal

    This is eyesight we're talking about here! I should think the shabby, cheapo, tricksy ink jet printer, monthly subscription, SaaS, DRM locked business models would be rejected forcefully. More like, we'd never reach that point, because the seller would realize those business models would NOT go over well. Besides, this is also medical. We all know US medicine's prices are beyond sky high.

    The suggestion that service was deliberately shut off with only seconds of warning, in a "planned obsolescence" kind of heartless, evil, money grubbing business move, is just the sort of clickbait sensationalism I'd expect of tabloid trash journalism. Enough businesses do have reputations that bad for it to be believable. But it's just too stupid. It'd be like embedding something in the windshield glass to make it go completely dark, preventing the driver from seeing. If that happened while the car was being driven, that could very easily cause a wreck, and the responsible company would get the bejesus sued out of it. There have been a few cases where companies were that stupid, but it's rare.

    It was a ticking time bomb battery drain problem, much like the CMOS batteries in PCs. That sort of problem, we know, is too far over the horizon for the short term thinking that pervades business.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:45AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @02:45AM (#1227031)

    This isn't exactly clear from the summary but I'm too lazy to read the article ('cause it's what everyone does here amirite?) But, this isn't a smRt home light set or fridge FFS. If an eye implant (or any medical device for that matter) is brickable via WiFi connectivity, you're seriously fucked as is witnessed here (oops, bad word choice in this case). I'd be suing this company for a lot of money. Same goes for an EV (hi Elon you smug fuck) or any hardware device for that matter. Oh and fuck you too Sonos while I'm at it.

    • (Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday March 09 2022, @08:15PM

      by tangomargarine (667) on Wednesday March 09 2022, @08:15PM (#1228028)

      If an eye implant (or any medical device for that matter) is brickable via WiFi connectivity, you're seriously fucked as is witnessed here

      Sort of lends a whole new meaning to the word "skullfucked"...

      --
      "Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @03:00AM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @03:00AM (#1227033)

    A miracle of capitalism, but beware
    What capitalism giveth, capitalism taketh away

    • (Score: 5, Touché) by helel on Sunday March 06 2022, @05:54AM (2 children)

      by helel (2949) on Sunday March 06 2022, @05:54AM (#1227070)

      Really it's a miracle of science and what science giveth capitalism taketh away.

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @01:33PM (1 child)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @01:33PM (#1227113)

        khallow will be along any minute now to explain how medical companies need to get filthy rich and some people too because reasons and commies.

        • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Monday March 07 2022, @04:55PM

          by Freeman (732) on Monday March 07 2022, @04:55PM (#1227396) Journal

          I don't see many defenders of Martin Shkreli or his ilk.

          --
          Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @03:17AM (8 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @03:17AM (#1227039)

    If you get a cutting edge, almost experimental implant to treat your blindness, you have accepted certain risks. The implant going bad is one of them. Oh, can't really remove the implant? That's the risk you accepted in exchange for the benefit of years of "vision" that the implant gave you. Jesus, quit infantilizing people.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday March 06 2022, @06:05AM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Sunday March 06 2022, @06:05AM (#1227073)

      It appears to me that the device shut off functionality, not because of batteries, but because of ?. I can see shutting off updates, but any critical medical device should be able to remain functioning at its current level without any sort of OK from the supplier.

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Common Joe on Sunday March 06 2022, @10:12AM (6 children)

      by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday March 06 2022, @10:12AM (#1227095) Journal

      I would assume there is a plan in place to have the implant removed even if the company goes bankrupt, but that doesn't seem to be the case. In fact, here is something FTA:

      Ross Doerr couldn’t get an MRI to check for a brain tumor because his doctors couldn’t get information about his implant from Second Sight

      Doerr’s doctor scheduled an MRI scan to rule out a brain-stem tumor. But because an MRI’s intense magnetic fields can interact with the Argus II, MRI providers are instructed to contact Second Sight before performing any scans—and Second Sight wasn’t picking up the phone. Doerr eventually got a CT scan instead, which found nothing. “I still don’t know if I have a brain-stem tumor or not,” he tells Spectrum.

      That's not "accepting certain risks". That's horrible stuff that should have been sorted out before the surgery was ever performed. The government should be right in the middle of this making sure that these kinds of things don't happen.

      • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Sunday March 06 2022, @10:19AM (1 child)

        by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday March 06 2022, @10:19AM (#1227096) Journal

        Well, this is just embarrassing.

        FTA = from the article.

        It should have read "Here is something from TFA", but I guess today I found out that I'm not perfect.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @01:53PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @01:53PM (#1227117)

          Some of us prefer from TFA (the f*ing article)

      • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @10:06PM (3 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 06 2022, @10:06PM (#1227223)

        You invoke The Government as some sort of savior that prevents any ill from happening.
        It doesn't and it can't. I stand by my statement that the risk of "shit happening" to the implant (which can't really be removed) is one the patient took on.

        • (Score: 2) by Common Joe on Monday March 07 2022, @04:24AM (2 children)

          by Common Joe (33) <{common.joe.0101} {at} {gmail.com}> on Monday March 07 2022, @04:24AM (#1227299) Journal

          You invoke The Government as some sort of savior that prevents any ill from happening.

          No. That is not what I said at all. I said this an example where government regulation should come into play. I'm no fan of government, but I do acknowledge that government is needed -- especially where safety is concerned like in the medical field.

          It doesn't and it can't. I stand by my statement that the risk of "shit happening" to the implant (which can't really be removed) is one the patient took on.

          Ah. I see. I believe your position is extreme Libertarian or anarchy. Well, I'm afraid we'll have to disagree on these points. I rather like government checking up on things where safety is concerned. For instance, spot checking food. Without that, every grocery purchase and trip to a restaurant would be much, much riskier... and in the long run, more expensive.

          • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 08 2022, @12:25AM (1 child)

            by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 08 2022, @12:25AM (#1227494)

            Govt red tape strangles innovation. These people would not have had the eye implants in their lifetimes if the implants were regulated to the point where there is zero risk. And I only stated that the people took on the risk because... well... they obviously DID, didn't they? How can the govt make it impossible for an implant to fail? Make it so a cutting edge implant (just past the research stage) is easily removable? This is life on the cutting edge. We're not talking about a tooth filling here.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 09 2022, @08:13PM

              by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 09 2022, @08:13PM (#1228027)

              hi there Ajit; welcome to SN

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