Paralysis, loss of vision, inability to speak: Canadians who suffer from disabilities will now be able to apply to receive an experimental Neuralink brain implant, which allowed a quadriplegic to play chess using thought last week.
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“Our patient registry is now open to Canadian residents! Join us to shape the future of brain-computer interfaces,” American start-up Neuralink, founded in part by billionaire Elon Musk, announced on X on Saturday, Global News reported on Wednesday.
The company, which is working to develop brain implants to allow a cell phone or computer to be operated by thought, would have opened the application for the technology called PRIME in the experimental phase to Canadian applicants.
To be eligible to apply, applicants must be of legal age and must suffer from “quadriplegia, paraplegia, vision loss, hearing loss, inability to speak and/or major amputation of a limb,” it says. read in the Neuralink patient registry.
Except that this announcement would come in the middle of a storm, when the company would have been accused by an American legislator, Earl Blumenauer, of having violated animal testing procedures, leading to unnecessary suffering and the death of around 1,500 of them. them since 2018, according to Global News.
The Democratic representative accused, in passing, the American Medicines Agency (FDA) of not having properly inspected the procedures before giving the green light for human trials in September 2023.
For its part, the FDA defended itself by indicating that it had not found any violation likely to compromise the safety of the trial, according to the English-speaking media.
Last week, the first quadriplegic patient to receive the “cosmetically invisible” implant, Noland Arbaugh, performed an impressive demonstration of the technology’s capabilities by playing online thought chess, which he likens to “using the force” in the science fiction saga Star Wars.
“I could make it move wherever I wanted, just look somewhere at the screen, and it would move where I wanted it, which was such a crazy experience,” the 29-year-old reportedly said during a live broadcast, according to Global News. It’s not perfect […] There is still a lot of work to do, but it has already changed my life.”