Al-Etihad, UAE, November 22
In a first-of-its-kind operation in the United States, a team of doctors at the University of West Virginia Hospital implanted electrodes into the brain of a 33-year-old patient earlier this month to help rid him of an opium addiction he suffered from for more than a decade. The addiction landed him in the hospital with life-threatening conditions on multiple occasions. Unfortunately, the treatments did not work, and he relapsed again and again. The electrodes, connected to external batteries implanted under the collarbone, work to help a patient rid himself of any desire to return to drug use. Doctors describe it as being similar to a cardiac pacemaker, a small device implanted into the patient’s heart… that regulates the contractility and diastole of the heart muscle electronically. This experimental and historic surgical achievement comes at a time when the state of West Virginia is experiencing an ever-growing burden of drug-related mortality. The state currently ranks first [in the US] in the proportion of deaths caused by drug overdose, in a country where deaths from prescription drugs among people under the age of 50 is already alarming. This prompted the US president in August to announce at a press conference that addiction to painkillers and opioids had become a national health emergency and should thus be classified as a threat to national security. It is sufficient to recognize the magnitude of this problem now, to know that 90 Americans die every day as a result of an overdose of opium derivatives among the 142 Americans who die each day due to drugs of various kinds. Based on these daily deaths, data and statistics show that more than 42,000 Americans die each year from an overdose of painkillers or opium derivatives. Although the operation in West Virginia was the first of its kind for the treatment of addiction, the implantation of an electronic device within the skull and between brain cells dates back to 1997, when it was first used to treat Parkinson’s patients. It is currently estimated that 180,000 patients around the world have undergone similar operations for the treatment of diseases like Parkinson’s, epilepsy, obsessive-compulsive disorder and systolic muscular disorder. These treatments fall under the broader concept of “human enhancement,” which can be defined as bringing about a natural, artificial or technological change to the human body in order to enhance its physical or mental abilities. Among the emerging technologies included in this field are things like human genetic engineering (gene therapy), deep-brain stimulation technologies, and three-dimensional bio-printing. There is no doubt that such techniques carry enormous moral and social dilemmas, which have become a concern for a wide range of scientists and specialists. This is especially alarming in light of the fact that some of the largest investments in this area come from tech giants who already occupy a large part of our daily lives through web and mobile devices – and may now also seek to control our brains, read our thoughts, interpret our dreams, arouse our desires and define our orientations using super-capable computer servers. As these dilemmas become bigger and bigger in the United States, they are surely likely to affect medical practices in our own countries. – Akmal Abd Al-Hakim (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)