You don’t have to drill a hole in your head and implant a microchip to lose weight. There are much safer ways to lose weight. These include a new class of very promising drugs that make brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) for weight management look downright dangerous.
Billionaire spreading conspiracies Elon Musk He raised the possibility of weight loss using computer chips while discussing the Neuralink BCI in April. TED interview. “We think we can address a very wide range of brain injuries, including severe depression, morbid obesity, and sleep disorders,” Musk said. [disorders and] Restores memory in the elderly. ”
That’s not a far-fetched claim. Neuralink, like other experimental BCIs, rewires the nervous system. People suffering from paralysis use implants to regain partial control of their limbs. BCIs can also convert nerve impulses (basically thoughts) into radio signals that can be sent to drones, computers, and other devices.
Therefore, it is not inconceivable that people suffering from morbid obesity could use BCIs to bypass the parts of the brain that encourage overeating. But there are also problems. First, there are BCIs that people can do; wear like a hat, the most versatile and sensitive ones like Neuralink require brain surgery. The surgeon literally drills a hole in the patient’s skull and implants the device.
This is invasive and dangerous under the best of circumstances. Implanted BCIs ‘pose surgical risks such as infection and rejection’ According to the U.S. General Accounting Office.
There may be reason to be particularly concerned about Neuralink.federal authorities started an investigation The California-based company formed last year after employees complained about rushed testing that caused unnecessary harm to animal test subjects. Nevertheless, in September an independent review board granted Neuralink permission to recruit subjects for a series of long-term trials.
In any case, medical interventions for morbid obesity are likely to be much safer than brain lab devices. Most notable is a new class of drugs called “glucagon-like peptide-1 agonists” (GLP-1). You may be more familiar with Ozempic, a commercially available analog.
Originally used to treat diabetes, GLP-1 can also help suppress hunger.Scientists aren’t entirely sure how they work, but at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, It pointed out The drug “slows the movement of food from the stomach to the small intestine. As a result, you feel full sooner and longer, and you eat less.”
US Food and Drug Administration approved Last month, Eli Lilly’s Zepbound, the first GLP-1 specifically for the treatment of obesity, was launched. After extensive clinical trials, the FDA concluded that the injectable drug is safe and effective, but stressed that it works best when taken in conjunction with a reduced-calorie diet and increased physical activity.
The best part? No brain surgery.
Both implants and drugs seem to have clear potential for abuse when it comes to controlling hunger. Imagine someone with an eating disorder who, through drugs or brain implants, gains complete control over their hunger urges.
But Tracy Richmond, a doctor who treats eating disorders at Boston Children’s Hospital, downplayed the risks. Clinicians are very skilled at identifying eating disorders and refraining from surgical or other interventions that could worsen symptoms, she told The Daily Beast. “In most cases, people with eating disorders can be singled out.”
In fact, there are risks to drugs that suppress hunger and brain transplants. cause Eating disorders. Professor Richmond cited the Minnesota Starvation Experiments of 1944 and 1945 as historical precedent. In that government-backed experiment, researchers at the University of Minnesota restricted the diets of 36 volunteers for six months before adding back calories. So we essentially starved them to understand the impact of calories. Famine and post-famine situations.
Researchers were shocked to find that many of the subjects developed anorexia nervosa as a result of prolonged starvation, voluntarily restricting their caloric intake even when food was plentiful. “When many people are undernourished compared to what their body wants, their thoughts become more obsessive,” Richmond said. This means that hungry people sometimes become obsessed with hunger.
Few medical interventions are completely risk-free, but some carry far more risk than others. When it comes to weight loss, it is clear which intervention is safer: GLP-1 or brain implants. “Molecular approaches are an effective way to target the hunger system quite specifically and are much less risky than implants,” Samuel Hiers, a neurobiologist at the University of Southern California, told The Daily Beast. Ta.
BCI is a promising technology. However, the fact remains that most BCI experiments involved seriously ill human subjects. When no other treatment is available For example, paralysis.
Before drilling a hole in your head and implanting a device to treat any condition, you may need to consider all other options first. That might mean trying drugs like GLP-1 or old-fashioned diet, exercise, and discipline.
Furthermore, given the promise of safe and effective GLP-1 drugs, the FDA may never approve brain chips for weight loss. “Now that GLP-1 agonists are available, I see no realistic path to market for invasive BCIs for obesity,” Hyas said.