Ready For Cyborgization?

In yesterday’s newsletter, we asked you for your views on Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs), such as the Utah Array and Neuralink’s chips on/in brains that allow direct communication between brains and computers, so that (for example) a paralysed person can use a device to communicate, or manipulate a prosthetic limb or two.

We didn’t get as many votes as usual; it’s possible that yesterday’s newsletter ended up in a lot of spam filters due to repeated use of a word in “extra ______ olive oil” in its main feature!

However, of the answers we did get…

• About 54% said “It’s bad enough that our phones spy on us, without BCI monitoring our thoughts as well!”
• About 23% said “Sounds great in principle, but I don’t think we’re there yet safetywise”
• About 19% said “Sign me up for technological telepathy! I am ready for assimilation”
• One (1) person said “Electrode outside the skull are good; chips on the brain are bad”

But what does the science say?

We’re not there yet safetywise: True or False?

True, in our opinion, when it comes to the latest implants, anyway. While it’s very difficult to prove a negative (it could be that everything goes perfectly in human trials), “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, and so far this seems to be lacking.

The stage before human trials is usually animal trials, starting with small creatures and working up to non-human primates if appropriate, before finally humans.

• Good news: the latest hot-topic BCI device (Neuralink) was tested on animals!
• Bad news: to say it did not go well would be an understatement

The Gruesome Story of How Neuralink’s Monkeys Actually Died

The above is a Wired article, and we tend to go for more objective sources, however we chose this one because it links to very many objective sources, including an open letter from the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine, which basically confirms everything in the Wired article. There are lots of links to primary (medical and legal) sources, too.

Electrodes outside the skull are good; chips on/in the brain are bad: True or False?

True or False depending on how they’re done. The Utah Array (an older BCI implant, now 20 years old, though it’s been updated many times since) has had a good safety record, after being used by a few dozen people with paralysis to control devices:

How the Utah Array is advancing BCI science

The Utah Array works on the same general principle as Neuralink, but the mechanics of its implementation are very different:

• The Utah Array involves a tiny bundle of microelectrodes (held together by a rigid structure that looks a bit like a nanoscale hairbrush) put in place by a brain surgeon, and that’s that.
• The Neuralink has a dynamic web of electrodes, implanted by a little robot that acts like a tiny sewing machine to implant many polymer threads, each containing its own a bunch of electrodes.

In theory, the latter is much more advanced. In practice, so far, the former has a much better safety record.

I am right to be a little worried about giving companies access to my brain: True or False?

True or False, depending on the nature of your concern.

For privacy: current BCI devices have quite simple switches operated consciously by the user. So while technically any such device that then runs its data through Bluetooth or WiFi could be hacked, this risk is no greater than using a wireless mouse and/or keyboard, because it has access to about the same amount of information.

For safety: yes, probably there is cause to be worried. Likely the first waves of commercial users of any given BCI device will be severely disabled people who are more likely to waive their rights in the hope of a life-changing assistance device, and likely some of those will suffer if things go wrong.

Which on the one hand, is their gamble to make. And on the other hand, makes rushing to human trials, for companies that do that, a little more predatory.

Take care!

Washing Our Hands Of It

In Tuesdays’s newsletter, we asked you how often you wash your hands, and got the above-depicted, below-described, set of self-reported answers:

• About 54% said “More times per day than [the other options]”
• About 38% said “Whenever using the bathroom or kitchen
• About 5% said “Once or twice per day”
• Two (2) said “Only when visibly dirty”
• Two (2) said “I prefer to just use sanitizer gel”

What does the science have to say about this?

People lie about their handwashing habits: True or False?

True and False (since some people lie and some don’t), but there’s science to this too. Here’s a great study from 2021 that used various levels of confidentiality in questioning (i.e., there were ways of asking that made it either obvious or impossible to know who answered how), and found…

❝We analysed data of 1434 participants. In the direct questioning group 94.5% of the participants claimed to practice proper hand hygiene; in the indirect questioning group a significantly lower estimate of only 78.1% was observed.❞

~ Dr. Laura Mieth et al.

Source: Do they really wash their hands? Prevalence estimates for personal hygiene behaviour during the COVID-19 pandemic based on indirect questions

Note: the abstract alone doesn’t make it clear how the anonymization worked (it is explained later in the paper), and it was noted as a limitation of the study that the participants may not have understood how it works well enough to have confidence in it, meaning that the 78.1% is probably also inflated, just not as much as the 94.5% in the direct questioning group.

Here’s a pop-science article that cites a collection of studies, finding such things as for example…

❝With the use of wireless devices to record how many people entered the restroom and used the pumps of the soap dispensers, researchers were able to collect data on almost 200,000 restroom trips over a three-month period.

The found that only 31% of men and 65% of women washed their hands with soap.❞

Source: Study: Men Wash Their Hands Much Less Often Than Women (And People Lie About Washing Their Hands)

Sanitizer gel does the job of washing one’s hands with soap: True or False?

False, though it’s still not a bad option for when soap and water aren’t available or practical. Here’s an educational article about the science of why this is so:

UCI Health | Soap vs. Hand Sanitizer

There’s also some consideration of lab results vs real-world results, because while in principle the alcohol gel is very good at killing most bacteria / inactivating most viruses, it can take up to 4 minutes of alcohol gel contact to do so, as in this study with flu viruses:

Situations Leading to Reduced Effectiveness of Current Hand Hygiene against Infectious Mucus from Influenza Virus-Infected Patients

In contrast, 20 seconds of handwashing with soap will generally do the job.

Antibacterial soap is better than other soap: True or False?

False, because the main way that soap protects us is not in its antibacterial properties (although it does also destroy the surface membrane of some bacteria and for that matter viruses too, killing/inactivating them, respectively), but rather in how it causes pathogens to simply slide off during washing.

Here’s a study that found that handwashing with soap reduced disease incidence by 50–53%, and…

❝Incidence of disease did not differ significantly between households given plain soap compared with those given antibacterial soap.❞

~ Dr. Stephen Luby et al.

Read more: Effect of handwashing on child health: a randomised controlled trial

Want to wash your hands more than you do?

There have been many studies into motivating people to wash their hands more (often with education and/or disgust-based shaming), but an effective method you can use for yourself at home is to simply buy more luxurious hand soap, and generally do what you can to make handwashing a more pleasant experience (taking a moment to let the water run warm is another good thing to do if that’s more comfortable for you).

Take care!