this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2023
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Even if her death is guaranteed by leaving it in (and I'm not sure it is without more information), does that make it ethical to remove? Perhaps the patient would prefer a shorter life with greater quality in regards to her seizures. After all, don't we allow and accept cancer patients to forgo treatment and enjoy the time they have left?
Frankly the articles I've found all use a mix of really weird language. In some places it says she was 'advised' to remove it by doctors, which makes a lot of sense. In others they talk about finances and purchasing the implant from the company.
My guess is that it was a combination of factors and while she ultimately did not want to give up the device despite being urged by doctors (she accepted the risk of leaving it in), but she was robbed of the possibility by capitalism and the fact that the company was forced to liquidate assets as terms of going bankrupt or being bought by another company. But we might have to wait for a court case or proper reporting to find out.
I hope we are able to enshrine some rights over forced explantation in the future. As soon as a device is implanted in you, you should own it 100%, no matter the cost of the device. To encourage making this possible even for extremely expensive devices, we should probably offer huge write offs or some other incentive to these companies lest they decide to restrict their purchase to only rich clients.
Owning the device doesn't help if it requires regular maintenance and there's nobody able to do it anymore.
I mean, we should protect against that too by requiring a certain level of service. But at the very least they need to own the device and have the right to leave the device in, even if it would fail or potentially cause them harm. I pointed that out because it sounds like they wanted to leave it in and not listen to the doctors advice to remove it, but could not for some reason. The only reason I can imagine would involve someone paying for the surgery to remove it against her will is one in which she does not own the device and the alternative is being burdened with a massive debt to pay off the device.
How do you require a certain level of service when the company that made it goes out of business? Or when employees with essential knowledge leave the company? I've been working in software for a long time, and everywhere I've worked, losing someone knowledgeable about a product is a big blow to future development because a lot of important knowledge is only in their head, leaving future maintainers to do a lot of reverse engineering. Requiring documentation wouldn't work because any company that had strict enough requirements would have a very hard time hiring engineers willing to spend so much time documenting every little thing.
You require them legally to budget and plan these things and give them harsh penalties if they fail. That they need to set aside money in a way that it can't be touched if they go under. You'll likely need to hire teams at the government to help fill gaps and coordinate.
I don't think you have any idea how much money you're talking about. The fact that you're proposing it in the context of an experimental device that was probably never even marketed is just deranged. We'd still be stuck with 1950s-level technology if you had your way because nobody could afford to develop any new products that can't be made in a basic machine shop.