Scientists test brain pacemakers for depression

[flashl]

WASHINGTON -- It's a new frontier for psychiatric illness: Brain pacemakers that promise to act as antidepressants by changing how patients' nerve circuitry fires.

Scientists already know the power of these devices to block the tremors of Parkinson's disease and related illnesses; more than 40,000 such patients worldwide have the implants.

But psychiatric illnesses are much more complex and the new experiments with so-called deep brain stimulation, or DBS, are in their infancy. Only a few dozen patients with severe depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder so far have been treated in closely monitored studies.

Still, the early results are promising. Dramatic video shows one patient visibly brightening as doctors turn on her brain pacemaker and she says in surprise: "I'm starting to smile." And new reports this month show that some worst-case patients _ whose depression wasn't relieved by medication, psychotherapy, even controversial shock treatment _ are finding lasting relief.

Washington Post

Is this the beginning of the man-augmented-machine society?

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

1. It's better than them killing themselves.

I'll leave the ethics of it to the individuals.

David

[tctctctc]

2. WOW...

VERICHIP finds its way to legitimacy?

Folks...do whatever you can to avoid this treatment. We want to be HUMAN BEINGS, right? Then let's help our children like human beings.

Would parents choose a 'brain-chip' device because they don't have the time to tend to their child in crisis? OR will the State reccomend this device to children suffering from bi-polar? Will the new National Health Plan demand parents do as they are told by the State and have the child implanted? We need to ask some serious questions before we vote for changes. I would refuse such a demand. Where would that lead me?

We need to have National Health WITH choice, not laws/rules.