Not exactly news, but I do like the idea of the gastric pacemaker.
Posted on 06/03/2007 6:42:50 PM PDT by Sleeping Beauty
DALLAS — The first bites of pizza fall into your eager stomach. All feels great, until you grab that extra slice and your gastric pacemaker awakens. The tiny device, which doctors sewed onto your gut, watches what you eat. Whenever you overindulge, a faint shock makes you too ill for more.
Science fiction? No. The gastric pacemaker exists, and it's just one of many medical prototypes that run on microchips from Texas Instruments Inc.
The Dallas-based company, which grew rich by planting tiny devices in machines, hopes to grow richer by planting them in you. It hopes to heal many ills and enrich the Dallas area, where existing centers for medical research and mobile computing may spawn a medical computing hub.
"The potential is incredible," said TI chief executive Rich Templeton, explaining his company's plans for medical technology at a conference last week. "We're talking projects like restoring sight to the blind."
Indeed, researchers at the University of Southern California can already make blind patients "see."
Camera glasses send video to a computerized belt, which translates digital images to electrical pulses for the brain. Patients today see blocky images that evoke early video games. It's enough to navigate everyday tasks, though, and improvements are in the works.
The improving tie between tissue and silicon also underlies a new generation of artificial limbs.
Scientists at University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center have attached a mechanical arm, one wire per nerve, to a volunteer's shoulder. The man can now use his mind to move fingers, hand, wrist, elbow and shoulder.
The device still lacks the control needed for pro sports or safecracking, but it's an honest-to-goodness bionic arm.
(Excerpt) Read more at montereyherald.com ...
Not exactly news, but I do like the idea of the gastric pacemaker.
If they can create a “Gastric Pacemaker” why not just create a system to bypass the digestive tract all together. Once the stomach is full, everything else is stored until you go to the toilet.
Makes more sense than the above system.
Besides storage, it could also be used to power the fuel cell needed to keep all of the biomechanical systems online.
ROFL. Great reponse. (Oh, the visuals!)
There’s just so many things they could do to improve quality of life, why spend time making people miserable with their designs?
Me, I want a third stomach so if I want to, I can graze in the back field and get all the nutrition I need. With a taste simulator circuit that makes the grass and else nasty taste like chocolate.
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