tongue device for balance

[1eye]

The company that inherited the idea for using a tongue output device from Paul Bach-y-Rita now has permission from the FDA to sell a similar device so that blind people can see using their tongues. But they did not prove their balance device works to the satisfaction of the FDA. Some nay-sayers posted on facebook about it and that was probably enough to kill the deal. The irony is that it was the balance device that made Paul Bach-y-Rita famous, because, for his patient, Cheryl Schiltz, it worked, hands down. But the FDA, in its ironic wisdom, could see that the vision device works.

The vision device has a lot more sensors, needed to resolve images.

Now the same people have reinvented the company under a new name, and got Montel Williams to flog a new incarnation of the device. He wants all those Traumatic Brain Injury patients to sign up for the multicenter, randomized trial, because he has MS, and it worked for him. Meanwhile, the old company, the one the FDA approved to sell the vision device, is no longer selling the balance device, though some owners say it works. You cannot get it, even for humanitarian reasons, which the older company specifically rules out. Maybe like the electric car, and the Atari ET game, they will buy them all up and bury them in the desert.

1. The vision device costs $10,000. Only the luckiest of the blind can afford one.
2. If randomized to placebo, you have zero chance of using the balance device, even if it does work for Montel, for MS.
3. The trial does not allow persons with MS, even though you can bet Montel continues to use his, and even if they have also had Traumatic Brain Injuries.

I think this is all smoke and mirrors. You can bet somebody's trying to get rich. The brain is neuroplastic. There is no doubt. There are 6 very well-known senses, and any of them can be used to substitute for any other. Some of them are very much more accurate than the tongue.

See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1902340/

More to the point, see https://www.seeingwithsound.com/

These devices and ideas are nobody's property, although y-Rita probably patented the tongue device and willed it to the University of Wisconsin.

These ideas are being made to look like intellectual property, definitely used for profit, and not being used to benefit anyone but the vendors. Since the book by Norman Doidge, (see http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/ ... abyss.html) was published years ago I think uses of neuroplasticity are not patentable, and should remain in the public domain, where the disabled can afford them. If I were president, there'd be some changes made.