BBC:
UK-based scientists have designed an 'intelligent' microchip which they claim can suppress appetite.The last two chapters of Micheal Gazzaniga's book Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique are devoted to this sort of thing, the future of the human body. After explaining for 300 pages what's biologically special about the human animal (our hands, our brains, our languages, our cultures, our dependence on technology), he begins to examine the latest technological direction—from the outside to the inside. In the past, tools were external (hammer, spoon, shoes); in the future that's arriving all around us, tools are becoming more and more internal. In the past, we were fyborgs (dependent on technology), but the future is transforming us into cyborgs.Animal trials of the electronic implant are about to begin and its makers say it could provide a more effective alternative to weight-loss surgery.
The chip is attached to the vagus nerve which plays a role in appetite as well as a host of other functions within the body.
Human trials of the implant could begin within three years, say its makers.
Cyborgs have a physical integration of biological and technological structures. And we now have a few in our midst.
