Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk said on Tuesday (October 29) that Neuralink, the company he co-founded, should look to develop a brain implant which would alleviate neck and back pain. Neuralink develops makes Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) which can be implanted in human brain. Musk's latest comment came in a post he made on X (formerly Twitter), the social media platform he owns.
At the time of publishing of this storuy, Musk's post had got eighty thousand likes and it had been reposted more than eleven thousand times. The post had received 8.1 million impressions and nearly ten thousand comments.
The post elicited enthusiastic comments.
"Dealing with back pain for over 25 years, this sounds like a game-changer!" said an X user.
"Neuralink is gonna be huge.. Will it be able to fix things like hearing/vision also??" said another.
"Please! Neck and back pain are responsible for so much of our stress and unhappiness," opined another X user.
Some of the comments said if Neuralink indeed focuses on eliminating back and neck pain, it would be a seismic shift in healthcare.
"This would be lifer changing and help put an end to big pharma's hold on pain management," said a person who commented on Musk's post.
Neuralink, alongwith having been able to attract attention due to its approach, has received criticism as well. The company faces criticism that it seeks to manufacture devices which are ultimately aimed at behaviour control and there would be less check on such a functioning of its chip because it will be embedded in the brain of a person.
The company has tested the brain chip in animals and got go ahead for human trials in the US several years ago.
