Safety Review of Neural Interface Stays Open and Contested

FRANKFURT — The safety review that has shadowed neural-interface augmentation all year remained open and unresolved this week, and both sides said they preferred it that way to a rushed answer. Regulators confirmed that the review of a Somaform Augmetics neural-interface line continues, with no finding cleared and no product shipped — the same contested state it has held for months. Roughly five percent of humans now carry some augmentation, and the interface class sits at the sharpest edge of that adoption. Founder Julian Morrow, the augmentation-rights advocate, argued the technology's benefits are being held hostage by caution; a rehabilitation clinician on the review's advisory rolls, Dr. Farida Haqq, argued caution is the whole point. "An implant is not a phone," Haqq said. "You cannot recall the year a patient wore it." For her patient, a stroke survivor named Osei Boateng relearning his left hand through an interface, the debate is not abstract. "I want it faster," Boateng said. "I also want it right." The review goes on.