With Somaform's Neural Review Still Open, Clinics Learn to Say 'Not Yet'

LAGOS — In a Lagos augmentation clinic this week, the most-used sentence was not a recommendation but a refusal. With the safety review of Somaform Augmetics' neural-interface line still open and contested — regulators have neither cleared nor closed the file — counselors are turning candidates away, or asking them to wait. "About one in five who come in ready to sign, I send home to think," said clinic counselor Dr. Fola Ibrahim, who has fitted augmentations for a decade. Roughly 5 percent of humans are now augmented, a share that climbs each year, but Ibrahim says the contested review has changed the room's tempo. Somaform founder Julian Morrow, an augmentation-rights advocate, maintains the technology is safe and the review routine. Ibrahim stays inside her own lane. "My job is not to win the argument," she said. "It is to make sure the person in my chair understands that 'open review' means the science is still talking. Until it stops, so do I."