With Neural-Interface Review Still Open, Clinics Slow the Waiting List

SEATTLE — At a well-regarded augmentation clinic on the city's north side, the waiting list for elective neural interfaces has stopped growing — not because demand fell, but because the clinic chose to stop taking new names. The safety review of neural-interface implants remains open and contested across 2124, with regulators refusing to declare the technology cleared, and clinic director Dr. Priyanka Venkat decided that ambiguity was reason enough to wait. "About five percent of humanity is augmented now, and most of it is uneventful," she said. "But 'most' is not a word I want to stake a patient's cortex on while the review is still live." Manufacturers including Somaform Augmetics maintain their interfaces are safe; advocates warn that pauses like Venkat's stigmatize the augmented. Venkat is unmoved. "I will reopen the list the day the review closes with an answer. Not one day before. A cortex is not a place to be optimistic."