With Somaform's Review Still Open, Clinics Weigh a Waiting Line Against a Warning

LAGOS — Nearly a year into a safety review that has neither cleared a line nor closed the file, the augmentation clinics that fit Somaform Augmetics neural interfaces are managing something regulators cannot resolve for them: a waiting room. The review of the company's neural-interface line remains open and contested, with no finding either way, even as demand from the roughly five percent of humans now augmented keeps referral lists long. At a Lagos fitting clinic, director Chinelo Abara said she counsels every candidate that the review is unfinished. "I tell them the honest thing, which is that no one has said yes and no one has said no," Abara said. Some patients wait; others proceed. Somaform founder Julian Morrow has continued to defend the interface as safe while urging patience with the process. The contest, patients and clinicians agree, is now as much about time as about technology — a review whose length has itself become the news.