The Cyborg Industry Springs a Squeak

Medical devices are kind of the Rodney Dangerfield of medicine's high-tech armamentarium. Sure, companies like Medtronic, Guidant and Stryker make artificial replacements or supplements for body parts ranging from hearts to bones (OK -- joints), but for whatever reason, devices don't seem to inspire the popular imagination the way, say, stem cells or gene therapy or even more conventional drugs do.

Which is why I've thought for a while that device makers could do a lot worse than to rebrand themselves as the Cyborg Industry. These companies, after all, have built their businesses around devices designed to take over the functions of aging and failing organs. In effect, that means they're creating human-machine hybrids with improved strength and quality of life -- at least by contrast with, say, the infirmity of a heart patient prior to something like a mitral-valve replacement.

Of course, cyborgs are pretty scary to most people, despite the fact that my fellow California residents seemed to have no problem re-electing one as governor. So I doubt we'll see the industry adopting this suggestion any time soon, even though the sorts of device advances some experts project -- "nanobots" that could cruise through your bloodstream, zapping viral invaders and cancer cells, or networks of microscopic sensors that might let you monitor detailed vital signs via your cellphone, or memory-enhancing brain implants -- could turn their eventual recipients into something a lot closer to actual cyborgs than anything we've yet seen put into practice.

So it was fascinating to see the NYT on Sunday note how some artificial hip joints made by Stryker seem to have developed audible squeaks, much to the annoyance of the folks who have them. The NYT's Barnaby Feder focuses on the entirely proper and serious question of whether the frequent and high-pitched sound of mechanical stress suggest the possibility of more serious problems with ceramic hip replacements, which are intended to be more durable and longer-lasting than older -- and non-squeaking -- metal-and-plastic joints.

But the underlying theme of the story seems to be that many people would just as soon do without constant reminders of their cyborg status -- particularly when that reminder comes in the form of noises that convey a sense of age and disrepair. Dozens of patients, Feder tells us, have already undergone painful and complicated surgery to replace their noisy hips, and some have sued, complaining that the noises make it impossible to live a normal life. A few examples of that annoyance:

• Nutritionist Susan O'Toole now squeaks when walking up and down stairs, and even when walking normally.
• Michael Mueller, a software executive in Scottsdale, Ariz., found the noise from his hip -- which resembles the sound of a rusty bearing or the wheels of an old red wagon -- so perturbing that he made his own video and put it up on YouTube. (The NYT, to its credit, linked to the video in its story, the first time I can recall seeing the newspaper of record link to an external source in the text of one of its own online stories.)
• One anonymous Stryker hip recipient told Feder that the noise "can interrupt sex when my wife starts laughing."

I certainly don't mean to minimize the potentially serious consequences should the artificial hips in question prove to be defective. Stryker, of course, denies that, even though the company is also clearly engaged in classic damage control by working to minimize the scale of the problem.

Still, the bigger issue here is one that most device makers will have to face sooner or later. As their plans to augment "natural" body functions -- even those that result from age or injury -- grow ever more ambitious, intrusive and touch the lives of more people, these companies are going to have to think a lot more seriously about how to cope with the unanticipated consequences of implanting mechanical and electronic devices into the body-- no matter how trivial those consequences might seem. The industry is going to have to live with this Cyborg Effect for quite some time.

Photo by Flickr user Garrette, CC 2.0