Bots, Blade Runner and Bioethics

Continuing with the robots theme, an article from the UK sparked my interest -- forgot iPods and Blackberries, those are SO yesterday -- it's the machine-mind-body interfaces that will take us to the next stage in our evolution -- apparently, robotics is the next giant leap for mankind (but didn't we all know that?) --

”You want that story,” says Dr Stuart Meloy, laughing. It's a frantic day for the pain-relief surgeon at the Piedmont Anaesthesia and Pain Consultants in North Carolina, but the chance to talk about his discovery is irresistible. ”In 1998 I was placing a spinal-cord stimulator into a woman with leg pain,” he says, describing a pain-relief procedure where electrodes placed parallel to the spine stimulate nerves supplying the leg, removing the pain. ”When I turned the energy on, the patient let out something between a wail and a moan — very different from the ”Wow’ I sometimes hear.” Meloy leant around the curtains to ask the patient what she felt. She caught her breath and said: ”You're going to have to teach my husband how to do that.”

”I had no idea what she was talking about,” he chuckles. It turned out the electricity had given her an orgasm. She had another one when he tweaked the power to find out if that had caused it. After news leaked out that Meloy had patented a cigarette-packet-sized implant that could stimulate an orgasm using a handheld remote, the media went crazy. Everyone wanted to hear about "Dr Pleasure" and his "orgasmatron". But Meloy, who aims to have an affordable product, similar in price to breast implants, on the market in about three years, insists there is a serious reason for the device. According to the surgeon, orgasmic dysfunction affects about a quarter of women in the US, and he hopes that this implant will help women worldwide."

For more on this, read on here.