[Originally published at The 6th Floor – Eavesdropping on the Times Magazine, March 26, 2014]

What got you interested in the subject of electronic devices being implanted into humans?
I read a lot of medical journals like Nature and Science. For probably a year, I had been seeing various stories about using the nervous system to cure disease. There has been a lot of work looking at the nervous system and the immune system to deal with cancer. These were independent researchers. I’d see a study here and a study there, and nothing really warranted a feature story. I collected clips over at least a year. Last fall, I saw a story in Nature about GlaxoSmithKline launching a bioelectronics division. Big Pharma is very conservative in business, in technology. They have to be. It is the nature of their business. To see them take an interest in a very science-fictiony or way-out project made me think, “Huh, there is more to this than I know.” They planned an invite-only conference to get all of these researchers I had been following together in one place. Continue reading →