Robotic Prostheses For Human Faces

holy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports on a patent application that suggests implanting polymer muscles beneath the skin of people suffering paralysis of the face to give them control of their features. The technique has already been used successfully to reanimate the eyelids of human cadavers. Movement could be returned to other facial features and even paralyzed limbs in the same way, the surgeons at University of California Davis say. The full patent application is also available on the WIPO site."

Why is this patentable?

[zooblethorpe]

Since when are surgical procedures patentable? And what are the ethics of patenting this anyway, and likely thereby preventing some people from receiving such treatment, even if it is somehow legal to do so?

Or is the patent specific to the artificial muscles?

Limited scope

[El_Smack]

Unless science can find another part of the human anatomy that is problematic when limp, this probably won't get off the ground.

Uncanny Valley

[lobiusmoop]

Feels like there's a great danger here of falling deep into the uncanny valley [wikipedia.org], especially with facial prosthetics.

Re:Why is this patentable?

[blueg3]

Note that it's a patent application. I haven't looked to see if it's patentable, but you can file applications for things that aren't patentable.

The concern about ethics really depends on what control is exerted with the patent. It'd all be speculation, since this isn't even a procedure ready to be used. (For drugs, for example, intellectual property controls back the majority of the drug cost -- so there are reasonable ethical questions. Even with a zero cost due to IP, neither robotic prosthesis nor the surgery and therapy needed to use them are at all cheap.)