Most of what you perceive as “taste” is just using your sense of smell on food within the mouth, where it is very close to smell receptors.
To isolate taste informally, pinch your nose, stick your tongue out, and put food directly on the tongue when it’s outside your mouth. You’ll find that by itself your tongue can’t distinguish many flavors, that’s why everything tastes terrible when you have Covid or a bad cold.
No, the paper says it shares a receptor with sour, not that it tastes like sour.
Just as “orange” and “purple” have receptors in common but are not perceived as the same.
Umami is the fifth flavor. This paper is about the sixth, which doesn’t seem to have a name other than “ammonium chloride”.
There was a medical reason, the device was considered unsafe. Any experimental device is considered unsafe without monitoring, and monitoring was no longer available. That’s why she chose to have it removed.
Anyone who signs up for a clinical trial knows that their treatment can be discontinued at any time, even if it is helping them. For example, if an implant is helping you but is found to be harming other people, it may be considered unsafe and you may be advised to remove it. In fact, a different article suggested that other patients were experiencing adverse effects from this experimental implant. This might even be why the company couldn’t get their product approved and eventually lost funding.
They can’t deny claims based on anything in your previous history. They can’t use your history of medical conditions, history of implants, history of drug use, history of pregnancy, history of employment, history of not wearing seat belts, history of anything.
They can say, “We won’t pay for this MRI” or “We won’t pay for this drug”, but that would be true of everyone else on the same plan, regardless of whether they had an implant.
More typically, they say “We only pay for a certain number of MRIs per year” or “You have to get a cheap Xray instead of an expensive MRI” or “You have to try the cheap drug, if that doesn’t work then you can try the expensive one” or “We need to be notified 30 days prior to getting the drug, otherwise we won’t pay” or “You can only get the MRI at this other location, otherwise we won’t pay”.
None of this has to do with your medical history, though. They are simply annoying hoops that everyone has to jump through. And they can never, ever, say “We will pay for X only if you remove the implant, otherwise we won’t pay for X”. If they are paying for X for anyone else on her plan, then they have to pay for hers too.
Classify them however you want, they have nothing to do with your eligibility for health insurance.
In fact, ACA health plans must enroll anyone who wants to enroll. They cannot decline an individual renewal. A premium can only be adjusted according to age and tobacco use. And they cannot charge old people more than three times what they charge young people.
Doctors remove unsafe implants and/or replace them with safer versions all the time, including devices like deep brain stimulators. I don’t see why you consider this to be a big problem.
The whole point of a clinical trial is to enroll volunteers who are willing to undergo a treatment that might not work at all and might not be available in the future even if it does work. Not only that, but you might expect to get a potential cure and end up with only a sugar pill.
If you think any of that is unreasonable, then don’t enroll in a clinical trial.
They aren’t reasonable possibilities, because Medicare covers everyone over 65 regardless of their medical history and ACA health insurance plans are required to enroll all applicants regardless of age or medical history.
The latter can raise your premium if you smoke tobacco. That’s literally the only power of “coercion” they have available. All your other choices are off-limits.
In the US, you can’t lose your health insurance based on your medical history.
Pretty much the only way for an individual to lose their health insurance is by leaving their employer, if they have employer-provided insurance.
Non-employer-provided plans are required to enroll anyone who wants enroll.
In the US, you can’t be denied health insurance based on your medical history. Thanks, Obama! No really, thank you.
she accepted the risk of leaving it in
It doesn’t say that. It says she was willing to pay to keep it in, which means she was willing to pay for long-term maintenance. But there was nobody willing to provide maintenance, because the company dissolved. That is why she was advised to remove the device.
the company was forced to liquidate assets
Implants generally go in the garbage after removal.
Implants that failed to gain FDA approval definitely go in the garbage after removal. Nobody else wants them, in fact the company will end up having to pay for proper disposal of medical waste.
There’s another article that explains that it wasn’t just the battery. After the company went under, there was nobody who could provide support for the product in the event of malfunction. Removal was recommended as the safest course.
This isn’t an “FDA problem”. The device was investigational, which means it did not have final FDA approval. Consequently, there is no guarantee that a surgeon would have the knowledge to maintain it. Surgeons are not expected to be familiar with every experimental device, in fact most surgeons will never touch any experimental device.
And no, surgeons aren’t just going to read a bunch of documentation to get up to speed. Typically, when a new product launches the manufacturer will send their technical representatives into the operating room to help troubleshoot any issues.
This story was described more accurately by The New Yorker. No, they did not do anything without her consent.
For three years after her operation, Leggett lived happily with her device. But in 2013 her neurologist gave her some bad news. NeuroVista had run out of funding and ceased operations. Leggett’s neural device would have to come out.
Leggett felt grateful that everyone involved was sympathetic to her plight. They let her keep the implant as long as possible. But the demise of NeuroVista—after spending seventy million dollars to develop the technology and conduct the trial, it struggled to find further investors—made removal inevitable. If the battery ran out, or a lead broke, or the site of implantation became infected, the company would no longer be there to provide support. She remembered a solemn drive to Melbourne for the surgery, and then coming back home without the device. It felt as if she had left a part of herself behind.
These days, when she gets a funny, flip-floppy feeling inside, she takes anti-seizure medication. She’s not always sure. Sometimes she gets her husband to weigh in. He says, “Go with your first instinct,” and usually she takes a pill. She is now seizure-free.
The article also suggests that other patients had problems with the device, which may have contributed to the failure of the clinical trial and recommendation for removal.
One of the articles suggests that the device was removed because the batteries were no longer available and nearing end of life.
Regardless, a surgeon is only going to maintain devices approved by the FDA or cleared for investigational use. If the company goes bankrupt then both are no longer the case.
She was advised to remove it.
I think “forced” is doing a lot of heavy lifting here. People use it to refer to unpleasant decisions, like “I was forced to leave New York City after I lost my job”.
The articles point out the company went bankrupt and her doctors advised her to remove the implant. It says she was willing to pay to keep it, and suggests this could have been avoided if another company could have taken over device maintainance.
All of which suggests that the device was removed because it could no longer be maintained, despite her willingness to pay.
Vomitoria existed, but they were used for people to leave a stadium, not for food to leave the stomach.
If a mathematical model has no constants then it can describe any dataset…
I can’t believe it’s not battery!