Su IEEE Spectrum, il magazine online del Consorzio IEEE, è stato pubblicato un articolo che racconta la storia di Second Sight, una società di Los Angeles che da più di vent’anni progetta e sviluppa impianti retinali per restituire la vista a persone che l’hanno persa completamente.I suoi modelli Argus sono stati installati sul 350 pazienti in tutto il mondo, almeno fino al 2020: anno in cui la sua situazione finanziaria ha iniziato a deteriorarsi.

Ross Doerr, another Second Sight patient, doesn’t mince words: “It is fantastic technology and a lousy company,” he says. He received an implant in one eye in 2019 and remembers seeing the shining lights of Christmas trees that holiday season. He was thrilled to learn in early 2020 that he was eligible for software upgrades that could further improve his vision. Yet in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, he heard troubling rumors about the company and called his Second Sight vision-rehab therapist. “She said, ‘Well, funny you should call. We all just got laid off,’ ” he remembers. “She said, ‘By the way, you’re not getting your upgrades.’ ”

L’articolo racconta le storie di alcuni di essi, che hanno perso la propria “vista bionica” da un momento all’altro. Con un’ulteriore beffa: un impianto retinale non funzionante e non supportato dal produttore può rivelarsi una complicazione per alcune analisi (ad esempio la risonanza magnetica) e la sua rimozione può essere complicata e dolorosa.

On 18 July 2019, Second Sight sent Argus patients a letter saying it would be phasing out the retinal implant technology to clear the way for the development of its next-generation brain implant for blindness, Orion, which had begun a clinical trial with six patients the previous year. The U.S. National Institutes of Health is funding that trial as a $6.4 million project over five years. […]

Second Sight was quick to assure Argus patients that its support of their retinal devices would not change. […] However, the letter’s promises were already looking shaky, according to one ex-engineer at the company, who asked not to be named because they had also signed an NDA. “We didn’t really support the basic Argus after that,” the engineer tells Spectrum. “We didn’t sell any more, we didn’t make any more, we didn’t have anything to do with it anymore.”

And worse was yet to come, for Argus and Orion patients alike.