I would strongly disagree.

The decreasing life expectancy in the US is probably, ahem, largely attributed to a medical system that is not particularly well-optimized for boosting mass life expectancy (despite being world-class in absolute quality of care, I assume).

If you look closely, past decades have brought immense breakthroughs such as

- the first completely synthetic new antibiotic

- dramatic improvements in spatial and temporal resolution of imaging systems (MRI, PET etc.)

- actually useful robotic assistance for surgery

- easy, simple, and widespread techniques that are nevertheless life-saving, including a broad awareness for important events such as cardiac arrest and stroke

- much better, faster and more accurate laboratory work, down to the DNA level

And that's only a fraction of it which a layman such as myself can come up with from the top of my head!

Unless those things help people live longer or better (with scientific evidence to show such an effect) they are interesting developments with no actual impact on patients. Do people treated with surgical robots live longer or better? Has the synthetic antibiotic helped average patients live longer or better? So far, we only see very marginal improvements, and at massive, constantly increasing costs.

I'm struggling to understand what you mean. Finally being able to communicate strikes you as "only marginally" improved? You really don't think that being able to talk to family, say that you're in pain, ask for an audiobook, helps much at all?

And then you mention life expectancy, which is quantity of life.

There are other systems that provide this ability. This system is not the first and is not the only thing that allows one with this condition to communicate. This is mostly a fluff piece. Quantity and quality both matter.

Who says this isn’t the beginning of a revolution of not being tethered to our meat bag bodies?