CSF sampling is a routine investigation in most hospitals. We don't typically see bacteria in these samples, when we do, its in the form of bacterial meningitis, hence the skepticism.
I'm a doctor training in anaesthesia. The idea with epidurals is to introduce local anaesthetic outside the compartment where the spinal cord is, literally epi-- --durally.
To sample the CSF, or to give a spinal anaesthetic, the needle needs to be introduced into the subarachnoid (one of the membranes that surrounds the central nervous system) space, but at a level below where the spinal cord has terminated. This is why they're done in the lower back typically.
Bending over is a totally legitimate way to perform them, and doesn't really alter the complication rate, while making the procedure easier. Also, there isn't really any realistic option to perform them in real time with imaging guidance. The author is right in that larger cutting needles are associated with increased rates of PDPH.
I was thinking the exact same thing last month[1]! It's really interesting what the implications of this might be, and how valuable human-derived content might become. There's still this idea of model collapse, whereby the output of LLMs trained repeatedly on artificial content descends into what we think is gibberish, so however realistic ChatGPT appears, there are still significant differences between its writing and ours.
Does this matter to them though? Does apple care about having the dominant messaging platform if it's no longer a hook to get people to buy apple devices.
There's unfortunately only so much you can achieve with scalp-based electrodes. The applications everyone dreams about - like fine BCI or controlling robotic arms - are hard to achieve with signals once they've had to pass through the cranium.
It's not as simple as you're suggesting. Take cancer screening for example. Doing more investigations and more procedures for things that weren't going to become problematic puts people at risk for the complications of those procedures.
Screening programmes need to be carefully thought out, not only from a cost-benefit, but from an actual risks vs benefits perspective.
I think that is being unfair. It's the sad reality that for many neurological conditions we don't have good treatments or cures. However, things like levodopa are godsends for many with Parkinsons, for example.