Neuralink shows what happens when you bring "move fast and break things" to animal research

[Jilly_in_VA]

Among the many grievances people harbor toward Elon Musk, add one more: alleged animal cruelty.

Neuralink, a startup co-founded by Musk in 2016, aims to develop a brain chip implant that it claims could one day help paralyzed people walk and blind people see. But to do that, the company has first been testing its technology on animals, killing some 1,500 since 2018 — and employee whistleblowers recently told Reuters the experiments are going horribly wrong.

Reuters reported this week that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Inspector General has opened a probe into potential violations of the Animal Welfare Act at Neuralink. It’s a rare corrective for an agency that is generally hands-off when it comes to animal research.

Congressional Democrats are weighing in too. As reported by Reuters, US House Representatives Earl Blumenauer and Adam Schiff wrote in a draft letter to the USDA that they are “very concerned that this may be another example of high-profile cases of animal cruelty involving USDA-inspected facilities.”

Questions around Neuralink’s treatment of animals date back to 2017, when Neuralink conducted experiments on monkeys at the University of California Davis. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a group that campaigns for alternatives to animal testing, obtained public records detailing the experiments. The findings were gruesome: One rhesus macaque monkey’s nausea was “so severe that the animal vomited and had open sores in her esophagus before she was finally killed,” according to Ryan Merkley, PCRM’s director of research advocacy.

Surgeons used an unapproved adhesive to fill open spaces in an animal’s skull, created from implanting the Neuralink device, “which then caused the animal to suffer greatly due to brain hemorrhaging,” Merkley said.

https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2022/12/11/23500157/neuralink-animal-testing-elon-musk-usda-probe

Dr. Oz, Envigo, now Eloon....

[Phoenix61]

1. Narcissists don't let something like another's suffering

get in the way of their success. One of the reasons they do well in industry and the military.

[jimfields33]

2. I wish the implant worked. That would have been incredible for so many.

Hopefully, another company is researching without the disgraceful actions.

[Richard D]

3. Disgusting.

[dchill]

4. What's an entrepreneur to do?

He's not allowed to test it on indigents and homeless people, after all.