Neuralink: Elon Musk’s brain implant firm refutes animal abuse claims

Neuralink, Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s agency investigating brain-machine interface implants, has issued a press release responding to claims of cruelty in assessments. 

Neuralink said in a blog post that it’s “dedicated to working with animals in essentially the most humane and moral means potential.” It additionally supplied a timeline of its animal testing actions since 2017, protecting a 2.5-year partnership with the College of California, Davis, and from 2020, when the corporate opened its personal in-house vivarium.

Neuralink is responding to allegations by the Physicians Committee for Accountable Drugs (PCRM), which filed a complaint last week with the US Division of Agriculture for alleged violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act. PCRM claims Neuralink and its lab companion, UC Davis, had carried out lethal and merciless mind experiments on 23 monkeys.

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The non-profit Physicians Committee is towards using animals in medical analysis. In accordance with PCRM, Neuralink paid UC Davis $1.4 million to run the experiments with the monkeys.

In December, Musk, who fashioned Neuralink in 2016, mentioned he hoped Neuralink might start testing the brain-computer interface on people in 2022, having initially hoped to start human testing in 2020. Final 12 months, Neuralink confirmed off a monkey known as Pager at its personal vivarium with a Neuralink implant utilizing a joystick to play a sport of Pong.

Enterprise Insider quoted Musk in December saying: “Neuralink’s working effectively in monkeys, and we’re doing simply a number of testing and simply confirming that it is very secure and dependable, and the Neuralink machine will be eliminated safely.”   

The criticism facilities on the care supplied to check monkeys throughout and after implant and elimination procedures at UC Davis.

PCRM alleges that Neuralink and UC Davis employees failed to supply monkeys with enough veterinary care, used an unapproved substance known as BioGlue that killed monkeys within the experiments, and euthanized a number of monkeys.

Particulars of the monkeys’ situations have been revealed in paperwork launched by the college after PCRM filed a public data lawsuit in 2021.

Neuralink says that through the 2.5 years at UC Davis, its assessments have been solely carried out on cadavers or “terminal procedures”, which concerned the “humane euthanasia of an anesthetized animal on the completion of the surgical procedure.”

“The preliminary work from these procedures allowed us to develop our novel surgical and robotic procedures, establishing safer protocols for subsequent survival surgical procedures,” the corporate says.

Throughout survival research, Neuralink says two animals have been euthanized at deliberate dates and 6 animals have been euthanized on the medical recommendation of UC Davis veterinary employees.

“These causes included one surgical complication involving using the FDA-approved product (BioGlue), one machine failure, and 4 suspected device-associated infections, a danger inherent with any percutaneous medical machine. In response we developed new surgical protocols and a completely implanted machine design for future surgical procedures,” Neuralink says. 

Neuralink notes that it engaged native USDA inspectors to make sure that its personal vivarium met and exceeded necessities of the Animal Welfare Act. 

PCRM’s second public data lawsuit requests that the college launch movies and pictures of the monkeys.

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