- Elon Musk’s medical device company is under probe for alleged animal welfare violations.
- The animal experiment is being rushed, leading to careless errors while testing, Neuralink employees told the media.
- According to Elon Musk, the real-world application of the brain chip could restore sight and motor function in people with paralysis.
Elon Musk’s medical device company Neuralink Inc. is under federal investigation for violating the Animal Welfare Act. According to a Reuters report citing people familiar with the investigation and company operations, the probe began in recent months by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Inspector General, as requested by the federal prosecutor.
According to the report, in an interview conducted with more than twenty current and former employees in the health tech firm, they have raised claims of being rushed by the company CEO, leading to unnecessary death and inflicting suffering on test animals.
The report also noted that, since 2018, roughly 1,500 animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs, mice, rats, and monkeys, have been killed following Neuralink experiments. The employees have said that some failed tests have had to be repeated, increasing the number of animals being tested and killed.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed a complaint with the USDA against Neuralink and the University of California, Davis, where the experiments were conducted, alleging that monkeys used for the investigation were caged alone, had steel posts screwed to their skulls, suffered facial trauma, seizures following brain implants, and recurring infections at implant sites.
However, Neuralink denied the allegations, stating they were committed to animal welfare. The company noted that all new medical devices must be tested on animals before being carried out on any human trial. Tested animals are sometimes euthanized after the experiment’s completion so that a post-mortem can be conducted to establish the efficacy of the test. The use of animals in experiments is regulated in the U.S. under the Animal Welfare Act.
Musk’s plans on implantable human brain chips in the next six months
Musk’s lack of patience with the health tech firm has grown as Neuralink, which was founded in 2016 together with a group of scientists and engineers, has missed deadlines on many occasions to acquire regulatory approval to start clinical trials in humans, according to the report.
As various companies experiment on animals before humans to bring new products to the market, Neuralink employees have opened up and said that the company had made several careless errors, including using incorrect surgical glue or wrong-size brain chips, which made the scientists kill those animals and start the tests over again.
Last week, Musk, at Neuralink’s event “show and tell,” announced his plan saying the company is developing implants that can go into the spinal cord and restore vision among people who have lost their sight or restore movement in someone who has paralysis. Musk showed a video of a monkey “telepathically typing” on a screen in front of it during the event.
Apart from Neuralink, its rival company Synchron, which was launched in 2016, is developing a different implant with less ambitious aims for medical advances and has received FDA approval to start human trials in 2021. The company’s device has enabled paralyzed people to text and type by thinking alone.
Nonetheless, Musk has said Neuralink plans to begin human trials of its implantable human brain chip within the next six months. The company has sought approval from the Food and Drug Administration to begin the experiment.
