Elon Musk’s Messy Brain Chip Experiments Kill Animals
Since 2018, Elon Musk's medical-device company Neuralink has killed about 1,500 animals – monkeys, pigs, and sheep – in its attempt to develop a brain-computer interface. Now the US Department of Agriculture is investigating the company for possible animal-welfare violations.
Neuralink Corp says its brain-chip implant will help paralyzed people walk and treat other neurological disorders. According to a Reuters investigation, the USDA probe was opened in recent months at the request of a federal prosecutor, as the feds determine if Neuralink has violated the Animal Welfare Act, which governs how animals are treated in research labs.
The investigation comes with growing employee dissent about Neuralink’s animal-testing practices, as some workers say CEO Musk’s insistence on speeding up development has resulted in botched experiments. When tests fail they have to be repeated, and then more animals end up dead. “In general, we are simply not moving fast enough,” Musk told his employees earlier this year. “It is driving me nuts!”
Musk has told employees to imagine they had a bomb strapped to their heads in an effort to get them to move faster, according to Reuters. The CEO also told employees he would trigger a “market failure” at Neuralink if they didn’t work faster, a comment perceived as a threat to shut down the company.
But haste makes waste. In 2021, the harried researchers placed the wrong-sized device in the heads of 25 out of 60 pigs. They had to redo the experiment with 36 sheep and, in the end, all the animals were killed. In another case they accidentally implanted Neuralink’s device on the wrong vertebra of pigs during surgeries, an error employees say could have been avoided, basically by taking their time.
Coincidentally (?), a few days before Reuters exposed the probe Musk said he expected there would be human trials for the brain-chip implant within six months. “I could have a Neuralink device implanted right now, and you wouldn’t even know,” Musk said at a company event. “Maybe one of these demos, in fact, one of these demos I will.”
Better him than the monkeys.
Photo credit: Getty Images
