Neuralink came under fire last year when the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed a complaint alleging that the company had performed 'invasive and deadly brain experiments' on 23 rhesus macaques monkeys. 15 of them ultimately died as a result of the testing. Neuralink now claims that the research was performed first in animal cadavers and then later in 'terminal procedures' monkeys (i.e., on the verge of death) who were humanely euthanized before ever waking from anesthesia.
MAGGIE HARRISON: Elon Musk, ever the logician and master of spin, is now claiming that contrary to media reporting and a federal investigation, Neuralink’s brain implants didn’t actually kill any monkeys; according to him, the animals were on the edge of death already…
Neuralink first came under fire in February of last year when a medical nonprofit called the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) filed a complaint alleging that the company had performed “invasive and deadly brain experiments” on 23 rhesus macaques monkeys. Fifteen of these monkeys, the nonprofit claimed, ultimately died as a result of the testing. (Later in the year, in September 2022, the PCRM would go public with a new allegation: that UC Davis was in possession of several hundred photos of the purportedly abused Neuralink monkeys, and that these gruesome photos “showed monkeys suffering from chronic infections, seizures, paralysis, and painful side effects following [the] experiments.”) “The documents reveal that monkeys had their brains mutilated in shoddy experiments,” Jeremy Beckham, a research advocacy coordinator with PCRM, said in a statement at the time, “and were left to suffer and die.”
Those are serious accusations, and the backlash was swift enough to prompt a reply from Neuralink, with the company writing on the platform formerly known as Twitter that “animals at Neuralink are respected and honored by our team.” But though the company did dispute the exact number of dead monkeys in a reactionary blog post, it did confirm that eight of its monkeys, or 21 percent of the total testing cohort, had perished during trials. “Two animals,” the blog read, “were euthanized at planned end dates to gather important histological data, and six animals were euthanized at the medical advice of the veterinary staff at UC Davis”…
The blog post also noted that Neuralink’s initial research, which was conducted alongside the University of California, Davis’ California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC), was “performed first in animal cadavers and then later in terminal procedures,” terminal procedures being those in which an animal that was already on the verge of death is humanely euthanized before ever waking from anesthesia.
But, to be clear, Neuralink addressed the eight monkey deaths in question while discussing the company’s subsequent “survival surgeries,” explaining that its cadaver and terminal monkey testing laid the groundwork for greater success in these later surgeries — and did not suggest that the eight controversial deaths took place among terminal primates. SOURCE…
RELATED VIDEOS: