TITLE: Neuralink Human Trials Set to Proceed, Despite Ethics Concerns
EXCERPT: According to Neuralink, it secured an investigational device exemption from the FDA in May and is ready to test both its interface and the robot it will use to implant the device on humans. “If you have quadriplegia and are interested in exploring new ways of controlling your computer, you may qualify,” a brochure detailing the trial says.
The brochure includes a picture of the R1 Robot that does the surgery. “During the study, the R1 Robot will be used to surgically place the N1 Implant in a region of the brain that controls movement intention,” it says. “Participants will be asked to use the N1 Implant and N1 User App to control a computer and provide feedback about the system.”
According to the brochure, the study will take place over the course of six years. The initial period involves nine at home visits spaced out over 18 months. The pitch is that an app will translate the user’s thoughts into actions on a computer. “Once surgically placed, the N1 Implant is cosmetically invisible,” the brochure says. “It records and transmits brain activity with the goal of enabling you to control a computer. The N1 Implant records neural activity through 1024 electrodes distributed across 64 threads, each thinner than a human hair.”
Before these human trials, Nueralink conducted tests on monkeys. In 2021, the company shared a video of one of the monkeys allegedly controlling the video game pong with its mind. Even if Musk’s company truly succeeded, it may have come at a terrible cost. Reports from the trial have been grim, and U.S. federal investigators launched an investigation into animal cruelty in 2022. It’s still ongoing.
The animal rights group, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, claimed that only seven of the 23 monkeys used in the early Neuralink experiment survived. According to Musk, those monkeys were already close to death. “No monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant,” he said on Twitter on September 10. “First our early implants, to minimize risk to healthy monkeys, we chose terminal moneys (close to death already).”
TITLE: The Gruesome Story of How Neuralink’s Monkeys Actually Died
EXCERPT: For example, in an experimental surgery that took place in December 2019, performed to determine the “survivability” of an implant, an internal part of the device “broke off” while being implanted. Overnight, researchers observed the monkey, identified only as “Animal 20” by UC Davis, scratching at the surgical site, which emitted a bloody discharge, and yanking on a connector that eventually dislodged part of the device. A surgery to repair the issue was carried out the following day, yet fungal and bacterial infections took root. Vet records note that neither infection was likely to be cleared, in part because the implant was covering the infected area. The monkey was euthanized on January 6, 2020.
Additional veterinary reports show the condition of a female monkey called “Animal 15” during the months leading up to her death in March 2019. Days after her implant surgery, she began to press her head against the floor for no apparent reason; a symptom of pain or infection, the records say. Staff observed that though she was uncomfortable, picking and pulling at her implant until it bled, she would often lie at the foot of her cage and spend time holding hands with her roommate.
Animal 15 began to lose coordination, and staff observed that she would shake uncontrollably when she saw lab workers. Her condition deteriorated for months until the staff finally euthanized her. A necropsy report indicates that she had bleeding in her brain and that the Neuralink implants left parts of her cerebral cortex “focally tattered.”
Yet another monkey, Animal 22, was euthanized in March 2020 after his cranial implant became loose. A necropsy report revealed that two of the screws securing the implant to the skull loosened to the extent that they “could easily be lifted out.” The necropsy for Animal 22 clearly states that “the failure of this implant can be considered purely mechanical and not exacerbated by infection.” If true, this would appear to directly contradict Musk’s statement that no monkeys died as a result of Neuralink’s chips.
Shown a copy of Musk’s remarks on X about Neuralink’s animal subjects being “close to death already,” a former Neuralink employee alleges to WIRED that the claim is “ridiculous,” if not a “straight fabrication.” “We had these monkeys for a year or so before any surgery was performed,” they say. The ex-employee, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, says that up to a year’s worth of behavioral training was necessary for the program, a time frame that would exempt subjects already close to death.
A doctoral candidate currently conducting research at the CNPRC, granted anonymity due to a fear of professional retaliation, likewise questions Musk’s claim regarding the baseline health of Neutralink’s monkeys. “These are pretty young monkeys,” they tell WIRED. “It’s hard to imagine these monkeys, who were not adults, were terminal for some reason.”
“We have no comment to make regarding Elon Musk’s statements,” Andy Fell, a spokesperson for the Davis campus, tells WIRED.
TITLE: Peter Singer: Are experiments on animals ethically justifiable?
EXCERPT: Researchers in Canada tested substances on laboratory mice housed in two different set ups. One group of mice were kept in the standard way, in small containers the size of a shoebox, with a grid on top and bright lights, which he describes as “quite stressful conditions for mice”.
Meanwhile another group of mice were housed in quarters more suitable to their nature, with places they could hide, and tunnels to run through.
Singer says, the researchers found when they tested substances on two groups, they got quite different reactions depending on the conditions the mice were kept in.
This raises questions about the veracity of experimental results involving animals like mice, already stressed by the laboratory environment and practices.
Do mice and rats deserve greater ethical consideration in science?
“The basic question is, are these animals who can suffer?,” Singer replies.
He says there’s no doubt that mice and rats – which represent the majority of laboratory animals used in science and research – can suffer. They’re mammals, vertebrates, with the same basic nervous system and brains like humans, albeit significantly smaller.
“In some respects, because they don’t understand this situation, things may be more terrifying to them than they would be to us,” he says.
“I certainly think that they count.”