Elon Musk says no primates died as a result of Neuralink’s implants. A WIRED investigation now reveals the grisly specifics of their deaths as US authorities have been asked to investigate Musk’s claims.

  • WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    Musk first acknowledged the deaths of the macaques on September 10 in a reply to a user on his social networking app X (formerly Twitter). He denied that any of the deaths were “a result of a Neuralink implant” and said the researchers had taken care to select subjects who were already “close to death.” Relatedly, in a presentation last fall Musk claimed that Neuralink’s animal testing was never “exploratory,” but was instead conducted to confirm fully formed scientific hypotheses. “We are extremely careful,” he said.

    Public records reviewed by WIRED, and interviews conducted with a former Neuralink employee and a current researcher at the University of California, Davis primate center, paint a wholly different picture of Neuralink’s animal research. The documents include veterinary records, first made public last year, that contain gruesome portrayals of suffering reportedly endured by as many as a dozen of Neuralink’s primate subjects, all of whom needed to be euthanized. These records could serve as the basis for any potential SEC probe into Musk’s comments about Neuralink, which has faced multiple federal investigations as the company moves toward its goal of releasing the first commercially available brain-computer interface for humans.

    The letters to the SEC come from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit striving to abolish live animal testing. The group claims that Musk’s comments about the primate deaths were misleading, that he knew them “to be false,” and that investors deserve to hear the truth about the safety, “and thus the marketability,” of Neuralink’s speculative product.

    “They are claiming they are going to put a safe device on the market, and that’s why you should invest,” Ryan Merkley, who leads the Physicians Committee’s research into animal-testing alternatives, tells WIRED. “And we see his lie as a way to whitewash what happened in these exploratory studies.”

    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.

      • phx@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        Let fucking Musk be the next one to be chipped so he can prove how safe and comfortable it is

      • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        The way humans treat animals and the natural world in general — scientific and medical experiments, factory farming, ecological destruction, pollution — it’s all one planetary scale horror story.

    • TurnItOff_OnAgain@lemdro.id
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      9 months ago

      Animal 15 began to lose coordination, and staff observed that she would shake uncontrollably when she saw lab workers

      Jesus fucking christ. That isn’t losing coordination. That is being terrified of these people for what they did to her.

      she would often lie at the foot of her cage and spend time holding hands with her roommate.

      She knew she was fucked and was getting comfort from those closest.

      I’m getting High Evolutionary from Guardians of the Galaxy 2 vibes here. These animals acted like his experiments.

      • XeroxCool@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Or the movie was based on real life. Animals aren’t as dumb as we pretend. Other mammals are just that: mammals. The same as us. Mammals have the same feelings as us, the same emotions, the same fundamental chemical reactions, the same socialization. We just have big brains and written language to amplify basic mammalian traits.

        • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          Yeah I’ll be downvoted to hell for this comment but… no. Not all mammals are like us, they don’t have the same feelings as us, they don’t have the same emotions and definitely not the same fundamental chemical reactions (whatever the hell that is supposed to be anyways).

          Just to be clear: Elon Musk is a sociopathic scammer, he doesn’t give a shit if living beings (or just plainly people) suffer or not and as far as I’m concerned he can go to hell where the devil will shove a pineapple up his ass every day for the shit he’s caused so far.

          However, that doesn’t mean that animals are the same like us. I’m not claiming were better, I’m not claiming they deserve to suffer because they’re different, just trying to say that even chimps are already very different from us, hell, even within humans we have a wide range: look at Elon. I think it’s fair to say that he works quite different from most other humans, quite different from you and I. Monkeys, apes, and especially “mammals” as a group work VERY different from us

          • Omega_Haxors@lemmy.ml
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            9 months ago

            Real “Insects can’t feel pain” energy. Le reddit “I’m going to get downvoted for this” doesn’t make your take any less horrible.

            • SwedishFool@lemmy.world
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              9 months ago

              Bro you’re kidding me right? He’s saying straight out that this is horrible and Elon is a sociopath, he’s not defending this but rather calling it out for being fucking awful. Him saying that our brains and their brains don’t work the exact same isn’t him defending it but rather calling out false information. Different parts have different sizes and limits specific functions that they haven’t evolved to have, just how a few days ago we had a post here about how baboons were flinging around the dead fetus from a stillbirth and they couldn’t go in and take care of it because the risks involved. Their brains just aren’t as developed as ours, but that doesn’t mean this is acceptable behavior. It’s fucking deplorable and needs to be outright forbidden.

              This is shit straight out of a horror film! But don’t use lies to make it seem worse, that just makes you look shallow, that you can’t relate to an animal if it’s wired slightly different than you.

                • SwedishFool@lemmy.world
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                  9 months ago

                  No, absolutely not. You’re as wrong as you could be. He never responded after his first comment, check the authors. You had your argument with an entirely different 3rd person.

            • phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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              9 months ago

              Actually no, you misunderstood what I said.

              Animals can suffer similarly like us, I’m simply saying they are not EXACTLY the same like us like OP was saying. OP claims that all mammals function exactly the same which biologically simply isn’t true. Even within humans we see so much diversity in how brains work, do you really want to say that a rats brain works exactly the same as yours?

              Again, doesn’t mean they can’t or should suffer. Elon is a monster and should be in jail

    • MorgoFett@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Used to work for this asshole. He’s just as much as a hack as Elizabeth Holmes.

        • Heresy_generator@kbin.social
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          9 months ago

          Her personally? Not that we know.

          But did people die because of the massive blood testing fraud that she engaged in where people didn’t get medical care when they should have because they were getting back false negatives and faulty tests were being used to determine things like the proper doses of potentially dangerous medications like Warfarin? Almost certainly.

    • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      You know you’re a great guy doing an ethical thing when lab animals quiver in terror at the sight of you.