Animal testing: Neuralink reportedly under federal investigation

US Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture (USDA) inspec­tors are report­ed­ly inves­ti­gat­ing Neu­ralink for pos­si­ble ani­mal wel­fare vio­la­tions in research trials.

Reuters reports that inter­nal doc­u­ments show that employ­ees feared the com­pa­ny was rush­ing ani­mal test­ing and inflict­ing unnec­es­sary suf­fer­ing and death.

The com­pa­ny has culled 1,500 ani­mals, includ­ing more than 280 sheep, pigs and mon­keys, since 2018, accord­ing to news outlets.

The com­pa­ny has also passed the US Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture facil­i­ty inspection.

But for­mer and cur­rent employ­ees told Reuters that Neu­ralink founder Elon Musk was in a rush to devel­op it, and that the tests were flawed, result­ing in an unnec­es­sar­i­ly high mor­tal­i­ty rate.

Since the com­pa­ny was found­ed in 2016, Musk is said to have been try­ing to move faster, telling employ­ees to “imag­ine hav­ing a bomb tied to their head.”

In addi­tion, he is said to have told staff that “if there is no progress, it will induce mar­ket fail­ure,” and some employ­ees inter­pret­ed this as a warn­ing that “the com­pa­ny will be destroyed.”

Ear­li­er this year, Musk also emailed staff an arti­cle about a Swiss researcher who cre­at­ed implants that would allow para­plegics to walk again, accord­ing to Reuters. “In gen­er­al, we are not mov­ing fast enough. It’s dri­ving us crazy,” he wrote in anoth­er email.

Accord­ing to Reuters, a review of the com­pa­ny’s exper­i­men­tal mate­ri­als found ques­tion­able results due to human error in four exper­i­ments involv­ing 86 pigs and two monkeys.

Neu­ralink had to repeat the exper­i­ment, result­ing in even more deaths. One employ­ee’s out­raged mes­sage said that an unpre­pared and over­worked employ­ee made a mis­take in rush­ing to oper­ate on an animal.

Sev­er­al exam­ples found in doc­u­ments by Reuters detail how Neu­ralink staff mis­tak­en­ly implant­ed the com­pa­ny’s brain-machine inter­face device into the ver­te­brae of two dif­fer­ent pigs.

It is This could eas­i­ly have been avoid­ed by count­ing the ani­mal’s ver­te­brae, forc­ing the team to end the suf­fer­ing by killing the pig.

Ear­li­er this year, the ani­mal rights group Physi­cians for Respon­si­ble Med­i­cine accused the com­pa­ny of fail­ing to oper­ate on mon­keys. Neu­ralink, in col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Davis, has con­firmed that it killed six mon­keys due to a lab problem.

But they defend­ed their research and said they had­n’t vio­lat­ed any laws.

Recent­ly, Neu­ralink held an event to announce that it will begin human tri­als with­in the next six months.

In the show, founder Elon Musk respond­ed to the physi­cists’ com­mit­tee’s accu­sa­tions, say­ing, “We do as much bench test­ing as we can before we even think about putting a device on an animal.

“We are very cau­tious and always want the implant to be con­fir­ma­to­ry rather than explorato­ry, whether it’s sheep, pigs or monkeys.”

How­ev­er, accord­ing to Reuters, it found numer­ous ref­er­ences to “explorato­ry surgery” in Neu­ralink records.

And in Octo­ber, Neu­ralink ani­mal care pro­gram direc­tor Autumn Sor­rells report­ed­ly dropped “explorato­ry” from the study title and told employ­ees not to use the word in the future.