1 of 1 Elon Musk, owner of Neuralink Photo: Picture Alliance/Getty Images Elon Musk, owner of Neuralink Photo: Picture Alliance/Getty Images
Neuralink, one of Elon Musk’s several companies, promises to commercialize brain chips that can reverse currently incurable diseases such as paralysis and blindness. As the company prepares to conduct its first tests on humans, records from an earlier phase of preparations on monkeys, which in many cases died during the procedures, are being withheld from the public, according to a recent report. via the Wired portal.
In a case pending in American courts, the US Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is trying to get the University of CaliforniaDavis, which worked with Neuralink to test the monkeys with the chip in their brains, to take photos and existing videos of them tests carried out. The university, which is partially funded by public funds and therefore subject to local transparency laws, denies the disclosure or is even required to do so.
Wired points out that the university published hundreds of pages of emails, contract documents, memos and other veterinary documents detailing work done for Neuralink between 2018 and 2020, sparking concern among American members of Congress. “But hundreds of files remain classified including photos of the neurological damage caused by Neuralink’s work with the monkeys,” the outlet says.
Tests resulting in death and “poor practices”
The experiments involved drilling a hole the size of a small coin into the monkeys’ skulls, placing electrodes in their brains and screwing titanium plates into their skulls. It is known that in some cases the experiment went wrong and caused great suffering to the animals, even leading to the animals’ deaths.
The Wired report cites the case of a 7yearold monkey whose brain was mutilated by Neuralink experiments. Dizziness and vomiting occurred constantly until the limbs began to atrophy and the animal could no longer stand. After the animal was euthanized, the autopsy found that “a toxic adhesive had leaked internally around the Neuralink implant screwed into its skull,” and the increasing pressure inside its skull deformed and ruptured its brain.
That incident, which occurred in 2018, was a violation of U.S. Animal Welfare Act, the report said. However, there were no legal consequences for Musk’s company or the University of California, based on U.S. Department of Agriculture rules against treating animals as guinea pigs in “educational moments.”
Wired also interviewed people involved in the testing on condition of anonymity. According to these sources, monkeys were trained months and even years before the operation, but survival prospects were poor for some, due in part to “poor planning and procedures.” “We had no surgical technicians. At that point we didn’t even have a veterinary pathologist on the team,” says a former Neuralink researcher about the vehicle.
Although publicly funded and therefore subject to California’s open records law, UC Davis has been fighting the release of the photos for more than a year. Their disclosure, he says, “would not serve the public interest.” Neuralink, whose partnership with the school ended three years ago, was allowed to store and retain its own footage. However, internal emails analyzed by Wired show that Elon Musk’s company had tight control over what UC Davis was allowed to reveal about the experiments.
In October 2022, the U.S. Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine sued UC Davis seeking access to records related to Neuralink’s work. The organization wants to promote alternatives to animal testing, but faces resistance from its colleagues, such as the American Medical Association, which supports the use of animals in biomedical research.
Positions of those involved
Neuralink does not comment on the case. UC Davis spokesman Andy Fell claims the university complied with California public records law and provided the “vast majority of records requested by the medical board.” “Some requested items were not provided because they are legally exempt from disclosure for various reasons outlined in the documentation,” he explains.
UC Davis states that test images should be kept secret and should only be used to “inform future research and clinical practice” or to “refine surgical techniques.”
The medical committee suing the university argued in California state court that the public has a right to know about any suffering resulting from taxpayerfunded animal testing. “The release of the images is particularly important because Neuralink is actively misleading the public and downplaying the horrific nature of the experiments,” Corey Page, an attorney representing the medical committee in the lawsuit, told Wired
The case is still pending in California court.