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Authors
Dhruv Mehrotra and Dell Cameron, Amanda Hoover, Tristan Kennedy, Medea Giordano, Simon Hill, Will Knight, Gideon Lichfield, Gregory Barber, Ben Ash Blum, Steven Levy
Key takeaways: An IRB at UC Davis would have approved this. They clearly didn't do their due diligence, and allowed unethical animal experiments that an IRB is supposed to prevent. They will have...
Key takeaways:
experiments were aided by the staff of the California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC), a federally funded bioresearch facility at UC Davis
An IRB at UC Davis would have approved this. They clearly didn't do their due diligence, and allowed unethical animal experiments that an IRB is supposed to prevent.
This May, the FDA gave the company approval for human trials.
They will have blood on their hands. At no point has any company associated with this madman shown caution or care for safety in far less risky products, nor has Neuralink had a clean track record. It is unconscionable for the FDA to allow human trials on unproven devices that have had grotesque failures leading to mortality in other primates.
I absolutely believe in the long term future of prostheses that can connect to existing nerves or bridge damaged ones, but such research needs to be done incrementally and with utmost caution. And we're nowhere near the time where brain implantation is a remotely acceptable risk.
This is the same sort of disgusting, cavalier disregard for public safety seen with foisting a beta of driverless vehicles on an unconsenting public. But with the potential for more disturbing results. I speculate that Musk's human victims won't just see the infections, "brain tearing" and paralysis seen in the macaques, but some disturbing psychological effects. And I hope Musk and his enablers are held accountable.
Ethics are a very thin line separating legitimate medicine and scientific research from the likes of Mengele and the Tuskegee experiments. We can not, under any circumstances, allow anyone to push against that barrier.
My question is how the fuck did they get any approval despite seeing two different probes on how they treated the primates. Another question where the hell is the research board for this...
My question is how the fuck did they get any approval despite seeing two different probes on how they treated the primates. Another question where the hell is the research board for this experiment, because something is suppose to over see something like this. Especially with the CNPRC, which is not a private research in, but a federally funded one.
We can not, under any circumstances, allow anyone to push against that barrier.
I agree with you that ethics is a barrier that should not be challenged, otherwise we will get more Little Alberts or more Stanford Prison Experiments. But in regards to Elon and ethics, he has none to speak of, as these past few years as shown us. He might believes that ethics is just something that gets in the way of his version of progress or what he wants.
I had the opposite reaction, the fact that they’re running to the SEC is of all places probably means this unethical behavior is standard. The argument is framed as “this will be bad for humans”,...
An IRB at UC Davis would have approved this. They clearly didn't do their due diligence, and allowed unethical animal experiments that an IRB is supposed to prevent.
I had the opposite reaction, the fact that they’re running to the SEC is of all places probably means this unethical behavior is standard. The argument is framed as “this will be bad for humans”, not “this process mistreated animals”.
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 Neuralink’s 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 conducted instead 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, which 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.
I almost never say this, as I generally don't like to invoke this kind of energy without very good reason, but - I feel sick after reading this. These poor poor animals. I hope they rest easy. :(
I almost never say this, as I generally don't like to invoke this kind of energy without very good reason, but - I feel sick after reading this. These poor poor animals.
I'm currently reading the book Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist by Frans de Waal. The author makes a sharp distinction between monkeys which are more distantly related to us...
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.
I'm currently reading the book Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist by Frans de Waal. The author makes a sharp distinction between monkeys which are more distantly related to us and apes which are more closely related to us, but it is clear from this book and other sources I have read that primates are all our relatives. These are intelligent, empathic beings who suffer when harmed. 😢
(as an aside, the book was also interesting in that he claimed to have observed behavior among apes that resembles transgender in humans)
They use the word euthanize a lot in that article, and I don't think they know what it means. One does not "euthanize" one's victims. From wikipedia: The word "euthanasia" was first used in a...
They use the word euthanize a lot in that article, and I don't think they know what it means. One does not "euthanize" one's victims.
From wikipedia: The word "euthanasia" was first used in a medical context by Francis Bacon in the 17th century to refer to an easy, painless, happy death, during which it was a "physician's responsibility to alleviate the 'physical sufferings' of the body."
Now if those ending the lives of the monkeys were saviours who rescued them from their grim fates and then put them out of their misery that would fit. But I think if you inflict the condition in the first place you're a butcher not a samaritan.
At a stretch you might use the tongue-in-cheek term "involuntary euthanasia", but it seems to me a more accurate two-verb description than "operated on and then euthanized" would be "tortured and then executed".
Key takeaways:
An IRB at UC Davis would have approved this. They clearly didn't do their due diligence, and allowed unethical animal experiments that an IRB is supposed to prevent.
They will have blood on their hands. At no point has any company associated with this madman shown caution or care for safety in far less risky products, nor has Neuralink had a clean track record. It is unconscionable for the FDA to allow human trials on unproven devices that have had grotesque failures leading to mortality in other primates.
I absolutely believe in the long term future of prostheses that can connect to existing nerves or bridge damaged ones, but such research needs to be done incrementally and with utmost caution. And we're nowhere near the time where brain implantation is a remotely acceptable risk.
This is the same sort of disgusting, cavalier disregard for public safety seen with foisting a beta of driverless vehicles on an unconsenting public. But with the potential for more disturbing results. I speculate that Musk's human victims won't just see the infections, "brain tearing" and paralysis seen in the macaques, but some disturbing psychological effects. And I hope Musk and his enablers are held accountable.
Ethics are a very thin line separating legitimate medicine and scientific research from the likes of Mengele and the Tuskegee experiments. We can not, under any circumstances, allow anyone to push against that barrier.
My question is how the fuck did they get any approval despite seeing two different probes on how they treated the primates. Another question where the hell is the research board for this experiment, because something is suppose to over see something like this. Especially with the CNPRC, which is not a private research in, but a federally funded one.
I agree with you that ethics is a barrier that should not be challenged, otherwise we will get more Little Alberts or more Stanford Prison Experiments. But in regards to Elon and ethics, he has none to speak of, as these past few years as shown us. He might believes that ethics is just something that gets in the way of his version of progress or what he wants.
I had the opposite reaction, the fact that they’re running to the SEC is of all places probably means this unethical behavior is standard. The argument is framed as “this will be bad for humans”, not “this process mistreated animals”.
I almost never say this, as I generally don't like to invoke this kind of energy without very good reason, but - I feel sick after reading this. These poor poor animals.
I hope they rest easy. :(
I'm currently reading the book Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist by Frans de Waal. The author makes a sharp distinction between monkeys which are more distantly related to us and apes which are more closely related to us, but it is clear from this book and other sources I have read that primates are all our relatives. These are intelligent, empathic beings who suffer when harmed. 😢
(as an aside, the book was also interesting in that he claimed to have observed behavior among apes that resembles transgender in humans)
Archive link (and pay/login wall bypass): https://archive.ph/Pps4x
They use the word euthanize a lot in that article, and I don't think they know what it means. One does not "euthanize" one's victims.
From wikipedia:
The word "euthanasia" was first used in a medical context by Francis Bacon in the 17th century to refer to an easy, painless, happy death, during which it was a "physician's responsibility to alleviate the 'physical sufferings' of the body."Now if those ending the lives of the monkeys were saviours who rescued them from their grim fates and then put them out of their misery that would fit. But I think if you inflict the condition in the first place you're a butcher not a samaritan.
At a stretch you might use the tongue-in-cheek term "involuntary euthanasia", but it seems to me a more accurate two-verb description than "operated on and then euthanized" would be "tortured and then executed".
Euthanized or sacrificed are pretty typical terms used for the controlled killing of lab animals.