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Neuralink faces federal probe, employee backlash over animal tests

• tareqak 4y ago
  A few quotes from the article: > But current and former Neuralink employees say the number of animal deaths is higher than it needs to be for reasons related to Musk’s demands to speed research. Through company discussions and documents spanning several years, along with employee interviews, Reuters identified four experiments involving 86 pigs and two monkeys that were marred in recent years by human errors. The mistakes weakened the experiments’ research value and required the tests to be repeated, leading to more animals being killed, three of the current and former staffers said. The three people attributed the mistakes to a lack of preparation by a testing staff working in a pressure-cooker environment. > Musk has pushed hard to accelerate Neuralink’s progress, which depends heavily on animal testing, current and former employees said. Earlier this year, the chief executive sent staffers a news article about Swiss researchers who developed an electrical implant that helped a paralyzed man to walk again. “We could enable people to use their hands and walk again in daily life!” he wrote to staff at 6:37 a.m. Pacific Time on Feb. 8. Ten minutes later, he followed up: “In general, we are simply not moving fast enough. It is driving me nuts!” > On several occasions over the years, Musk has told employees to imagine they had a bomb strapped to their heads in an effort to get them to move faster, according to three sources who repeatedly heard the comment. On one occasion a few years ago, Musk told employees he would trigger a “market failure” at Neuralink unless they made more progress, a comment perceived by some employees as a threat to shut down operations, according to a former staffer who heard his comment. > The mistakes leading to unnecessary animal deaths included one instance in 2021, when 25 out of 60 pigs in a study had devices that were the wrong size implanted in their heads, an error that could have been avoided with more preparation, according to a person with knowledge of the situation and company documents and communications reviewed by Reuters. > The mistake raised alarms among Neuralink’s researchers. In May 2021, Viktor Kharazia, a scientist, wrote to colleagues that the mistake could be a “red flag” to FDA reviewers of the study, which the company planned to submit as part of its application to begin human trials. His colleagues agreed, and the experiment was repeated with 36 sheep, according to the person with knowledge of the situation. All the animals, both the pigs and the sheep, were killed after the procedures, the person said. > On another occasion, staff accidentally implanted Neuralink’s device on the wrong vertebra of two different pigs during two separate surgeries, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter and documents reviewed by Reuters. The incident frustrated several employees who said the mistakes – on two separate occasions – could have easily been avoided by carefully counting the vertebrae before inserting the device.
  • hndamien 4y ago
    As somebody who routinely eats pork and lamb, and shares concern for animal welfare, I don't see any evidence that these animals experienced any undue pain and suffering (besides the death) which is routinely accepted by society for animals we eat.
    • tareqak 4y ago
      It's a long article, but here is one section: > The first complaints about the company’s testing involved its initial partnership with University of California, Davis, to conduct the experiments. In February, an animal rights group, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, filed a complaint with the USDA accusing the Neuralink-UC Davis project of botching surgeries that killed monkeys and publicly released its findings. The group alleged that surgeons used the wrong surgical glue twice, which led to two monkeys suffering and ultimately dying, while other monkeys had different complications from the implants.
      • hndamien 4y ago
        An allegation isn't evidence, and animals do die in testing for medical gain. The real question is whther it is undue, avoidable, unethical, causing unnecessary suffering. As somebody that believes that animals are quite concious and we don't particularly have the right to "use" their lives for our medical gain, this is far from the common societal consensus. I also hypocritically eat these animals which I justify as just nature - so its hard to draw a distinct line that my belly has more justifaction to their life than much more valuable scientific progress.
        • encryptluks2 4y ago
          Is there any proof that Neurallink's medical gain is worth it? As far as I know, he has been pushing it as a mind hacking device
          • dmix 4y ago
• smrtinsert 4y ago
  This guy bans people from posting pics of him on Twitter. I will never ever consider giving him access to my mind.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • amusedcyclist 4y ago
    He's such a horrible guy. Really weird to see people so desperate to defend him
    • yrgulation 4y ago
      Herd mentality. Some people need a shepherd.
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
  • 93po 4y ago
    Source for him banning people for that?
    • _mitterpach 4y ago
      I believe the OP of the comment above is talking about the fact that before his twitter ban, the last picture posted by Kanye depicted Musk in an unflattering pose. The statement by OP is mostly incorrect, Kanye did post the picture, however that was apparently after a private conversation with Elon regarding an earlier post of Kanye depicting a swastika, where Elon said to either delete the photo or be banned. Kanye doubled down, attacked Elon personally and got banned. Note: I do not really care about either Elon or Kanye, both seem to suck, just supplying the context for the comment.
• slimebot80 4y ago
  We need to push hard for Musk to be the first person to stick his BlueTooth chip onto his brain. That would be a poetic test of his sincerity. In any case, I think we all know he shoots his mouth off (/ to the moon) to suck up money for his various ponzis.
  • jackmott 4y ago
    plenty of accurate ways to critique elon, no need to make yourself look foolish by suggesting tesla and spacex and other ventures are just ponzi schemes.
    • DennisAleynikov 4y ago
      Yeah, as if musk isn't going to put his "BlueTooth chip" in his own brain. What is this critique its just low quality anti-musk sentiment
      • TigeriusKirk 4y ago
        It won't be Musk, but I would not be at all shocked if one of the people there gets an implant with no official or public record of it very early on in this process.
        • kjksf 4y ago
          What kind of public record do you expect for a private medical procedure?
    • slimebot80 4y ago
      Confidence tricks, then. The scheme collapses if people above you on the pyramid stop believing. Tax funded, also.
      • kjksf 4y ago
        Do you mean that Model 3 and Model Y will disappear when people stop believing they are real?
• madrox 4y ago
  The older I get, the harder it gets to stomach animal testing or even animal consumption. I don't mean that this is overly cruel to animals, because nature itself is cruel. However, I could not be someone who did this work because I cannot knowingly cause suffering, and I'm wary of anyone who can.
  • russdill 4y ago
    After learning about milk production, I'm leaning on being more ok with meat production then dairy. I still consume both though and I'm holding out hope that artificial production of dairy proteins will some day destroy factory style dairy
    • AlexErrant 4y ago
      Perfect Day can synthesize whey protein. They can't complete with animal dairy on pricing though... yet. https://perfectday.com/animal-free-milk-protein/ https://perfectday.com/animal-free-milk-protein/
      • 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y ago
        > Our animal-free milk from flora is the first of its kind, using whey protein made by microflora, not cows, to make dairy that’s identical to traditional milk. Yes, we said identical. > Lactose-free They don't know what identical means.
        • AlexErrant 4y ago
          Lactose-free dairy milk exists - though I agree with you that "identical" here is marketing nonsense.
    • barbariangrunge 4y ago
      What is wrong with milk production? I’m not informed on this. Is it some kind of factory farm horror?
• doublerabbit 4y ago
  This report too. [1] > The company’s statement does not change the fact that monkeys used by Neuralink at UC Davis had portions of their skulls removed and devices screwed to their heads, nor that Neuralink used a substance called “BioGlue,” which was not approved for use in these experiments and has been widely known to be toxic to nerve tissue since at least 2001. BioGlue came into contact with the surface of at least two monkeys' brains, causing damage and hemorrhaging; one monkey suffered for days after this damage. Monkey Holding Device [2] [1] https://www.pcrm.org/ethical-science/animals-in-medical-research/pcrm-response-neuralink-claims https://www.pcrm.org/ethical-science/animals-in-medical-rese... [2] https://www.pcrm.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/public/2022-02/nonhuman-primate-restraint-chair-neck-plate.jpg?itok=5svBxapn https://www.pcrm.org/sites/default/files/styles/medium/publi...
• gamblor956 4y ago
  The huge red flag isn't the internal backlash to the animal testing. The red flag is the capricious and utter disregard for any sort of experimental, procedural, or safety policies in carrying out this research. Putting in several dozen of the wrong size of implants? Using toxic substances? Failure to record surgical details and experimental results? This company, and its current crop of employees have absolutely no business being anywhere near the inside of someone's head.
  • 93po 4y ago
    > disregard for any sort of experimental, procedural, or safety policies This is true if you ignore the comprehensive information Neuralink provides on these very topics: https://neuralink.com/blog/animal-welfare/ https://neuralink.com/blog/animal-welfare/
    • gamblor956 4y ago
      RTFA. They ignored their own policies.
      • 93po 4y ago
        They've been accused of borderline doing so in a small selection of incidents.
• nomilk 4y ago
  I hope Neuralink makes reasonable efforts to minimise the impact of testing on animals. But state hindrance of Neuralink's research could delay or stop blind people from gaining sight and quadriplegics from walking and gaining independence. These are themselves forms of harm whose negative effects could outweigh the impacts of testing imperfections by orders of magnitude.
  • Gigachad 4y ago
  • cactusplant7374 4y ago
    A sentiment not shared by at least one expert in the field: https://twitter.com/miguelnicolelis/status/1598364258512904198 https://twitter.com/miguelnicolelis/status/15983642585129041... https://twitter.com/miguelnicolelis/status/1388948526416207872 https://twitter.com/miguelnicolelis/status/13889485264162078... https://twitter.com/miguelnicolelis/status/1380983162881331201 https://twitter.com/miguelnicolelis/status/13809831628813312...
    • deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    • lm28469 4y ago
      Wait are you saying Musk isn't a genius but more of a master marketer !?! When people will wake up it's going to be brutal. In 50 years we'll still talk about mars colonies and autonomous vehicles being "just around the corner"
      • starik36 4y ago
        The current version of Tesla autonomous vehicles is actually pretty darn good. I would consider it good enough for my uses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaWjndujjzc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oaWjndujjzc
        • 4y ago
• reset2023 4y ago
  Feels like life in this world for the past couple of years it's been been just about 3 powerful ignorants causing anything but havoc.
• TapWaterBandit 4y ago
  This reeks of hypocrisy. The state actively subsidises factory farming which is at least 100 times more morally messed up than this but this could be shut down? When one of the key uses cases will be to help the infirm and disabled? The number of animals being discussed here is less than 200 all up. Mostly pigs. Do you know how many pigs are grown for slaughter each year in the USA? 130 MILLION! 90000 are killed every day! I'm a meat eater but even for me those numbers make me feel slightly ill.
  • lathiat 4y ago
    The number of chickens will blow your mind. There was a world clock I saw once counting like population and a bunch of random statistics including chickens in approximated real time.
    • wyre 4y ago
      That’s https://animalclock.org/ https://animalclock.org/
    • nostromo 4y ago
      Wait until you see the number of fish: https://considerveganism.com/counter/ https://considerveganism.com/counter/
      • ricardobeat 4y ago
        Those numbers for fish cannot be right. Thats basically 1 whole fish per day for each of 8 billion people on the planet.
        • akiselev 4y ago
          Smaller fishes reproduce faster and in greater numbers so most of deaths are probably fish like anchovies and minnows that go mostly to a variety of processed fish products and cat food
        • chroma 4y ago
• trident5000 4y ago
  Not to sound harsh but I want advancement to cure horrible diseases and disabilities, not government red tape halting us from moving forward because some monkeys woke up with a headache.
  • lefrenchy 4y ago
    Okay, let’s strap you into a chair and drill into your head against your will and then subject you to hours of tests only to realize it’s the wrong implant so we just have to kill you. Sound good?
    • trident5000 4y ago
      Bud, these animals go to war with each other and tear each others faces off and get eaten alive by predators every day. This is hardly the worst thing to happen and its the only way to make progress in this area. They're also not trying to be cruel, its not some torture chamber.
      • lefrenchy 4y ago
        It’s not? They’re recklessly messing up implants, forcing them to be killed. There’s no benefit to that, only needless suffering and death. Humans go to war with each other and use nuclear weapons, does that mean murder, torture or human testing (in the form of implants against your will) are okay? You argument falls entirely apart on that one simple premise.
    • ad404b8a372f2b9 4y ago
      Human life is worth more than monkey life. It's not pleasant to say but it's the way our society works.
      • sasattack 4y ago
        yes the human ubermench must rule over the savages as is his right as the greatest wielder of violence. Not familiar to ideology that we experience to bunch of in the 30s and 40s at all....
• solarkraft 4y ago
  That makes the "look, the monkey likes doing this" a bit funnier than it already was. It was clear that it was a (pathetic) response to the cruelty allegations. That said humans are cruel to animals at a scale far, far, far larger than this.
  • newZWhoDis 4y ago
    What else are they supposed to do? If they ignored the allegations I’m guessing you’d criticize that too?
    • solarkraft 4y ago
      Ignoring it is typically the wisest response if you can't effectively explain yourself. If you can, responding can work, but it's going to add to the fire. They did neither here: Mentioning the controversy, but not saying anything redeeming, more like demonstrating that they don't take them seriously.
• forrestthewoods 4y ago
  I have a family member trying to produce some novel materials. To prove it is safe for human skin contact he is required by federal regulations to perform testing on beagles. Something on the order of 60,000 beagles are bred per year for animal testing. Most of the testing isn’t actually helpful or valuable. But it’s the only way to get through the regulatory approvals. It’s all super gross.
  • ars 4y ago
    I avoid products that advertise that they did not test on animals, because I don't have any way of knowing if they are actually safe.
• whiddershins 4y ago
  I think it’s good to be vigilant about unnecessary animal testing, but they seem to be doing this ethically, and the purpose is truly noble.
• mmh0000 4y ago
  "Sciences cannot more forward without heaps [of dead monkeys]!" [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xo8oj2BHhU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Xo8oj2BHhU
• irae 4y ago
  As times passes I am less supportive of how companies use ideology to weaponize regulations in order to slow down competition. How fast the COVID vaccine was created is a bit of uncovering how fast it could go when people are willing to compromise for the greater good (also talent and hard work). It feels like the machine was created to slow down progress and now it cannot be stopped. As other comments said already, factory farming is worst than what Neurallink is doing, and vegan activists are trying to save animals for ages. On the other hand, Musk is also known for pushing hard employees, and animals is just the extension of pushing hard for breakthrough. If not done in the US, maybe it will go elsewhere, and to what purpose? This feels to me like a very worthy cause. A huge number of other animals are used for other types of health research. I guess just because people dislike rodents they give it a pass. But what Neurallink is doing is in far fewer number than rat use for drugs, etc, and far less than animal farming. It is just the engine of regulation, competition, lobbying and patents working as it is supposed to.
  • russdill 4y ago
    The COVID vaccine is perhaps a poor example as mRNA vaccines have been something in development for quite some time before COVID. It was a technology there at precisely the right time
• aga98mtl 4y ago
  Millions of cows, sheep, chicken died today to feed humanity.
  • someNameIG 4y ago
    We shouldn't be doing that either
  • iancmceachern 4y ago
    But not in unnecessarily cruel ways, and not unnecessarily, they are used properly. Some of these animals were not.
    • 93po 4y ago
      Literally millions of animals die every day as a byproduct of animal processing industries. As in, death in a way that doesn't result in any sort of useful consumption.
      • iancmceachern 4y ago
        True, but it's a cost of doing the business. In general, if there was a way where we could do that processing with less animal suffering we would. In Neuralinks case they could have done their business with less animal suffering, and chose not to.
        • 93po 4y ago
          > they could have done their business with less animal suffering, and chose not to This is true of literally any animal impacting business and Neuralink is by far the least worst offender if these allegations even wind up being true.
          • iancmceachern 4y ago
            They are not by far the least worst offender. Medtronic, J&J, all the big med tech and pharma companies do this work day in out, for decades, and none of them do it this way. Neuralink is by the far the worst, and that is why there are articles and former employees saying so.
• joko42 4y ago
  “The death of one pig is a tragedy. The death of a million is a statistic.” - Some pig in Animal Farm
• hammock 4y ago
  Over a hundred comments and I haven't seen one suggestion yet that this is retaliation for what Elon is doing with Twitter right now. Wouldn't you think that's a distinct possibility?
  • beeboop 4y ago
    I doubt it's Twitter specific - it's just people who don't like Elon or aim to profit off making him fail.
    • cactusplant7374 4y ago
      This argument doesn’t appeal to me. Musk is a guy that pushes the limits. Someone like that will attract the ire of the regulators. * FSD is being tested on public roads instead of a closed course. * His “funding secured” tweet
  • kapildev 4y ago
    When internal employees complain, the regulators are compelled to investigate regardless of whether the person in charge has a beef politically with the executive body. Otherwise, it would be an incentive to revile the government if you know you are not in compliance with any regulating body.
    • hammock 4y ago
      Not suggesting that the allegations are untrue, just that the timing is politically expedient. Neuralink has been in the news before about animal treatment (Feb '22).. and it was not as big a deal in the media then. For the issue to resurface now is...interesting
      • ndkap 4y ago
        I would argue that this might also have been due to Neuralink recently announcing their updates where a monkey was shown to be operating a Neuralink device. Remember, Elon Musk has been politically controversial wayy before he got hold of Twitter. Since 2020 when he flouted Covid policy, he has been controversial politically. So since that time, there is a possibility that any regulatory action against him would have been considered politically expedient. Hence, one can argue instead that it is politically expedient to claim any action against him to be policially motivated.
• andy-x 4y ago
  Pavlov's dog would approve.
• pvaldes 4y ago
  Killing animals is normal in testing, and even required by law.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• IshKebab 4y ago
  For sheep and pigs surely you can just run a farm and do experiments on them just before they're due to be slaughtered. Then only vegetarians can complain! Shame about the monkeys though.
  • chunkyslink 4y ago
    The quality of comments on this site has gone down recently. Prime example.
    • IshKebab 4y ago
      That's not very nice. Your comment isn't exactly filled with original insight either is it?
  • kayodelycaon 4y ago
    Actually, you can’t do this. Negligence is one thing. Deliberately torturing animals, even if they are used for food, is illegal. Scientific animal research has guidelines to minimize suffering as much as possible. The government treats this as a necessary evil. If you’re attempting to do this in good faith, it’s only morally wrong. Many companies make illegal activity a corporate policy, but that doesn’t make them immune from prosecution if someone decides they have stepped too far over the line.
    • sixQuarks 4y ago
      Where in the article did it say NeuroLink was deliberately torturing the animals? In fact, the article said that the animals are killed after research in order to do post mortem examinations. This is standard across many animal testing labs.
      • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
        They don't seem to be DELIBERATELY torturing them, but there seems to be a lot of easily predictable negligence going on.
• hef19898 4y ago
  If people tell, and show, you who and what they are, believe them. Nothing wrong with animal testing in and of itself, as long as it follows established rules and regulations.
  • iancmceachern 4y ago
    The thing with Neuralink is they have clearly not followed established rules and regulations, not even close, they're way off the rails.
    • hef19898 4y ago
      Exactly, snd it seems a lot of Musks endevours play it fast and loose with regulation. Well, even when it comes to morales, which are an important part of animal testing. Not that I am surprised the least bit.
    • NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
      Which ones have they not followed?
      • iancmceachern 4y ago
        "Principle of reducing the number of animals used in research, refining scientific procedures to minimize pain, and replacing animal experiments with in vitro models when possible." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK24650/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK24650/
• thefounder 4y ago
  • pupperino 4y ago
    Did you actually read the article? This sounds like a blanket statement to rationalize your affection for the company.
  • phoe-krk 4y ago
    Sucks if you end up destroying a whole truckload of eggs and the omelette is nowhere near though.
    • thefounder 4y ago
      I better waste a truckload of eggs and make that omelette in my lifetime. I think we had enough "potential treatments" for humans that take 50 years to pass(if ever) the "potential" stage. We eat enough steaks anyway so using 0.00000001% for research doesn't sound that bad to me.
      • AlexandrB 4y ago
        I don't think wasting the eggs is making the omelette any nearer. Sloppy science makes replication difficult.
  • SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
    Sure, but you don't need to abuse the chickens while you do it.
  • bongoman37 4y ago
• rob74 4y ago
  When "move fast and break things" turns into "move fast and kill things", maybe you should consider moving less fast?
  • LatteLazy 4y ago
    Of course, moving less fast to get a cure to a deadly disease also kills things (well people) because of the delay introduced...
    • Loughla 4y ago
      I don't understand how that's relevant to the neuralink story. Yes there are people who will benefit from being able to communicate via brain activity instead of their meat. But I'm not sure how that's curing a deadly disease?
      • pvaldes 4y ago
        Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, for example
    • Veserv 4y ago
      Of course moving recklessly fast in a way to produces inferior results also kills things (animals directly and people indirectly) because of the delay introduced.
• SketchySeaBeast 4y ago
  The most chilling statement out of the article to me is "Musk’s impatience with Neuralink has grown as the company, which launched in 2016, has missed his deadlines on several occasions to win regulatory approval to start clinical trials in humans, according to company documents and interviews with eight current and former employees." To think a company that is apparently being forced to cut corners and move faster, resorting to "hack jobs" on animals in order to show progress, wants to test on people turns my stomach. How do you effectively shift from that negligent approach to the careful diligence demanded when testing with people? What happens when the human trials take too long to show progress?
  • warinukraine 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • bheadmaster 4y ago
      > everything we know about Elon Musk Care to share with "us" what is it that "we" know about Elon Musk?
      • camillomiller 4y ago
        [flagged]
        • christophilus 4y ago
          [flagged]
          • iancmceachern 4y ago
            There are plenty of regular good people who are CEOs, you just never hear about them in the news.
            • ilyt 4y ago
• radu_floricica 4y ago
  I... don't really see a problem with this, at least from the article. The actual complaint as far as I can tell is related to the fact that they moved fast enough to make mistakes, specifically because they want to get to useful treatments faster. If we lived in a vegetarian world I might object to it, but in this world there's an actual price for a sheep's life.
  • capableweb 4y ago
    > Five people who have worked on Neuralink’s animal experiments told Reuters they had raised concerns internally. They said they had advocated for a more traditional testing approach, in which researchers would test one element at a time in an animal study and draw relevant conclusions before moving on to more animal tests. Instead, these people said, Neuralink launches tests in quick succession before fixing issues in earlier tests or drawing complete conclusions. The result: more animals overall are tested and killed, in part because the approach leads to repeated tests. > On several occasions over the years, Musk has told employees to imagine they had a bomb strapped to their heads in an effort to get them to move faster, according to three sources who repeatedly heard the comment > filed a complaint with the USDA accusing the Neuralink-UC Davis project of botching surgeries that killed monkeys, and publicly released its findings. The group alleged that surgeons used the wrong surgical glue twice, which led to two monkeys suffering and dying > included one instance in 2021 when 25 out of 60 pigs in a study had devices that were the wrong size implanted in their heads, an error that could have been avoided with more preparation > staff accidentally implanted Neuralink’s device on the wrong vertebra of two different pigs during two separate surgeries Surely they could have a more scientific approach that would avoid having to kill so many animals and also make progress faster because the environment would be more stable. If it's borderline illegal to accidentally kill animals or making them suffer when it could prevented, I'm not sure. As it seems right now, they have something of a cowboy approach to science which will lead to unnecessary pain and death of animals, and walking in circles in their progress as they don't seem to know what they are doing.
    • thefounder 4y ago
      I have a better idea: instead to run tests concurrently(kinda what Musk is doing) let's run them sequentially so that less animals are used(even if it takes way more time). We can use the saved animals for some tasty burgers. Nevermind that some people need treatments now. We can give them the saved burgers.
• benrr 4y ago
  This is appalling if true. People will try and justify the pain and suffering of these animals and the employees by the potential benefits of these devices, but none of this is acceptable. Who’d even want a device like this put inside their brain by a company responsible for botched surgeries and unnecessarily killing living sentient beings. The idea that this is a result of this new wave of toxic productivity mantra is also terrifying.
  • thefounder 4y ago
    >> Who’d even want a device like this put inside their brain by a company responsible for botched surgeries and unnecessarily killing living sentient beings. I guess at least anyone who slaughters animals for sport or simply for their taste. I know few people near that burger-shop.
    • krageon 4y ago
      Torture is not the same as murder and by implying that they are you make it harder for people to advocate for less torture. Nobody wins in that case, not even you.
      • pessimizer 4y ago
        Experiment isn't the same as torture, either. They're not being accused of devising optimal ways to make animals suffer. If you're referring to inadvertent or incidental torture; alone in a feedlot pen too small to turn around your entire life, standing in your own shit, stuffed with grain, then unnecessarily killed (no one needs to eat meat.)
    • thelock85 4y ago
      I grew up in Texas smoking briskets and practicing at targets in family cookouts. Now I’m plant-based living in California and my three guns are collecting dust in my mom’s closet. To each their own, but I don’t see how culturally or logically either lifestyle would lead me to put a chip in my brain… though I’m sure a lot of people will when/if neuralink is viable, desirable and affordable, regardless of their habits and beliefs.
• onetokeoverthe 4y ago
• prvc 4y ago
  The same government that tortured and killed thousands of beagle puppies for no scientific purpose (in order to pad a budget) now coincidentally cares about animal welfare, just shortly after it had been badly embarrassed by the company's CEO. How strange.
  • myvoiceismypass 4y ago
    You think this is related to Elon’s hunter biden “drop”? How strange.
  • cocacola1 4y ago
    > just shortly after it had been badly embarrassed by the company's CEO. What happened?
• neilv 4y ago
  > The sources characterized that figure as a rough estimate because the company does not keep precise records on the number of animals tested and killed. How are they doing this science without keeping records of such important information about scientific experiments and the subjects? Or are they lying, or intentionally finding a way to do the experiments and manage subjects without keeping these records? (I could believe either. I've heard some surprising things from people involved in research on animals, including of primate facilities they know of being hidden/disguised/unmarked, where I'd never guessed. I assume the "delicate PR" of animal research is well-known by people who work in that space, and might be incentive to suppress PR-damaging records.)
  • iancmceachern 4y ago
    Totally. For obvious animal welfare reasons it is standard practice in the industry to keep careful plans for these tests. You must prove that you absolutely need an animal model for the test, you must have a clear cut, documented procedure and design of experiments, etc. Every other company that does this kind of work does this.
    • bpodgursky 4y ago
      There's no legal requirement here, it's just standard IRB stuff. If you run a slaughterhouse, nobody is making you count the chickens you kill.
      • iancmceachern 4y ago
        But IRB is required by law. The accounts of what Neuralink did would never pass a legit IRB panel.
        • telotortium 4y ago
          Source? Most universities have an IRB for non-human test subjects, and the federal funding requirements may require an IRB, but I can't find any federal requirements for an IRB on non-human subjects if you're not taking federal funding, even for FDA approval.
• zomg 4y ago
  i work in the medical device industry and am very familiar with preclinical (animal) research. my problem with this article is the inference that the animals COULD have survived if the studies were not rushed. the reality is that these animals are specifically bred for research and are always euthanized at the conclusion of the study.
  • fabian2k 4y ago
    I understood that the time pressure lead to mistakes that made some experiments useless. So they had to be repeated, which means more animals in total died than if the experiments had been done correctly the first time. Of course the specific animals would have been used for other experiments, but it would have affected the total number of animals bred and killed.
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • iancmceachern 4y ago
    Me too (work in the space). My issue is the quantity of animals they thought they needed, I've never seen more than a dozen or two needed for an entire medical device program, drugs may need more, but for devices this is a staggeringly high number.
    • ckemere 4y ago
      The Neuralink system is nothing like testing the biocompatibility of a simple artificial knee. (Though I'll note that insufficient animal testing led to huge issues in this space.)
      • iancmceachern 4y ago
        I've never worked on artificial knees. My frame of reference is artificial hearts and surgical robotics, those are on the same order of complexity as Neuralink, so my experience is pertinent IMO.
• olliecornelia 4y ago
  As with any post pertaining to Musk the meat riding is crazy.
• vt85 4y ago
  [dead]
• mensetmanusman 4y ago
  For context about 100,000,000 animals are killed annually for scientific research.
  • capableweb 4y ago
    How is that providing context? Add how many companies experiment on pigs and how many pigs they go through each year, compare that to Neuralink and you have something you could call context. As it stands, that number doesn't really provide any context at all. Even maybe misleading as you're talking about any type of animal, I'm assuming? While Neuralink seems to focus on pigs as they are commonly used for device testing.
    • mensetmanusman 4y ago
      It’s context for people like myself who aren’t sure of the modern state of animal research.
  • philjohn 4y ago
    I'm willing to bet the vast majority of those are of far more benefit to humanity than an implant that lets you use a device hands free.
    • mensetmanusman 4y ago
      Paralyzed people might disagree.
      • philjohn 4y ago
        It would probably behoove them to look into the other players in the area then.
    • pessimizer 4y ago
      I'm guessing they aren't.
• AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  In retrospect it’s sort of insane that this sounds like a ton when that many dead animals pass through my local grocery store in… a week? Looking up the stats Costco sells 150k rotisserie chickens a day.
  • quonn 4y ago
    There's obviously a difference, since animals can be slaughtered instantly and have not expectation of what will happen to them and no memory after. [0] On the other hand, experiments where they eventually die are likely to cause immense stress and pain. [0] Now there can be a very complex discussion about this. I'm not saying slaughtering is unproblematic. I'm not saying you couldn't try to make a similar point for humans to which I would also have replies why that's a different matter. I'm just making the point for this specific purpose of comparing here.
    • bpodgursky 4y ago
      OK but that is not actually how US factory farming operates. They are almost universally factories of extraordinary animal suffering, where broken or sick animals are discarded like trash (smashed, shot, thrown in a dumpster to die, etc). I think it's likely that even the most terribly mistreated lab animal has a better quality of life and death than the average US foodstock chicken.
      • noptd 4y ago
        >almost universally factories of extraordinary animal suffering I'd love to see some sources that support such a strong claim. Otherwise, it just comes off as bait for argument.
        • pessimizer 4y ago
          They're not exactly hard to find, or secret. They are, however, subjective; you may think it's funny to throw male chicks alive into a meatgrinder, or to cull a entire facility's worth of unsalable pigs by turning up the heat.
• notlukesky 4y ago
  The same government targets animal rights activists as terrorists. I suppose that make sense from the same government that drones babies and women and talks about human rights. https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/ecoterrorism-fbi-animal-rights/ https://theintercept.com/2019/03/23/ecoterrorism-fbi-animal-... https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/animal-people-documentary-shac-protest-terrorism/ https://theintercept.com/2019/12/12/animal-people-documentar... https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/testimony/animal-rights-extremism-and-ecoterrorism https://archives.fbi.gov/archives/news/testimony/animal-righ... - For context Peta claims that 110 million animals are killed annually in the US for research purposes: https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animals-used-experimentation-factsheets/animal-experiments-overview/ https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation...
  • MrRiddle 4y ago
• mordymoop 4y ago
  This is one of those instances where it would have been useful to: - somehow not see that headline number of 1,500 first - come up with a guess (or look up) how many animals are typically killed in medical testing procedures for drugs, surgeries, etc. - guess how many animal deaths would be expected for a company doing what Neuralink is trying to do - only then check the true number after having this estimate in mind Since we see the 1,500 first we have some kind of immediate emotional reaction to it that is not calibrated to anything. It’s a textbook form of scope insensitivity. Would you have reacted any stronger if the number had been 150,000? Would you have reacted more mildly if the number was 150? When a headline provides a number and then the article provides no real context for what one might reasonably have expected that number to be, it’s a sign that you are being preyed upon.
  • iancmceachern 4y ago
    It's normally a dozen or two animals per product. It's usually 2-4 years to develop a device and get it cleared, an animal or two a month. Not anywhere close to 1500, this is criminal.
    • ckemere 4y ago
      I'm not sure what tech space your experience comes from, but this is ridiculous. Thes numbers are true to demonstrate*biocompatibility* but are 4 or 5 orders of magnitude smaller than what is required to show *functionality*, let alone to develop a new technology.
      • iancmceachern 4y ago
        I'm in devices. In pharma you need way more. In devices we do a lot of In vitro work, cadaver work, etc. so animals is just the final stage of that. For drugs you need for more admittedly, but it's usually rabbits and mice you need in high quantities, not monkeys. Usually you do a bunch or rabbits, and then just one or two monkeys to verify. I've never heard of anything close to 1500 monkeys for a product that isn't even on the market.
• iancmceachern 4y ago
  It appears that they have killed 1500 animals so far, that is a staggering number. For context most of the projects I've worked on use a total of a dozen or so animals over the course of the entire program, and those devices are on the market.
  • ckemere 4y ago
    It sounds like you probably worked on passive devices like joint implants or evolutionary things like a slightly modified version of a previous valve or pacemaker. The type of system Neuralink is building - a surgical robot that implants thousands of individual active electrodes into the brain - has no comparable in med tech development history. But compare to original DBS, pacemaker, artificial heart - 100s to 1000s of animals for development. (To be clear - you took something to market, and this same complexity gives me doubts about whether Neuralink will be able to!)
    • bamboozled 4y ago
      So the complexity of the product should mean it's development causes more animal suffering ?
      • iancmceachern 4y ago
        The comment above is wrong, you are right. I've worked on similarly complex stuff (active implantable devices like artificial hearts, lvads, and surgical robotics, etc.). We don't cause our animals to suffer like this, we don't need 1500 to do our work.
        • ckemere 4y ago
          I don't understand this comment. Does an artificial heart need an onboard GPU to do the required real time signal processing? Does a arthroscopic robot localize the head of the device with < 10 um accuracy? I realize I'm coming off as a Neuralink fanboy, but I think it's ridiculous to compare next generation brain interface technology to the existing Medtronic/St Jude/Stryker space. The complexity is the reason why none of those companies would touch this with a 10 foot pole. Medtronic paid $200M to acquire a company that made a 32-channel DBS electrode and then killed the product because it was too hard to manufacture. Neuralink is trying to build a 10,000 channel device.
• post_break 4y ago
  Am I the only one who thinks 1500 seems low for what they are doing? And all animals used in clinical tests like these are destroyed after, so it's not like they are going out of their way to slaughter animals. Could they use less animals by doing things differently? I'm not an expert on any of this but I'm sure they could, but how does this compare to any other experimental brain or spine stimulation testing?
  • fabian2k 4y ago
    These are not mice, and there are much, much higher standards for animal experiments on e.g. primates. The expense and amount of effort per animal is also very different for monkeys compared to mice.
    • post_break 4y ago
      "including more than 280 sheep, pigs and monkeys" Well most of them were rats or mice based on this article. It doesn't say 1,500 monkeys were killed.
      • rand0mx1 4y ago
        https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/17/business/elon-musk-neuralink-animal-cruelty-intl-scli/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/02/17/business/elon-musk-neural...
• ericd 4y ago
  The article seems to say that only 280 of those were larger animals “pigs, sheep, and monkeys”. For a little perspective, Americans ate 21 million chickens yesterday, roughly 7-8 billion per year. I’ve probably personally eaten a substantial percentage of their sheep and pig death count, and there’s not much ground breaking research coming from that, besides an exploration of all the things made better by bacon. Maybe the animals getting eaten have a more pleasant exit, but I wouldn’t be confident in that.
• ckemere 4y ago
  I have friends who have worked and currently work at Neuralink, and I agree with much of the sentiment I see in the comments about Musk. I also am confused about the long term viability of the company. BUT, I hate to see this sort of animal rights hack-job amplified on HN. You can recognize it as such by the radical animal rights orgs quoted and the minimal contextualization or detailing. It seems like the main criticisms are (1) in 2 procedures out of 1500 , there were surgical targeting errors, and (2) many procedures are done in parallel rather than sequentially. With regard to (1), if that were really the case, 0.1% errors would be much better than human surgeons. I'm sure that the mistake rate is higher, but that still doesn't mean anyone is behaving unethically? With regard to (2), there's a huge problem in medtech around small sample sizes. It's always easy when you have N=4 to say "Oh, we should have understood this at N=1." But the reality is that a host of N=1 conclusions have been subsequently debunked. If the team wants to replicate failures to understand them, that should be applauded. There's also some discussion of wound glue - translating, it sounds like some sutures opened up, which caused an infection, and they found a vet who was happy to blame the brand of vetbond they used. There are many things wrong with Neuralink, but personally, one might that the major tragedy here is that I'm sure that the pigs that ended up with the wrong spinal implants didn't subsequently get turned into pork chops and bacon. And the reason for that life-wastage is the frustrating ability of animal rights groups to get their message amplified.
  • fabian2k 4y ago
    The two experiments mentioned involved 61 animals, so it's not 2 out of 1500 but at least 61 out of 1500. And I think it would not be unreasonable to assume that there are more cases than the ones explicitly documented in the article, given the immense time pressue Musk seems to be creating here.
    • ckemere 4y ago
      The quote I see says, "staff accidentally implanted Neuralink’s device on the wrong vertebra of two different pigs during two separate surgeries". The other issue mentioned in the Reuters article apparently has to do with testing different sizes/generations of their devices. Whether it's appropriate to sacrifice more animals to make sure the FDA is not confused by a submission is arguably not an ethical issue you can blame Neuralink for.
• sweetheart 4y ago
  • Archipelagia 4y ago
    As a vegetarian, I would much rather have someone who eats meat and also has a preference for reduced animal suffering, rather than having that person abandon it due to someone's demands for consistency. Gatekeeping caring about animal welfare leads to more animal suffering, not less.
    • sweetheart 4y ago
      Who is gatekeeping? I'm merely pointing out the hypocrisy. And if you're definition of gatekeeping includes merely pointing at that contributing to the subjugation of animals in our food system is in fact unnecessary suffering, then I think 1.) your definition of gatekeeping is useless, and 2.) we should be doing more of that "gatekeeping". Also, have you considered being vegan rather than vegetarian? After all, the dairy industry is the meat industry, so what effect does being a vegetarian actually have for the victims?
  • noptd 4y ago
    Maybe you are being down voted because condescending remarks like this do more to turn people away from the cause?
  • lotharbot 4y ago
    You said in a recent comment: > Your style of debate is _not_ working, my guy. Your comment history in other threads seems to paint a picture of you not really arguing in good faith. Downvotes are a signal that others have that perception of you.
    • sweetheart 4y ago
      That's generally true, but I don't think it is in this case, as when I argue about this I argue in good faith. When people downvote someone for saying that one cannot claim to care about animal welfare while paying for their exploitation, I can be generally certain that the reason for the downvotes is because they don't like having cognitive dissonance pointed out. Do you have specific suggestions for what would be a more reasonable way to point out such dissonance?
• pfdietz 4y ago
  I seriously doubt this will ever advance to human trials. It's going to be another Musk fiasco.
  • unixhero 4y ago
    ... Another? Like Starlink, Tesla and SpaceX? Geez I don't know what people are on about sometimes.
    • eli 4y ago
      Twitter is unequivocally a fiasco. You disagree?
      • leesec 4y ago
        yes lol. not at all a failure
      • baryphonic 4y ago
        How is Twitter a fiasco? The platform has more engagement than anyone has seen in years, and there is finally transparency around the moderation decisions. Twitter is also finally taking child exploitation seriously. The only negative was the haphazard release of Twitter Blue "verification," which felt chaotic and was turned off as a result pending relaunch, but was hardly a fiasco.
        • ZoomerCretin 4y ago
          > How is Twitter a fiasco? How about the Nazis and far-right accounts he's given blanket pardon to, and who are now inciting violence against the LGBT community?
          • baryphonic 4y ago
            I haven't seen this. Can you point to specific examples of prominent accounts inciting violence?
• macinjosh 4y ago
  Unless you are a vegan, I really don't get the outrage over a company killing 1,500 animals, most of which are rodents, pigs, and sheep. How many animals did Chipotle have killed yesterday to serve their customers? They serve cow, chicken, pigs. I bet they kill pests in their kitchens too! Horrific!! Edit: And to think all those animals used for food, why is it so bad to use animals for research that could heal the paralyzed or give sight to the blind? That is far more noble cause than just being food.
  • iancmceachern 4y ago
    The issue is that these animals were tortured, and they used way way more animals than is usually needed. One monkey was caused to vomit so violently from the surgury that it had open sores in its throat. The issue is that animal wasn't immediately euthanized, it was kept alive and its final weeks were spent in agonizing pain, it was tortured. We don't generally think it's OK to torture the animals in our food supply. That's the difference, the torture.
• ckemere 4y ago
  Important context - announcements of USDA investigations are public records. PETA et al monitor the website and create press releases which, e.g., Reuters can pick up. *Outcomes* of investigations are often covered much less.
• LatteLazy 4y ago
  More generally than this one case or Neuralink or Musk... We have made basically zero progress treating any mental health or neurological condition in the last 40 years. And those diseases (from depression to Alzheimer's) are the number one blights on human health. Suicide is the leading cause of death for some demographics in the west. Based on that, I think there is a good argument to do more animal testing, to move faster and (sorry animals) to make more mistakes.
  • theGnuMe 4y ago
    I disagree, we've made a lot progress treating mental health issues.
  • iancmceachern 4y ago
    I completely disagree, we've made more progress in the last 40 years than in all of human history. We can sequence an individual humans genome, that's just one example. This is true for nearly all of Medicine. Your way off here.
    • LatteLazy 4y ago
      I was specifically pointing to mental health (where we still don't have a well defined list of diseases) and neurology (where we have made no actual progress on any of the major diseases). You're right for medicine and human biology more widely
      • iancmceachern 4y ago
        But just our understanding of mental health as it relates to genetics. We now have genetic markers for all sorts of mental health disorders. That alone has changed the landscape significantly. In neurological stuff just look at the neurostim world, big stuff there, acknowledged that it's not strictly mental health but you mentioned neurological stuff. There has been a lot more than "no progress"
        • LatteLazy 4y ago
• anotheryou 4y ago
  I don't like it, but does it matter at all compared to the meat industry? Just by the scale of things I think I'm not doing whataboutism here if I say that :)
  • iancmceachern 4y ago
    The issue isn't that they did the animal experiments, as you point out we do it every day. The analogy wouldn't be to the meat industry generally. The analogy would be to a rancher that intentionally did something to one of their animals that caused that animal to vomit so violently that it had open sores in its throat, choose to keep it alive and not euthanize, such that the animals final weeks were spent on complete agony, it's torture. So, do we torture the animals in our food supply?
  • havelhovel 4y ago
    Since you're asking if scale should influence our attitude, consider the following sentence: "I could have called an ambulance for my severely injured neighbor, but I gave up when I checked the numbers and saw that 70 million people would die this year regardless." I'm not saying these scenarios are equivalent, but I do think there are scenarios where considering absolute numbers is irrelevant or absurd. Going for the low hanging fruit can be better than doing nothing.
• ausbah 4y ago
  for everyone in this thread who thinks "animal deaths are ok if it means a cure comes faster", the article makes it seem like "moving faster" in this space just results in botched experiments & needlessly dead animals since Musk never can manage a deadline vs hype
• swellguy 4y ago
• rajeshp1986 4y ago
  May be they should also investigate how many animals are killed by McDonalds and KFC?
  • iancmceachern 4y ago
    Again, it's not that the animals died. In your analogy it's as if McDonalds mishandled many of the animals in its supply chain, caused them to vomit so continuously that they had open sores in their throat , kept them alive anyway, and then slaughtered them. People aren't upset that neuralink did animal studies, everyone does those, it's a cost of our modern medical magic. People are upset because they tortured those animals, and way way more of them than is typically needed.
• theonemind 4y ago
  Lot of "people eat meat, so why should we care?" in the comments. I disagree with this line of reasoning. It'd be pretty much impossible to make progress in anything with that sort of attitude, allowing backsliding in one place because you don't have another in order. It argues, in my opinion, for better oversight of the poor animal welfare in the food chain.
  • raducu 4y ago
    Isn't it hypocritical to dismiss that argument, though? Arguably if you cared about animal wellbeing you'd start with the farming industry. I'm not saying shutdown animal-cruelty cops because the farming industry is far worse than individuals abusing animals, but those 1500 animals killed were killed in the name of science.
    • striking 4y ago
      No, they were killed in the name of Elon Musk. Not for science, but for "speed".
    • havelhovel 4y ago
      They aren't dismissing the argument. They're saying pretty plainly that both things can be bad, and therefore both can be addressed simultaneously. Taking the stance that animal welfare activists can't care about anything else until the insanely divisive issue of factory farming is solved, on the other hand, is being dismissive of the issue at hand. It's whataboutism. Moreover, someone might take issue with animals being sacrificed for Neuralink while being okay with animals suffering for human consumption. Such a take would be nuanced, not hypocritical.
  • phiresky 4y ago
    Arguing against whataboutism makes sense, but considering over 50 billion animals are killed every year for food it seems a bit weird to consider 1500 animals being killed for some purpose news (0.000003% of that total).
    • 4y ago
• pelasaco 4y ago
  Hopefully is Lex Fridman thinking twice before joining it..
  • Pr0ject217 4y ago
    Why? Wouldn't it be a good thing if intelligent, level-headed, and moral people join the team and improve it?
• sys32768 4y ago
  Musk IRS audit in 3...2...
• paxys 4y ago
  There are going to be enough people out there very eager to sign whatever waiver you put in front of them and implant Musk's chip in their brain. Why not use them instead?
• halfjoking 4y ago
  FDA has as much credibility as the SEC. SEC prosecuted LBRY token, while letting FTX steal people's money to fund fraudulent covid studies for the establishment. [1] Those studies encouraged vaccination, which allowed the covid vaccines to kill millions of people from blood clots, cardiac problems and cancer. [2] They only tested the boosters on 8 mice [3], so I guess they really do are about animal welfare. FDA could kill millions of humans and get away with it, but if you support free speech and injure more than 10 mice you have to be investigated. Is that the takeaway from this story? [1] https://twitter.com/BretWeinstein/status/1592993969402941441 https://twitter.com/BretWeinstein/status/1592993969402941441 [2] https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/1593840089544679425 https://twitter.com/EthicalSkeptic/status/159384008954467942... [3] https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/ba5-boosters-8-mice-trial-actually?r=z8f0i&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email https://igorchudov.substack.com/p/ba5-boosters-8-mice-trial-...
• verdenti 4y ago
• thinking4real 4y ago
  Just looked it up and over 23 million animals are killed every single day just in the US. This is just for land animals. Including seaside brings it somewhere around 150 million a day. To think that now all of a sudden 1,500 animals over months or years matters is laughable. Anyone criticizing musk needs to either stop and reflect on how their society is causing all this animal murder, or at the very least realize how irrational they look getting worked up over this.
  • NaturalPhallacy 4y ago
    Not only that, but this story is about 1,220 mice and a statistically insignificant number of pigs, sheep, and monkeys (the article doesn't even say how many of which). We breed mice exclusively to feed to our pet reptiles as a society. This is just another Musk hate story cause he took one of their toys away.
• paxys 4y ago
  Everything I see online about Neuralink reminds me so much of Theranos. - Megalomaniac founder who only cares about their grand end goal, not the realities of the science needed to get there. - Flashy demos and overhyped press coverage, no real world results. - "Move fast and break things" operating mantra, regardless of consequences. - No public research, published papers, peer reviews. - Adversarial relationship with FDA and other regulators. - Legion of fans defending their every move, right up to the bitter end.
  • darknavi 4y ago
    With that in mind then it is critical to carefully watch any "product" when it starts getting into the hands (heads) of people. Theranos was bad but it got even worse when they were defrauding customers by giving them garbage results.
  • FL33TW00D 4y ago
    This would be true if Musk didn't have a track record of delivering ambitious projects (albeit late). Elizabeth Holmes had exactly 0 track record of delivering anything.
• imwillofficial 4y ago
  I know the whole “to make an omelette you have to break some eggs…” But jesus
• Nifty3929 4y ago
  Let's say there's a 1% chance that Neuralink is able to improve the quality of life for paralyzed people by 100% (double) within 20 years, at the cost of 10,000 high-order animals (sheep, pigs, monkeys, etc). Is that worth it? If they could do it with only 1000 animals instead, but this delayed availability by 10 years, would that be better? These are the types of questions we need to think about in order to have a productive conversation. Black-and-white positions with binary and objective moral superiority are not possible. We must weigh costs and benefits, and acknowledge that we might end up in different places based on having different, but reasonable and good-faith priorities.
  • danShumway 4y ago
    1. It doesn't sound like the extra animal suffering is actually helping their odds, it sounds like if anything it's going to reduce customer trust in Musk's ability to implant electronics in their brain without killing them. 2. It's possible to do this research without this extreme level of reckless testing on live animals. 3. It's not clear that Neuralink's approach will actually be better for society in the long-term. Musk's policies towards consumer freedom and privacy in every single one of his businesses he's been a part of from Paypal to Tesla has been atrocious; I would prefer another company that's not owned by Musk build neural implants because I don't trust Musk not to screw the people who are getting the implants. The correct questions here are: - Will sacrificing 1,500 animals actually increase Neuralink's odds of doubling the quality of life for paralyzed people in 20 years by 1%? I don't think it will. - Will other companies be able to produce the same results in 20 years without that suffering? Probably, yes. Nueralink is not the only company researching this. - Do we want Neuralink to "win" the market of neural implants in the first place? I would argue that we probably don't, the best-case scenario for neural implants would be if they came out of an Open ecosystem in cooperation with more traditional companies who have less of a startup/move-fast-and-break-things vibe. - Is the sacrifice that Neuralink wants to make generalizable as a moral principle? No, we know what it looks like when animal testing is deregulated, and it looks awful, and Musk shouldn't be given a special pass on those rules. The problem with doing quick math on whether suffering is "worth it" is that it can be used to shut conversations about how to get the same outcomes with less suffering. It's an argument that's been in play basically ever since activism around animal testing began, and repeatedly, the people who argue "it's worth it to save everyone" have been proven wrong -- both because it's been repeatedly proven that we can do the same testing without Musk's extreme level of disregard for animal life, and because the outcomes very often turn out to be over-exaggerated or gloss over serious caveats. People are very bad at estimating the odds of success of a venture, and very bad at estimating what the potential benefits or downsides of an outcome will be, and so animal testing without moral boundaries tends to lead towards people killing a bunch of animals for no good reason. In practice, saying "anything goes as long as the research is important enough" hasn't really born out well morally, so it's good for us to have standards that apply to everyone, regardless of what they are working on or how important they think the project is.
• aYsY4dDQ2NrcNzA 4y ago
  Sort of a general overview of problems at Neuralink: https://youtu.be/yddbGcKYtn4 https://youtu.be/yddbGcKYtn4
• anarticle 4y ago
  Interesting article, I have always wondered about the oversight of animal experimentation at private companies. In my old industry rumors, there is some oversight, but because it's private it's not regulated like university research (my xp). Before animal fans get too upset, know that IACUC exists in the uni sphere which is the vanguard against bad research: https://www.aalas.org/iacuc https://www.aalas.org/iacuc. In short, you have to prove to your local committee why your experiments need animals rather than cell models, in what capacity, and what your standard of care is. It is NOT a rubber stamp org, and they will reject you for any diligence you have missed. IACUC was created the year the Penn monkey helmet experiments were brought to light by PETA, which were abusive. I don't like PETA as an org, but they did good work there. In the private world, maybe such a thing doesn't exist, or its less prevalent. For sure, even in my time (2000s?) there were rumors of labs contracting research out to other places to escape IACUC oversight. There are strict regs on what you can do to animals, especially primates in the USA. In my experience, I've seen dogs, macaques, micropigs, xenopus, fruit flies, zebrafish, rats, mice, and even chinchillas in the lab. I've worked with probably half of that list. (USA) They're all extremely valuable models for driving human outcome research. There are tons of examples of fantastic technology derived from animal research. Horseshoe crab blood is a great example, for detection of endotoxin in manufacturing drugs and vaccines. Xenopus frogs used to be used as pregnancy tests in the 30s, as it turns out they will lay eggs if you inject them with small amount of urine. The story of that one is fantastic, recommend a quick perusal if only for how far we've come. If anything, I'd like to see neuralinks brain in a rack setup come to replace many forms of tissue culture in the lab to push the envelope further and give us more reasons to not use animals in these tests. From a purely capitalist standpoint, animals are WAY more expensive than cell lines, especially mammals. Also, I can field any questions people have about lab work if you're interested. I'll answer as best I can.
• uwuemu 4y ago
  This is a problem that needs to be addressed. Needless suffering is always bad. But. Is this really a BIG problem or are the politics (of Elon being who he is) leaking again? This is not about some social networking platform or a car company. If this thing works and eventually has the ability to vastly improve QOL of disabled people, won't the testing be justified? I mean... how many desd animals outweigh one functioning quadriplegic? Only extremists would say "zero" or "any number", but regular people will probably say a number in the hundreds. We're team people after all. Not to mention that we already kill millions of animals for food (most of which live in terrible conditions all their lives and some of which die in brutal ways). And it's not like Elon goes around killing endangered species, these are mostly sheep, pigs and rodents we're talking about here.
  • Imnimo 4y ago
    Before you get to that question, you'd want to first answer the question of whether the deaths of the animals were actually necessary to make progress in the first place. Just because Neuralink has killed 1500 animals doesn't automatically mean that those deaths were productive. They just as well could have been the result of negligence or recklessness without real scientific value. That seems like a question that's worth investigating.
• danShumway 4y ago
  Given the number of "what about the meat industry" comments on here, I want to speak as a vegan and give you my express permission to be morally outraged about careless research causing animal suffering, even if you are an omnivore. And I wish all of the people here arguing that you need to stop eating chickens to be upset about this a very, "either convert fully to veganism yourself or go away and stop appropriating vegan arguments in an effort to try and get people to care less about animal wellfare." I would love for all of you to be vegan, but you are absolutely allowed to care about animals before you become vegan. I don't care if you're hypocritical, please do not use the existence of veganism as an excuse to turn off the empathy centers of your brain. No vegan is ever going to tell you not to care about animal suffering just because you don't care about it perfectly consistently in every area of your life. That is not what veganism is about.
  • freddealmeida 4y ago
• jschveibinz 4y ago
  As a baseline for the number (1,500), here is a link to the number of animals killed in the US per year (don’t look if this will upset you): https://animalclock.org/ https://animalclock.org/
  • BoorishBears 4y ago
    Subject to my own personal brand of morality, feel free to insert your own but... "animals have been killed for food this year in the United States" If you kill 10 animals for food it's not the end of the world. If for every 10 you kill an additional 1 because of the horrors of factory farming, it's sad, but in the grand scheme of things, they still died for us to have food, they just didn't become food. If you kill 1 animal just for kicks, you probably need to be institutionalized. And if you pay people to maim 1,500 animals to meet unreasonable deadlines for a moonshot vanity project that's cutting corners while planning to implant its results in human brains, you need to be stopped.
• strangattractor 4y ago
  People lack imagination. Think of it - a Musk company with sleeping compartments. Employees with Neuralink connectivity working even when they sleep. The man is going to be a gigazillionaire.
• robomartin 4y ago
  We must, of course, for fair treatment, steelman[0] the argument about the lack of morality of the purported 1500 animals allegedly killed by Neuralink. The first reaction by anyone decent should be obvious: This is horrible. I can't imagine anyone not agreeing with the simple idea that animal testing is a horrific thing. The argument in favor of it generally includes an element of accounting for human lives saved and benefits to society balanced against using animals for testing. Does this erase or balance-out the moral reservations we all have? Not sure. Can we add further support for the practice? Well, how about the fact that N animals per year (where N is a very large number) are bred for testing. In other words, N animals would never have existed in the natural order --just like we raise chickens by the billions to eat. Before going further, a key question: What's the scale? According to PETA [1], 110 million per year. That's a lot of animals. I think I can say this would not be possible without breeding animals for research. OK, how about benefits to society? In lieu of a list, here's a link [2]. The list of medical benefits is quite long. What does an institution like Stanford [3] have to say? Quoting: "It is important to stress that 95% of all animals necessary for biomedical research in the United States are rodents – rats and mice especially bred for laboratory use – and that animals are only one part of the larger process of biomedical research." Well, that's interesting, that means 104.5 million out of the 110 million are rats bred for research. Does that change our mindset? OK, time to look at the other side. There might be more questions than answers here. Is the entirety of our rejection of animal testing based on emotional or moral stances? Religious? Is there a canonical "rule of the universe" to use as a measurement or threshold of acceptance? Is any number OK? Is zero the only acceptable metric? Looking at the list of benefits [2] it is easy to imagine that hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people would not exist today were it not for animal testing. I say "would not exist" because someone's death results in potentially erasing an entire genealogical tree --with potentially geometric growth. In other words, a single death could have massive consequences. Does that justify it? Well, what if we have, as a result, overpopulated the planet. Have we interfered with our own natural selection process? Is that the crime? What are the limits then? Is humanity supposed to live in the natural survival-of-the-fittest and not resort to life extension through science and medicine? Are science and medicine part of our natural-selection story? It's easy to see the analysis of this seemingly-simple issue, where a moral/emotional reaction is easy to deliver, quickly becomes massively complex with questions such as "How many people are you willing to see die?" and "How many members of your own family would have died?" or "Would you exist?". I can't provide any answers here. This is far too complex. Opinion? Sure. We all have one. I fail to see the utility of using animals for the testing of cosmetics. I am sure there are corner cases for justification here and there. Not sure what those might be. Neuralink? Well, that's a good question. What's the benefit to society? I can't think of one. Well, wait, how about things like using a future embodiment of Neuralink to enhance equality/equity by providing everyone with the same cognitive capabilities? That's far-fetched, yeah. Is it a real possibility? Don't know. Is this one of those "just because we can" ideas? Should we do it? Clearly the purported 1500 animals (not sure what kind) attributed to Neuralink is insignificant when compared to the 110 million per year quoted by PETA. Are 100% of them bred for testing? If so, is that OK, just like eating chickens? What's the different between eating a chicken and using the same purpose-bred chicken for research? I'll stop here. I don't have any answers. I am not sure what the right stance might be here. Not sure how "right" is defined. Not sure of anything. Lots of question though, more than I can list here. In closing, we do need to address criticism of Musk and others who toil to advance humanity in any way. I am reminded of: "Ladran Sancho señal que cabalgamos" Criticism of every successful person often follows the same pattern and is delivered by the same type of people. It's easy to be harsh when one does nothing, contributes nothing, delivers no benefits to society, enjoys the benefits others create and can take a "holier than thou" stance while watching the world from a couch and having popcorn. Being critical is easy. Becoming a net contributor to society isn't. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man#Steelmanning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man#Steelmanning [1] https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animals-used-experimentation-factsheets/animal-experiments-overview/ https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation... [2] https://fbresearch.org/medical-advances/animal-research-achievements/ https://fbresearch.org/medical-advances/animal-research-achi... [3] https://med.stanford.edu/animalresearch/why-animal-research.html https://med.stanford.edu/animalresearch/why-animal-research....
• zaroth 4y ago
  Where the discussion goes off the rails and becomes less enlightening in my opinion is railing against using and ultimately killing animals in the pursuit of scientific advancement in general versus something unique or specific about how Neuralink uses animals. My personal belief is that animals are absolutely crucial at this point for many scientific purposes. Some things which animals were used for in the past can reasonably be done without killing animals, thru computer simulation or modeling, and certainly animals should not be needlessly killed, or intentionally left to suffer. Animal use should be reduced when reasonable, but particularly in the case of animals which are also feedstock, it’s logically absurd to even minimally constrain scientific research to reduce the number of pigs and sheep killed worldwide by a few hundred or thousand animals when they are bred by the millions to be slaughter and eaten. What’s interesting to me is the nuanced discussion of serial versus parallel testing, and the need for sometimes re-testing. When you have a matrix of potential choices, you can minimize the number of tests overall by serializing the process, at the expense of maximizing the duration of testing. If you parallelize the testing, similar to branch prediction in CPUs, you will end up running tests that would not have been needed, but you complete the overall experiment faster. The trade-off of time is not merely a matter of impatience. The capital costs must be absolutely tremendous, and the likelihood we even get to the point sometime in the future where there’s a life-altering treatment that is FDA approved, and the ultimate cost of that treatment, is highly dependent on how long it takes to achieve the fundamental research objectives and overcome the extraordinary challenges they are facing. So it’s not simply arrogance or apathy, a serial approach could very well either make the treatment uneconomical, or even make the R&D costs and timelines un-fundable. As someone who had rack of lamb for dinner last week and bacon for breakfast this morning, this research is absolutely on a higher moral plane and IMO it would be abhorrent to tell paraplegics that Neuralink is doing anything even remotely wrong by trying to accelerate this research while American pig farms produces 2 billion pounds of bacon every year.
• bobcattz 4y ago
  what about the grey alien abductions huh? pet store
• nurettin 4y ago
  Not much compared to the number of norvegian white rats that died for epilepsy research.