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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 CO
by 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 agoI 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 agoMe 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 agoThe 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 agoI'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.
- ckemere 4y agoI'd argue that the brain and the heart are at least 2 orders of complexity apart. Granted many neurologists try to treat the brain as if they were similar, and current brain implants essentially function as pacemakers, but I think most folks that are excited about Neuralink are excited because for the first time they are building interfaces that begin to cross those 2 orders of complexity.
- iancmceachern 4y agoYes, the brain and the heart are. We are not talking about those though. We are talking about devices that treat the brain and heart, completely different. Devices that treat the heart are far more complex devices - they have moving parts that need to work seamlessly while submerged in blood. Brain implants are just glorified PCBs in enclosures with electrodes. No moving parts, no motors. It's also not the first time those things have crossed. We've been doing cochlear implants for decades, neurostim devices for nearly as long. None of this is new (except for the Musk being an ass part)
- capableweb 4y agoWhere is the inference that the animals could have survived? I think it's pretty clearly outlined in the article that the animals end up dead regardless. What the article is saying though, because of tight deadlines, sloppy procedures and chaotic environment, the trials are rife with mistakes that could have been prevented if they were more careful, so they don't have to repeat the same trial over and over because they fucked up the previous times. So the suggestion is to instead of running a trial bad 4 times killing 4N pigs, run one good and proper trial so you only end up killing 1N pigs for the same output research data.
- pvaldes 4y ago> are always euthanized at the conclusion of the study Even more. Are euthanized by law. Required by government. People is confused about the status of those animals. They aren't pets. Not killing them after such research would be illegal in many countries. If people wants to save the lives of those animals, they will need to talk with the politicians and require them to change the laws [1] first. [1] (Hint, those laws were created specifically to please anti animal cruelty activism)