9 ms·
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) h
by 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 agoIt'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 agoI'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 agoI'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.
- letmevoteplease 4y agoRead the article. Of the 1,500, 280 are "sheep, pigs and monkeys." The rest are presumably mice. The only specific figure for monkeys is the claim that "two monkeys" were involved in experiments marred by human errors.
- iancmceachern 4y agoThis is still way way more than is typical. For context I've worked on artificial hearts where they did a few dozen sheep and pigs before going to human implants, some other devices where you do 5 or 10. Never hundreds just to not even get there yet.
- ckemere 4y agoThe first artificial hearts were implanted in the 1960's. I think the point I'm trying to make is that Neuralink is doing a huge amount basic science / R&D in addition to trying to get a product into FDA. In their final FDA application, it sounds like (from the article) that they'll have data from ~100 animals. That doesn't mean that the other animals were wasted - it's more that the 100 animals for the FDA are wasted in the sense that they're tested on the pristine final product rather than all the steps before.
- iancmceachern 4y agoThey're not. Typically work like this gets published, shared, talked about publicly exactly so our collective understanding is improved. Presented on at clinical and scientific conferences, etc. What Neuralink is doing looks completely different than this. It's clearly being run like many of his other endeavors. With a significant disrespect for regulators, for the health of the general public, etc.
- fastball 4y agoHow does anything Neuralink has done demonstrate disrespect for the health of the general public?
- fastball 4y agoI killed a dozen rats for my undergrad thesis.
- iancmceachern 4y agoHow many monkeys did you torture though?
- zaroth 4y agoThe article specifically mentions the monkeys are treated abnormally well.
- iancmceachern 4y agoThere are other articles that disagree: "In two separate incidents, experimenters used an unapproved adhesive called BioGlue to fill holes in the animals’ skulls, which seeped through to the monkeys’ brains. In one monkey, the use of BioGlue caused bleeding in her brain, and she vomited so much from the resulting side effects that she developed open sores in her esophagus" https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220926005606/en/Physicians-Committee%E2%80%99s-Lawsuit-Against-Elon-Musk-Company-Neuralink-Reveals-Existence-of-Hundreds-of-Photos-of-Monkeys-Used-in-Painful-Experiments https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220926005606/en/Phy...
- s1artibartfast 4y agoSeems independent of if the animals were treated well
- iancmceachern 4y agoNot at all. These animals seems to have been treated very poorly.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
- raducu 4y ago> Not anywhere close to 1500, this is criminal. 10 billion animals are killed in the USA each year, but 1500 is criminal?
- colordrops 4y ago
- whywhywhywhy 4y agoNot really. 1500 is fine for a chance at helping people with paralysis, would have to be magnitudes higher for me to care. The potential good outweighs the cost significantly
- iancmceachern 4y agoThis device is not going to deliver that (help with paralysis) for a decade or more. At best it's going to allow people to move a cursor on a screen.
- idrios 4y agoAnd for someone fully paralyzed that'd be a massive quality of life improvement
- maximus-decimus 4y agoI'm fine waiting an extra-decade and killing 3k animals for that. Hell, let's make it 10k animals. This is huge. Even just moving the cursor on a screen... you're fixing carpal tunnel syndrome for every white collar employee working at a computer all day.
- iancmceachern 4y agoMe too, but this is not what Musk has promised. He is promising far more in far less time. His typical MO. And thinking that an average office worker would get an invasive brain implant to prevent carpal tunnel is nuts. Carpal tunnel is a thousand times better to have than an invasive brain surgury.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoThis varies wildly depending on the class of device and technology. There is no "normal".
- iancmceachern 4y agoThere is a normal for this class and type of device. This is way outside normal for this class and type of device- source, I've designed them for 20 years.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoI'm skeptical. I've worked on devices with no electronics and no moving parts that used as many or more large animals. It really depends on why you are doing animal studies in the first place. If you have a working product and are just confirming functionality before going to human trials, sure you don't need that much animal work. If you are doing active research, I'm trying to understand,fix, or improve a design, you can run through a lot of animals.
- iancmceachern 4y agoUsually it's best to try to do that stuff in vitro first, figure out some analog for animals that you can use on the bench.
- s1artibartfast 4y agoSurely you understand that some systems don't have a in vitro model. Particularly , the biological response and interaction is the unknown. I'm working on such a project now. It'll likely require many dozens of large animals if not hundreds to collect some semblance of data to support human use. I would consider anything less unethical and irresponsible development
- capableweb 4y agoFrom the article: > Some Neuralink rivals are having more success. Synchron, which was launched in 2016 and is developing a different implant with less ambitious goals for medical advances, received FDA approval to start human trials in 2021. The company’s device has allowed paralyzed people to text and type by thinking alone. Synchron has also conducted tests on animals, but it has killed only about 80 sheep as part of its research, according to studies of the Synchron implant reviewed by Reuters. Seems they are providing context, as long as you take the time to read through the article.
- ckemere 4y agoI would argue that "context" is intentional misdirection. Most people don't know that synchron is marketing an electrified stent that gives maybe one channel of data I/O whereas Neuralink has a robot that implants thousands of electrodes in multiple regions of the brain and spinal cord. They are different by orders of magnitude in complexity and potential utility.
- vanderZwan 4y agoThere is nothing about what you said that suggests that this requires more animal testing in a shorter timeframe. If anything a single animal test should provide so much more data that it should take much longer to process and analyze the results, slowing down the speed at which animal tests occur.
- ckemere 4y agoI'm confused - nothing at Neuralink is off the shelf. How would you go from an empty room to an animal implanted functionally with lots of data?
- vanderZwan 4y agoWhat is there to be confused about? On the one hand you seem to be arguing that neuralink is more complicated and has more unknowns, and that this explains why it needs to do more animal tests, but that depends on how much data one can capture in a single test. So it is not a given that the complexity-to-tests-needed graph is linear. And assuming that we do actually capture a lot more data in a single test (I would hope so at least), then that also means more work needs to be done to interpret this data in a meaningful way and make improvements. Which would suggest that it should take more time to move on from one test to the next. There is a difference between total animal tests and how quickly the tests are done.
- coldpie 4y agoIf it's within the normal course of this type of business, why would the feds be investigating it?
- iancmceachern 4y agoNeuralink is way outside the rails. Yes, it is normal to do animal studies with a few dozen carefully planned, documented and cared for animal cases. It is not standard practice to do poorly documented, half baked studies where 1500 monkeys are used and tortured. This is way off the ranks of "normal"
- s1artibartfast 4y agoThe article mentions 2 monkeys, not 1500. Where did you get that impression and why did you decide to state it as fact?
- iancmceachern 4y agoIt was an honest misunderstanding
- Karunamon 4y agoYou are within the edit window as of time of writing and should update your comment, then, rather than leave misinformation standing. Or delete it.
- iancmceachern 4y agoI can no longer edit it. I would have edited it to say 1500 animals, striking "monkeys".
- s1artibartfast 4y agoAs someone that works with devices, you should know that 1500 monkeys is a wildly absurd claim. As someone who also works with devices, I would be extremely skeptical and wouldn't even believe 1500 monkeys if the article did state it, unless proof was included.
- breck 4y agoto put the number in context in usa we kill 9 billion chickens per year.
- havelhovel 4y agoSuggesting we calibrate our reaction based off other examples of animal suffering isn’t an objective take. Some people don’t want any animals to suffer by human hands. Some people are opposed to animal trials in their entirety. Some people might oppose their use in this particular instance. Some people might just have a hard cut off at three dead mice. Whether or not this number is industry standard can be beside the point for someone else, and it doesn’t mean they’re being “preyed upon” or manipulated for reading and responding to a fact using a different moral framework.
- Method-X 4y agoAccording to the most recent data from the USDA, approximately 915,000 animals were used in research in 2019, which is the latest year for which data is available.
- pvaldes 4y agoExact, 1500 is not a such big amount as people thinks. If we use correctly the term animals, expanding it to flies, worms and zebra fishes instead to use it incorrectly as a synonym for "birds and mammals", the real number should be much higher. To kill 1500 vinegar flies in a week for research is not uncommon or a strange thing. We need to remind that the faster you do research, the more people will be saved by research. The problem here is not the amount of lab animals killed.
- lazzlazzlazz 4y agoThe headline is manipulated to imply it's worse than it is. A small animal bio research lab kills thousands of animals a year. They're trying to take Musk down, and unsurprisingly, some on Hacker News are taking the bait.
- rakkhi 4y agoReally good point. 1500 now removed from the title For context Peta says 110m animals killed for science each year 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...
- rakkhi 4y agoDouglas Houfstedder I am a strange loop. Great book on consciousness. He says monkeys have a higher level of consciousness than say mosquitoes. Maybe similar to a 3 year old human. That's why we feel it is worse morally