4 ms·
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
by 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 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?
- iancmceachern 4y agoI was saying that in reference to his other projects (Tesla FSD)
- fastball 4y agoAFAIK nobody has been injured due to Tesla FSD, so not exactly sure how that qualifies either. Actual self-driving cars will save thousands of lives, so (to me) Tesla being the only company that is pursuing it in a way that might actually get there before the end of the decade says they care more about the health of the general public, not less.
- 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