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> In response to an inquiry from Reuters, the USDA said it had found no conflicts of interest on Neuralink’s board when the department inspected its animal-rese

by jjk166 4y ago

> In response to an inquiry from Reuters, the USDA said it had found no conflicts of interest on Neuralink’s board when the department inspected its animal-research operations during 10 inspections since 2020. The company has passed all inspections with no citations, according to public records and a person with knowledge of the examinations. I'm not going to get too worked up by a private company doing something that has received no complaints from the federal agency in charge of overseeing it. If you think the USDA's regulations are too lax, that's something that we the people can potentially change.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
JacobThreeThree 4y ago
From what I can tell by looking at the IACUC membership lists for various institutions, it's completely normal to have almost all members of these committees come from the same institution. For example, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, there are only two non-affiliated members out of an IACUC member list of 21 people. https://animalcare.illinois.edu/about/institutional-animal-care-and-use-committee https://animalcare.illinois.edu/about/institutional-animal-c... In my opinion, this Reuters article is another manifestation of the anti-Musk media bias that preys on the ignorance of your average person who won't know that this IACUC structure is entirely par for the course.
- meowkit 4y ago
  This article and others are most certainly just baseless hit pieces. They have shown up before, and seem to be extreme animal activists leveraging anti-Musk sentiment. A neurosurgeon at Neurallink was just on Huberman Lab. He discussed, in detail: why they do the kind of animal testing they do, the humane parts, inhumane practices, the internal culture. I’ll take his word for it to be honest.
  - Veserv 4y ago
    In the interview you mention [1] at 1:27:20 “If tomorrow laws were changed and the FDA said okay you can do some of this early experimentation in willing human participants that would be a very interesting option I think there would be a lot of people who would step up.” Holy shit that is a terrifying opinion for the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink to have. He thinks it is morally acceptable to experiment on humans with untested medical procedures that have demonstrably killed at least dozens of animal subjects and using processes that have resulted in inserting the wrong fucking implants in animal subjects. That is not merely immoral, that is capital E Evil. If that is the sort of person they keep as the head of neurosurgery then I too will take his word for it and say they should be shut down and entire leadership team banned from management in any medical research as they have no business designing processes that may impact the lives of humans or other creatures when they have such a callous disregard for those same lives. https://youtu.be/3ZGItIAUQmI https://youtu.be/3ZGItIAUQmI
    - Dylan16807 4y ago
      Letting people volunteer for something dangerous is capital E Evil?
      - giraffe_lady 4y ago
        No it's the human experimentation part that's evil not "letting people volunteer."
        Veserv 4y ago
        Also the fact that it is structurally almost impossible for a layperson to give informed consent on a dangerous, highly experimental, early stage medical procedure, let alone a elective, non-medically necessary procedure. We have rules about human clinical testing for literally that reason.
        Dylan16807 4y ago
runarberg 4y ago
Mistreating animals is a multi-million dollar industry. People in power have been known to cater to those who can spend the most on lobbying efforts. Even if your representative doesn’t get influenced by lobby groups, there is a whole ideology disproportionately popular among the ruling class around lax government involvement. Representation in congress sits at one representative per 4-5 hundred thousand constituents, one of the lowest representation in the world. If your representative is holds opposite ideology from yours or if the majority in congress has the opposite ideology from you and your representative, you have little chance of changing an institution which is independent from congress. If you and your representative and majority of congress hold the same ideology, but the majority of senate or the president don’t, you have little chance of being heard. No. It is childishly optimistic to thing we the people can change anything about this. Our best shot is complaining on social media and write articles in news magazines, but even that has limited results.
- moate 4y ago
  (Mostly) Worked for Sinclair…

by jjk166 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

JacobThreeThree 4y ago

From what I can tell by looking at the IACUC membership lists for various institutions, it's completely normal to have almost all members of these committees come from the same institution. For example, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, there are only two non-affiliated members out of an IACUC member list of 21 people. https://animalcare.illinois.edu/about/institutional-animal-care-and-use-committee https://animalcare.illinois.edu/about/institutional-animal-c... In my opinion, this Reuters article is another manifestation of the anti-Musk media bias that preys on the ignorance of your average person who won't know that this IACUC structure is entirely par for the course.

meowkit 4y ago
This article and others are most certainly just baseless hit pieces. They have shown up before, and seem to be extreme animal activists leveraging anti-Musk sentiment. A neurosurgeon at Neurallink was just on Huberman Lab. He discussed, in detail: why they do the kind of animal testing they do, the humane parts, inhumane practices, the internal culture. I’ll take his word for it to be honest.
- Veserv 4y ago
  In the interview you mention [1] at 1:27:20 “If tomorrow laws were changed and the FDA said okay you can do some of this early experimentation in willing human participants that would be a very interesting option I think there would be a lot of people who would step up.” Holy shit that is a terrifying opinion for the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink to have. He thinks it is morally acceptable to experiment on humans with untested medical procedures that have demonstrably killed at least dozens of animal subjects and using processes that have resulted in inserting the wrong fucking implants in animal subjects. That is not merely immoral, that is capital E Evil. If that is the sort of person they keep as the head of neurosurgery then I too will take his word for it and say they should be shut down and entire leadership team banned from management in any medical research as they have no business designing processes that may impact the lives of humans or other creatures when they have such a callous disregard for those same lives. https://youtu.be/3ZGItIAUQmI https://youtu.be/3ZGItIAUQmI
  - Dylan16807 4y ago
    Letting people volunteer for something dangerous is capital E Evil?
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      No it's the human experimentation part that's evil not "letting people volunteer."
      - Veserv 4y ago
        Also the fact that it is structurally almost impossible for a layperson to give informed consent on a dangerous, highly experimental, early stage medical procedure, let alone a elective, non-medically necessary procedure. We have rules about human clinical testing for literally that reason.
        Dylan16807 4y ago

runarberg 4y ago

Mistreating animals is a multi-million dollar industry. People in power have been known to cater to those who can spend the most on lobbying efforts. Even if your representative doesn’t get influenced by lobby groups, there is a whole ideology disproportionately popular among the ruling class around lax government involvement. Representation in congress sits at one representative per 4-5 hundred thousand constituents, one of the lowest representation in the world. If your representative is holds opposite ideology from yours or if the majority in congress has the opposite ideology from you and your representative, you have little chance of changing an institution which is independent from congress. If you and your representative and majority of congress hold the same ideology, but the majority of senate or the president don’t, you have little chance of being heard. No. It is childishly optimistic to thing we the people can change anything about this. Our best shot is complaining on social media and write articles in news magazines, but even that has limited results.

moate 4y ago
(Mostly) Worked for Sinclair…