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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 co
by JacobThreeThree 3y 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 3y agoThis 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 3y agoIn 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 3y agoLetting people volunteer for something dangerous is capital E Evil?
- giraffe_lady 3y agoNo it's the human experimentation part that's evil not "letting people volunteer."
- Veserv 3y agoAlso 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 3y agoWhy can't they give informed consent? A layperson can understand a percent chance of grievous injury or death.
- Veserv 3y agoThey do not know the percent chance of death during early experimentation. They literally do not understand the procedure well enough to estimate the effects with sufficient confidence for it to be acceptable to do in human subjects. That is why it is called early stage and why we have animal testing, to establish these parameters as best we can for it to be acceptable to attempt on humans. This is literally the blood the human clinical testing rules around consenting to procedures is written in.
- Dylan16807 3y agoAnd once they do enough animal testing, they can figure out a reasonable estimate for the danger. And they've probably done enough for that. The real barrier here is whether it's considered safe enough to let people volunteer, not just whether they can estimate the level of safety. There's a big range of experiments where informed consent is possible but it's not allowed because it's too dangerous. I think this testing is probably in that range. And anything in that range is not a matter of "capital E Evil". Evil is when you're not getting consent, or similar.
- darth_avocado 3y ago> I’ll take his word for it to be honest. Like all the hundred other times he’s lied about things? If anything, just the way he treats his human employees, I’d not be surprised if the animals are treated worse than the raised concerns.
- hackernewds 3y agocurious why you will take his word for it? given he gets paid to do and say those things