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The Gruesome Story of How Neuralink’s Monkeys Died
- FranzFerdiNaN 3y agoIt’s downright criminal what they did. This should never ever have been allowed, the company should be dissolved. Also Musk should be jailed for his role in all of this, as a founder and the one pushing for results, resulting in all of this. Fucking hell.
- andreistan26 3y ago[flagged]
- delfinom 3y agoThe rich at the top never get jail, that is how the oligarchy known as the US works.
- joe__f 3y agoAlso true everywhere else in the world, probably at least slightly better in the US and other democracies.
- joenot443 3y agoShould Neuralink's work prove to be successful, and they were later able to restore movement to otherwise paralyzed humans, would you still feel the same way? It seems that you value the lives of monkeys very highly, which is understandable. Is there an amount of human suffering which could be avoided which could justify the loss of macaques? I don't know if there's a definite answer. I think the moral question of accepting the deaths of animals for purposes of humanity's comfort is one we've debated for millennia now.
- singleshot_ 3y agoDefinitely a good point. I think a lot of the rage here stems from the assumption that these brain implants will be less about restoring abilities to the disabled and more about giving people the ability to post in social media at the speed of light. The frivolity of the potential applications seems short of justification for animal abuse, even if saving lives is sufficient justification. (Edit: I figure there will be some frivolity, but truly useful medical advances will be made. Are they worth the lives of monkeys? I sure am glad I’m not a bioethicist because I dunno).
- latexr 3y ago> It seems that you value the lives of monkeys very highly. Maybe they value informed consent. Something which humans could give in this situation but other primates can’t. Maybe the issue is that the experiments were done on someone who cannot say “no” (though we can argue they are doing just that by exhibiting fear). Had the experiments been done on humans, this would be the equivalent of doing them on slaves instead of consenting adults. > Is there an amount of human suffering which could be avoided which could justify the loss of macaques? We can flip the question: “is there an amount of macaque suffering which could be avoided which could justify the loss of humans”? Why not? Is avoiding our suffering more important because we ended at the top of the food chain? Maybe if we in turn did a great deal to protect other species we could argue that saving humans benefitted everyone, but the status quo is that making another species suffer for our benefit will only lead to other species suffering even more.
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago[dead]
- aaron695 3y ago[dead]
- refurb 3y agoMaybe it's my background in medical devices, but none of this seems gruesome. Infections, wounds bleeding, broken devices, complications from brain implants like bleeding or brain damage. These are certainly bad outcomes, but I wouldn't say unexpected or something you wouldn't see with other animal tests for medical devices. Keep in mind this description comes from Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine which seeks to abolish animal testing entirely. Not an unbiased source. If Musk's company were doing this alone, I might assume something bad is happening, but it's not, the tests are done in partnership with "California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC), a federally funded bioresearch facility at UC Davis". I'd find it hard to believe a government run, non-profit center which are experts in primate research (and operating within a public university) aren't follow laws around animal testing and appropriate care and effort to prevent suffering.
- johnnyworker 3y agoGruesome means gruesome, not unexpected or rare. Also, what do you mean by "this description"? It's an investigation by WIRED, there are many sources in this article, and quite a lot of "this description" is simply quoting staff notes.
- emmet 3y ago[flagged]
- Zetobal 3y agoProbably the TheGreaterGood™ excuse.
- emmet 3y agoCan’t wait until the greater good of downloading racist tweets directly into your brain
- onetokeoverthe 3y ago[dead]
- latexr 3y agohttps://archive.ph/HicQj https://archive.ph/HicQj
- vibrio 3y agoThe studies are now in humans, and any such gruesomeness that occurs there will be scrutinized. With the complex coverage Neurolink gets and the polarity of opinions on Musk, it will be interesting to see how patient enrollment goes.
- matthewdgreen 3y agoThe real concern is that the patients will be Musk fanboys, and insufficiently cautious about their own health.
- jasfi 3y agoI don't understand how the FDA could have given approval for human trials, after what happened to those monkeys. I thought that the FDA was quite stringent about these things. Aren't there published guidelines for what constitutes too much discomfort/pain for animal testing? Rules?
- Zigurd 3y agoWhat happened to the monkeys is secondary to Elon not understanding why and what would happen to them: He publicly stated the monkeys were terminally ill. They were not. That's not how anything works. If you don't grok that, you should be nowhere near decision making about animal testing. Evidently Elon did not understand that "terminal" meant the test animals would likely or certainly be euthanized if they did not perish due to the experiments being run: https://futurism.com/neoscope/elon-musk-neuralink-terminally-ill-monkeys https://futurism.com/neoscope/elon-musk-neuralink-terminally... That said, there are standards for animal suffering in research, and that should be checked as well.
- catchnear4321 3y ago> Animal 15 began to lose coordination, and staff observed that she would shake uncontrollably when she saw lab workers.
- hulitu 3y ago> > Animal 15 began to lose coordination, and staff observed that she would shake uncontrollably when she saw lab workers. And what exactly is not humane here ? /s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unit_731 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_human_experimentation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_radiation_experiments https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_radiation_experiments https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_cam... and so on and so forth..
- Etherlord87 3y agoMy dog sometimes shakes uncontrollably when there's e.g. fireworks outside. I'm a vegetarian BTW, so I'm not arguing for testing on animals, just that it's easy to over-interpret.
- scoodah 3y agoYes and your dog does that because it’s scared and stressed out. Why is that an acceptable thing to subject animals to willingly?
- Etherlord87 3y agoAsk the society. Apparently the majority accepts fireworks. I don't see an article on hackernews describing how terrible the fireworks are because an animal was shaking uncontrollably. What I also wanted to communicate is that shaking uncontrollably isn't necessarily connected to some terrible, unbearable trauma, which I think is something implied by people using the quote.
- 3y ago
- victortan83 3y agoNeuralink is basically doing ground breaking micro electrodes implantation through robotics assisted open brain surgery. Sometimes the implants cause complications. If you are familiar with how brain surgery works, nothing about what happened to the monkeys is considered remotely gruesome. This stuff has been going on in research labs and hospitals for decades. Lay people just don't get to hear about them often.
- oliwarner 3y ago> If you are familiar with how brain surgery works... I'm not unfamiliar and I'm not sure what you think a layperson wouldn't understand about an unnecessary, unconsented, experimental medical procedure. Or is it okay because it's a monkey?
- amanaplanacanal 3y agoHard to get consent from non-human animals. Some people think that means we shouldn’t experiment on animals at all. Some people think that the potential gains in relieving human suffering make it worthwhile. Most people on both camps think we shouldn’t allow the animals to suffer more than is necessary.
- catchnear4321 3y ago“necessary” > Animal 15 began to lose coordination, and staff observed that she would shake uncontrollably when she saw lab workers.
- Etherlord87 3y agoIt's not clear what you're trying to communicate here. Yes, it draws a scary picture about the suffering of the "Animal 15". However it doesn't mean it wasn't "necessary".
- catchnear4321 3y ago
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago[dead]
- sidibe 3y agoMonkey killing ethics questions aside, it really is typical of Elon to blatantly lie about this when he could have just pointed out there is plenty of other research being done with monkeys.