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Maybe it's my background in medical devices, but none of this seems gruesome. Infections, wounds bleeding, broken devices, complications from brain implants li
by refurb 3y ago
Maybe 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]
- refurb 3y ago[flagged]
- Capricorn2481 3y agoWe're talking about a brain implant so a billionaire can stuff your brain full of SaaS. We're not talking about cancer drugs. Nobody is advocating against animal testing, we're exercising discretion over what is worth testing on animals.
- refurb 3y agoIf you bothered to google the goal of Neuralink you'd realize it's "enabling people with paralysis to control external devices with their thoughts". I don't know about you, but that sounds like a very worthwhile goal.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- Capricorn2481 3y ago> 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. There are barely any laws around this for animals
- refurb 3y agoThis is why I love coming to HN. I get to read comments like this - definitive statements that are 100% false. There are a ton of laws around animal testing. If you want to run an experiment like this you need to go through hundreds of pages of regulations to make sure you follow all of them. Then you need to go in front of a board who will make you justify the work (only allowed if there is no alternative), and discuss at length exactly what you will do to the animals, what you will do if things go wrong, how you will monitor their health, what you will do with the animal once the experiment is done. All the while you need to show you are doing you best to alleviate any suffering, including administration of anesthetics and pain killers.
- Capricorn2481 3y agoLet me rephrase this since you're ignoring the context of this conversation. Relative to human testing, there are not a lot of laws around animal testing, which a lot of people find abhorrent.
- refurb 3y agoRelative to human testing, there are not a lot of laws around animal testing This is also false. There is a very comprehensive law outlining the laws around animal testing along with hundreds of pages of regulations that go into exquisite detail on what animal testing is allowed and what efforts have to be put forth to minimize pain and suffering.
- lgvln 3y agoCan you elaborate more on why you think “none of this seems gruesome”? To most people, experimentation on animals that results in such unthinkable suffering is abhorrent. Is such practices simply “the norm”? Besides that, the central argument of the article is it disputes the Neuralink/Musk’s claim that “the monkeys died due to unforeseen complications”. Instead, what seems more likely is Neuralink experiments were directly responsible for the gruesome deaths of their test subjects. None of what you wrote addresses or refutes the evidence presented in the article.