The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine reported that 15 monkeys that participated in the brain chip tests died or were euthanized.
The lawsuit filed by the organization claims that Elon Musk’s company “failed to provide dying monkeys with proper veterinary care, used an unapproved substance that killed them by destroying parts of their brains, and failed to provide psychological treatment.”
The committee adds that the monkeys were subjected to extreme suffering and “were left to suffer and die.”
After a couple of days in silence, Neuralink responded through a statement where he assured that he cares for the animals “in the best ethical way”, although he acknowledged that they had to sacrifice up to eight monkeys.
“The use of each animal was extensively planned and considered to balance scientific discovery with ethical use. As part of this work, two animals were euthanized on planned dates to obtain important historical data. Another six were euthanized on the advice of the veterinary team at the University of California Davis,” the statement said.
“Among the reasons was a complication during surgery using an FDA-approved product, BioGlue. Failure of one of the brain implants, and four infections possibly caused by the devices. In response, we developed new surgical protocols and a new design for future surgeries.”
Neuralink also justifies its procedures by pointing out that all its work was approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee.
It should be remembered that the company assured in January that it was ready to start conducting experiments on humans, which is criticized by the medical community after this controversial complaint of animal abuse that appeared in New York Post.
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