Animal 15 began to lose coordination and staff observed that she would shake uncontrollably when she saw lab workers. Her condition deteriorated for months until the staff finally euthanized her. A necropsy report indicates that she had bleeding in her brain and that the Neuralink implants left parts of her cerebral cortex “focally tattered.”
So I think people here need to be mindful of how much they don’t know about animal testing, how easy it is for the topic of animal testing to become inflammatory and how much musk-hate makes that even more likely.
Animal testing and experimentation is happening all over the place. And in such work accidents to happen, as with any surgery. And a common measure to prevent suffering is to euthanise. In fact I think euthanasia is prescribed so often that it’s controversial, but you should keep in mind that any animal experimentation setup is likely to have an intentionally antagonistic relationship between experimenters and animal carers and ethicists.
There are groups deeply and actively opposed to animal experimentation of any sort and will infiltrate and target labs and try to expose them any way they can. There’s a real chance that something like that is behind these revelations. Point is that it’s often not objective and misleads you into thinking the targeted lab is particularly bad when it’s actually just a selected target for political reasons.
All of which is NOT to condone animal experimentation (I’m a vegan for example). But you really should be mindful of how dumb media hype around this issue can be.
If you’re outraged for instance, when was the last time you ate meat and how well do you think that animal was treated both before it’s killing and even during? Better than the monkey in this story? Hell, when was the last time you ran over an animal in your car and did you really need to be driving at all? Did that animal die peacefully? Did you even realise?
How many benefits come to both humanity and animals too from progress from animal experimentation and is that worth some of the mistakes and suffering caused?
These are some of the better thoughts IMO, where musk hate is really not relevant here. From what I could tell from the article, it did not seem odd at all. If you care about animals, take the issue seriously and don’t make it about one very famous person who’s cool to hate right now. Animals, and humanity, frankly deserve better.
Debates about animal testing are important and understanding the realities of them is good, but I feel like it's easy to overlook maybe the most crucial component of this: Musk has openly and clearly lied about these tests and the realities of what point his technology is at, seemingly to mask the grim reality behind it
i’m just glad the monkeys aren’t suffering anymore. With elon sugarcoating tesla autopilot and neuralink’s impact on monkey brains, how are we supposed to trust this man?
Anybody seriously considering letting one of Elon's companies put things in your brain should probably read the story of him crawling under floorboards to unplug random servers because "Elon knows best".
veterinary reports show the condition of a female monkey called “Animal 15” during the months leading up to her death in March 2019. Days after her implant surgery, she began to press her head against the floor for no apparent reason; a symptom of pain or infection, the records say. Staff observed that though she was uncomfortable, picking and pulling at her implant until it bled, she would often lie at the foot of her cage and spend time holding hands with her roommate.
Kinda amazing they go to the SEC for investor fraud instead of the courts for persecution of torture
I wonder if these "scientists" were the type of kids that would burn ants to death with a magnifying glass too
I remember way back on reddit after hearing the neuralink buzz, I went to /r/neuralink and asked questions about how they would prevent infections with such procedures.
The answer?
"Well its just on the outer skin and doesn't really pass the blood brain barrier so its fine", I felt so validated and was blown away by how laissez-faire they were with infections, guess that little blurb was company policy!
Public documents obtained by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) and seen by Wired indicate that Neuralink’s macaque subjects were euthanized after suffering various complications, including “bloody diarrhea, partial paralysis, and cerebral edema.”
Those are now posted on its website and cited in the letters it sent to the Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday accusing Musk of securities fraud, referencing the reported $280 million Neuralink has raised from investors to create a brain computer interface.
Wired notes a December 2019 experiment outlined in one of the documents saying one monkey had to be euthanized after a piece of Neuralink’s brain implant broke off during the surgical process, leading to infection.
Another macaque mentioned — known as Animal 15 — “began to press her head against the floor for no apparent reason” days after receiving the implant, and her condition only went downhill from there:
Along with claiming that no monkeys have died because of a Neuralink implant, Musk has said the startup “chose terminal mon[k]eys (close to death already)” as test subjects to “minimize risk to healthy monkeys.” However, Wired cites an anonymous former employee saying that is not true:
Last year, the PCRM filed a complaint with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) alleging that Neuralink’s practices violate the Animal Welfare Act.
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While there is an obvious issue with Musk clearly being in a position to know that this was going on and not shutting it down, it saddens me that there was (is) a team (multiple teams?!) of highly qualified medical scientists that were (are) psychopathic enough to actually do this horrific shit over an extended period of time. Everyone involved should be stripped of everything dear to them and placed in a small dark hole for the rest of their miserable lives.
Reading these comments after watching Guardians of the Galaxy 3 just hits different.
Unless Elon himself is removed from his position, crimes like these simply won't stop.
Personally I don't have an issue with the animal testing part. New medical procedures are often tested on animals, that's how you save lives. But Musk is clearly making shit up here and now tries to proceed with human testing? With the amount of stupid hype he's spewing about it I don't believe absolutely anything that is being said about this technology. I say let him go first and show us how useful this is.
Another rich aberration with zero empathy and no connection with the rest of the human race - only himself. Seems to be a lot of that these days. Or at least the worst of them seem to keep getting the headlines.