Whoever was implanted with this was restricted to having lost complete motor function and likely had extremely poor quality of life, opting for this procedure as a last hope. I get you're making a joke but I hope you understand it's at the expense of someone in a terrible situation who's undergoing a significant amount of suffering and likely was prior to any interaction with Musk.
Even if it worked flawlessly, there's no way I'm putting that crap in my brain. Best case scenario, I have a useless hunk of tech in my skull when they "sunset" support. More likely scenario, I'm inundated with ads that I can't escape 24/7, and I also have the useless hunk of metal in my head until I die. No fucking thanks.
I do not know about US numbers, but in NL - one of the most “productive” countries when it comes to agriculture - about half the population number is killed weekly 8.5m), which is about 843 animals per minute. Not counting fish, insects, game, etc.
So you are technically incorrect, but those are not exactly rookie numbers.
There are laws dictating how animals should be treated for research, and they don't specify at all how many animals may be used. They do dictate how research might be approached to minimize suffering and loss of life, and even with these weak animal welfare laws Musk still finds a way to run afoul of them.
The complaint relates to Musk pushing researchers so hard they make mistakes
its basically a fancy mouse. It lets you control a computer or phone. So, yes, as it goes inside the body I guess its technically a medical device but this is not a necessary evil. I fully agree with animal testing when it comes to important things such as curing diseases but this is just musk trying to roll out another device that will probably never work right anyways.
In fairness there's a lot of people with disabilities that could benefit from something like this. But you're right, I wouldn't trust anything Musk has touched to be inside someone's head.
I think the issue is more that they died from distress or complications of the hardware. Standard operating procedure is to dispose of animal subjects after testing irregardless, so the FDA isn't so much worried about the number of corpses as much as how they died.