Current Events > Elon Musk's Neuralink killed 1,500 animals in four years;

(+) Yeah! (+)

I don't think they've ever used chimps. That would never get through any ethics review.

That would never get through any ethics review.

Probably the point is Elon and his companies dodging the whole ethics thing.

"non-human primates"

*spends 10 seconds looking at your links

The statement is very mild when you take it in context. Realistically, the press was always going to be negative about any actual animal research because it's easy to drive negative sentiment.

Well... every year in the USA alone more than 110 million animals are killed in US laboratories for biology lessons, medical training, curiosity-driven experimentation, and chemical, drug, food, and cosmetics testing.

source: https://www.peta.org/issues/animals-used-for-experimentation/animals-used-experimentation-factsheets/animal-experiments-overview/

Humans are a garbage species and every day you enjoy a life of comfort you should remind yourself of that.

reminder stuff like testing cancer cures on mice is not even viable

our DNA is to different

and in this case its just cruelty for cruelys sake

this technology will never work not now and not in a 1000 years

its nonsense with no basis in facts

Literally not possible to dodge ethics review boards.

animal abuse

Animals dying in R&D is whatever.
What else are we going to do?
Straight to human trials?
Not really an option

And there's no reason they killed a little over a monkey a day over the course of 4 years. Animal trials are bound to have deaths, but the scale of deaths are simply unacceptable.

Literally not possible to dodge ethics review boards.

I thought different organizations had different IRBs and thus different levels of scrutiny? In principle they should be uniform but I thought there was variance..

There's variance across all IRBs. But I've never met an IRB that was too lenient. If you ask any working scientist, IRBs tend to be way overly cautious and overstep their boundaries.

It recently took us 3 or 4 months and 2 cycles of protocol revision to allow us to give our animals feed with doxycycline in it, a very harmless antibiotic.

So Musk's actions (or anyone) *could* be to seek out more leniency/less strict ethics panels?

There's variance across all IRBs. But I've never met an IRB that was too lenient. If you ask any working scientist, IRBs tend to be way overly cautious and overstep their boundaries.

It recently took us 3 or 4 months and 2 cycles of protocol revision to allow us to give our animals feed with doxycycline in it, a very harmless antibiotic.

Because you worked with people who give a shit. Musk literally moved research facilities to avoid scrutiny and rigged in order to report only what he wanted to report.

Musk should be the first human test subject if it ever goes to human trials. Live stream that shit.

And there's no reason they killed a little over a monkey a day over the course of 4 years. Animal trials are bound to have deaths, but the scale of deaths are simply unacceptable.

It's also easy to imagine Musk skirting all the rules and generally being evil, harder to imagine the trained scientists and medical professionals he hires all doing so.

Through documents and interviews with Neuralink staff, Reuters identified four experiments with 86 pigs and two monkeys that went awry due to employee mistakes. As a result, the experiments had to be repeated. One employee, Reuters reported, wrote an angry missive earlier this year to colleagues about the need to overhaul how the company organizes animal surgeries to prevent hack jobs.

Theres this incredible pressure by these Silicon Valley dudes who want their devices on the market, they want to push things forward, but they dont understand that these things take time, said Merkley. That leads to as weve seen botched experiments and animals suffering.

Two statements referencing nothing specific don't constitute anything particularly noteworthy.

Like, "we're moving too fast" is like the number 1 complaint across all biomedical sciences. And I've heard scientists call otber's work hackjobs way too often to overinterpret a comment like that.

Like I said, there are a lot of reasons to dislike neuralink, the fact that they do animal research and are trying to do so quickly is not really a reasonable one. It is one that will resonate with the general public though!

Animals dying in R&D is whatever.
What else are we going to do?
Straight to human trials?
Not really an option

Time to move onto human trials!

if it pays, i wanna join

You'd be dead before the first check hits dawg

PETA kills more animals in a single year, so why aren't they being investigated.

Seems people just have a massive hate boner for Musk.

Probably the point is Elon and his companies dodging the whole ethics thing.

Because you worked with people who give a s***. Musk literally moved research facilities to avoid scrutiny and rigged in order to report only what he wanted to report.

They didn't. Whistleblowers have been leaking s*** about this for years.

Yup, all kinds of fuckery is done to skirt animal welfare measures/protocols. An account from someone in a similar field:
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/zj7uat/neuralink_killed_1500_animals_in_four_years_now/izun9b3/?context=8&depth=9

this experiment should not be happening at all

the science is nonsense

what is trying to be achieved is factually impossible

If we stopped doing research every time something was called impossible we wouldnt be where we are today. Im no musk fan. But animal research is a necessary evil unless you want to start sacrificing humans. And even if some animal activists would prefer that general society has a tendency to want to keep humans alive.

congrats this post shows you dont actually know how science works