NEURALINK, a biotech company from Tesla founder Elon Musk, is accused of torturing monkeys being used for testing purposes.
An animal rights group, The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), is claiming they’ve obtained records detailing the monkeys’ abuse.
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Jeremy Beckham, MPA, MPH, research advocacy specialist with the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, told The Sun via email there was skepticism about Musk and Neuralink’s claims about the experiments.
“Our medical experts who had expertise about neurological experiments in monkeys were skeptical of the lofty claims being made by Elon Musk/Neuralink in the press at the time we submitted our first request (September 2020),” Bekham said.
“We wanted to look at the internal UC Davis records themselves, including videos and photographs, to get a better understanding of what was happening to the animals in the experiments as well as verify the integrity and promise of the research.”
The animal-rights group also told Business Insider that the records show monkeys experienced “extreme suffering as a result of inadequate animal care and the highly invasive experimental head implants during the experiments.”
Multiple media outlets are reporting that 23 monkeys were involved in the experiments, which lasted from 2017 to 2020.
However, it’s also reported 15 of the monkeys either died or were euthanized by 2020.
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The remaining seven monkeys were transferred to a Neuralink facility.
Beckham says the last of the monkeys were shipped in November 2020.
“At the time they were shipped to Neuralink, they were ‘experimentally naïve’ and hadn’t had any surgeries or other procedures performed on them,” Beckham told The Sun via email.
“We have no information what happened to them after November 2020, and likely never will.”
Neuralink is reportedly developing a brain chip that would monitor, and even stimulate brain activity.
The company inked a deal with UC Davis in 2017 to develop the brain chip technology by testing with monkeys, as the university is known for its research facility for primates.
But the animal-rights group is claiming the university withheld information about the treatment of the animals during the testing.
The monkeys may have suffered from “possibly from self-mutilation or some other unspecified trauma,” according to the New York Post.
The outlet is also reporting that the records indicate some monkeys may have had holes drilled in their heads, and others suffered from bloody skin infections.
On its website, Neuralink states: “Inserting a device into the brain always carries some risk of bleeding. We are trying to reduce that risk by using micron-scale threads, inserted with a needle whose diameter is about the size of many neurons in the brain.”
In a statement to Fortune, a UC Davis spokesperson denied the allegations, saying: “We fully complied with the California Public Records Act in responding to their request.”
Neuralink and UC Davis ended their relationship in 2020.
“We have no information as to why the relationship ended in November 2020, but it came to an abrupt end, and that does raise questions,” Beckham says.
Neither Neuralink nor UC Davis has responded to The US Sun’s request for comment.
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