The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) denounced the University of California (UC) at Davis and billionaire Elon Musk’s company Neuralink for causing and concealing the death of 16 monkeys during experiments.
In almost 600 pages of documents and records of the investigation, the non-profit institution details that the brain experiments carried out with these monkeys violated the Federal Animal Welfare Law.
The PCRM asserted that Neuralink and the UC Davis staff did not provide the monkeys with adequate veterinary care , used an unapproved substance known as “Bioglue” that killed the monkeys by destroying parts of their brains, and did not take care of their psychological well-being.
UC Davis received 1.4 million dollars from of the company Neuralink for the investigation: “UC Davis may have given its publicly funded facilities to a billionaire, but that does not mean it can circumvent transparency requirements and violate federal animal welfare laws,” said Jeremy Beckham , of the Medical Committee.
“The documents reveal that the monkeys had their brains mutilated in poor quality experiments and were left to suffer and die. It is no mystery why Elon Musk and the university want to keep the photos and videos of this horrible abuse hidden from the public,” he added.
An implant to play
The project financed by Neuralink was not a secret. In fact, the same company disclosed the images of these monkeys using their “mind to play video games”.
However, the PCRM filed a second lawsuit to force the university to publish the photographs and videos of the animals, in order to publicize the conditions of these primates.
Most of these 23 Monkeys had part of their skulls removed to implant a device into their brains as part of Neuralink’s development of a “brain-machine interface.”
Neuralink develops these devices and tests them on animals with the hope of being able to do the same process in humans for the 2023, with the idea that this could be a help, for example, so that a person can recover their mobility.
“I want to be clear. The early applications – the device – will really only be for people with a serious brain injury where, well, the value of the implant is just huge,” Elon Musk said a little over a year ago.
Meanwhile, UC Davis refuses to publish the images, alleging that these documents belong to Neuralink, a private company that is not subject to US legislation.
With information from DW.
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