Using animals in scientific research is a privilege and one that comes with a huge number of responsibilities. Ethics approval (in my - admittedly limited - experience) requires a justification for the number of animals being used and an annual review to confirm that their use is still justified and that they are being cared for correctly. Why on earth were they allowed to use 23 monkeys when so many of them were dying?Neuralink chips were implanted by drilling holes into the monkeys’ skulls. One primate developed a bl..dy skin infection and had to be euthanized. Another was discovered missing fingers and toes, “possibly from self-mutilation or some other unspecified trauma,” and had to be put down. A third began uncontrollably vomiting shortly after surgery, and days later “appeared to collapse from exhaustion/fatigue.” An autopsy revealed the animal suffered from a brain hemorrhage...
“Pretty much every single monkey that had had implants put in their head suffered from pretty debilitating health effects,” said the PCRM’s research advocacy director Jeremy Beckham...
“These highly invasive implants and their associated hardware, which are inserted in the brain after drilling holes in the animals’ skulls, have produced recurring infections in the animals, significantly compromising their health, as well as the integrity of the research.”
I am not against animal experimentation. I recognise it's necessary for many types of scientific research, and I recognise that performing invasive surgery is something only a small percentage of animals undergo. But this doesn't seem like a justifiable use of primates. And it worries me.
I'm worried that this plays into the hands of those who oppose animal experimentation and may make it harder or more dangerous for those who do legitimate animal experimentation. But it also worries me that research centres are apparently willing to relax their standards if people hand them enough money. I don't believe this would have been allowed to happen if it was a normal research project. But because it's Musk with his billions UC Davis seems to have looked the other way. The article notes that they stopped working with Neuralink in 2020, and it's not clear of the timeline - when they started working with the monkeys, when they started implanting the chips, etc - so it may be that the deaths all happened in the final year of the project, though that would still raise the question of why they were allowed to go from zero to 23 monkeys in a single year without confirming their techniques worked and were safe. And it may be that the animal rights group who have raised the complaint are exaggerating the harms caused. But even if that's the case, unless they're lying about the number of monkeys used and dead, the statistics do not speak well for them.
