California, Europe Brief News – Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk has invested in the firm Neuralink to create a device which enables the human brain to connect with a computer.
A Complaint was registered against the firm to the US Department of Agriculture for possible cruel treatment of macaque monkeys which are being a part of the plan to test the technology.
The Firm refused to accept any claims of the animal cruelty. The firm even said that the technology works with animals in the most humane and ethical way possible.
In the blog post, Neuralink said “Our central mission is to design an animal care program prioritising the needs of the animals, rather than the typical strategy of building for human convenience alone”.
Seizures and Trauma
At the beginning of the research for creating a device, Neuralink shook hands with Davis National Primate Research Centre which is a part of the University of California.
By the time the firm gets to 2020, they created their own vivarium to keep the monkeys with the plans of improving on the current Standards.
The Complaint was registered against UC Davis to stop the cruel treatment of monkeys for the sake of technological testing. The main part of the complaint consists of claims that deadly experiments are being conducted on 23 monkeys.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed a complaint. The Committee further claimed “Most of the animals had portions of their skulls removed to implant electrodes in their brains”.
The Committee is even planning to register a second appeal to urge the university to release videos and photos of the monkey.
Surgical Complications
To counter the several claims, neurolink has said that two animals were intentionally put to death at planned end dates to collect critical histrological data.
UC Davis said “ These reasons included one surgical complication involving the use of the FDA approved product, BioGlue, one device failure and four suspected device association infections”.
Neuralink
Neuralink came into existence in 2016 and since then Elon has been privately funding this firm.
The firm is working on devices that consist of small probes developed with the help of thousands of electrodes which are mainly attached to stretchable thread to monitor activity of neurons.
In the beginning, the device was set up to help patients with severe neurological complications but Elon Musk also has a vision of Superhuman Cognition.
