Neuralink has been sought after by thousands of people according to businessinsider.com. Neuralink has tried and failed to gain approval from the FDA to use their tech on people because of the chance of it overheating, or the wires causing damage. In September of this year, they began searching for people with paralysis due to a spinal injury or those experiencing ALS. Neuralink aims to help humans with things such as texting and playing games, but first the company wants to help people with neurological disorders.
Although many people have voiced that they want a Neuralink device, Neuralink is still waiting for volunteers. Vance wrote, “Neuralink has done 155 implantation surgeries using the robot on a variety of animal test subjects, including pigs and monkeys.” Elon Musk is currently feeling a need to speed up the use of Neuralink on humans because other companies such as Synchron, have already implanted their technology inside of a U.S patient. Elon has stated that Neuralink should pick up its pace, “like the world is ending” to keep up with AI.
One Neuralink executive has advised that they can’t afford to have the first three blow up, referencing the SpaceX’s first three rockets, which exploded. The company has killed over 1,500 animals since it began experimenting in 2018. Some have said, “death of animal test subjects is not uncommon in labs, employees told the news service the mortality rate has been higher than necessary due to Musk’s grueling development timeline,” according to thegarudian.com. One example of this was told by former employees which said, “in one botched experiment, the wrong size of devices was installed in 25 of 60 pigs used for testing.” Another example of this is when they implanted the device in the wrong vertebrate, which led to the death of the pigs via euthanasia because of the pain they were in.
The FDA did not confirm whether or not what happened to the pigs really did happen, citing laws that kept commercial information private. Neuralink has said it is, “absolutely committed to working with animals in the most humane and ethical way possible.” In February 2022, it had “never received a citation from the USDA inspections of [its] facilities and animal care program.” There have been some problems with the way Elon is handling animals and some worry about the safety of people, but Elon has said he will use the utmost care in future surgeries. The question is whether or not people are willing to take Elon’s word and trust that the procedure will be safe, or use other similar tech from other companies. If neither choice is satisfactory, then people may choose not to participate in this kind of technology.
