According to Reuters reports, the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack (Thomas Vilsack) in a July 14 letter to Congressman Earl Blumenauer (Earl Blumenauer), said that in addition to the 2019 incident has been reported, the department did not find Elon Musk (Elon Musk) ‘s brain-computer interface company Neuralink has not been found to have violated any animal research rules, other than those already reported.
Vilsack writes that USDA officials conducted a “focused” inspection after receiving a complaint about the company’s handling of animal testing, but found no compliance issues. The inspection included a visit to two of Neuralink’s facilities in January 2023, with more inspections to come.
Musk has big ambitions for his brain-implant startup, saying his chips will make it easy for both healthy and disabled people to undergo quick surgical procedures at nearby facilities to treat obesity, autism, depression and schizophrenia. He even thinks they could be used for web surfing and telepathy, and Neuralink is preparing to test its brain-implanted devices on humans.
In his letter, Vilsack said the department did not include an “adverse surgical event” that occurred at Neuralink in August 2019 in its inspection records. That’s because the company voluntarily reported the incident and took corrective action, which was consistent with its policy at the time. The Department of Agriculture changed the rules in 2021 so that self-reported violations are no longer exempt from penalties.
In the 2019 incident, a Neuralink surgeon used a sealant that had not been approved by the Animal Research Oversight Group to close holes drilled in a monkey’s skull, according to emails and public records obtained by the Council for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), an animal welfare advocacy group.
The complaint that triggered this latest examination was filed by PCRM in February 2022 against Neuralink and the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), which was working with the company at the time, alleging that the company conducted lethal experiments on 23 monkeys between 2017 and 2020.Neuralink ended its UC Davis collaboration.
In addition, Reuters found through interviews and internal documents over the years that four of Neuralink’s experiments involving 86 pigs and two monkeys went awry due to human error. These errors undermined the research value of the experiments and required repeated tests that resulted in more animals being killed.
Vilsack did not provide an update on the progress of the USDA Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) investigation, stating, “If (the OIG) investigates the Neuralink facility and finds that additional actions should be taken by the Department of Agriculture, we will fully co-operate in taking those actions.”
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved Neuralink’s request to begin testing its brain implant device on humans, after the agency denied Neuralink’s request to conduct human trials last year for safety reasons.
Even with the FDA’s approval, the company faces other challenges. The Department of Transportation is investigating whether Neuralink illegally transported dangerous pathogens removed from monkey brains without proper quarantine.
