Elon Musk has been all over the news lately for his new ownership of Twitter, his Tesla stocks plummeting, and now for animal cruelty allegations involving his new company, Neuralink. Elon Musk is the founder of Neuralink; a neurotechnology company that cultivates implantable brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) to improve the connection between humans and computers. A few dilemmas it’s made to cure are blindness, paralysis, epilepsy, and more.
However, Neuralink is now under investigation for violating the Animal Welfare Act. PCRM filed a complaint with USDA against the alleged violation of the Animal Welfare Act, relating to the Neuralink experiments that took place at UC Davis. The Animal Welfare Act sets minimum standards for care and treatment to be provided for certain animals used in research and testing.
According to Vox, Musk told staff to “imagine a bomb was strapped to their head as motivation to work harder and faster.”
This urgency for accelerated results has caused staff members botch or hack experiments, putting the animals through unnecessary pain and suffering. It’s been the result of over 1,500 animal deaths in which animals experience brain hemorrhaging, nausea, infections, etc.
Ms. Khaleda, a science teacher at Thomas Edison isn’t a big proponent of Elon Musk and the roots behind his projects; “I think people just fall in love with his billions of dollars but they don’t realize that he takes someone else’s ideas and makes it profitable,” she said.
She related this to Elon Musk’s Tesla company in which two engineers generated the idea for the Tesla car and Elon Musk solely acquired the car and took the idea off from them.
“That’s the thing with a lot of billionaires, they’re good business men, it’s not that they’re smart,” Ms. Khaleda said.
In around six months, Neuralink is hoping to start human trials, however, they still haven’t earned approval from the FDA.
To much of the public eye, Musk “is thinking a little too ahead.”
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