Francesca Capozzi Elon Musk's Neuralink devices have received approval in the US, described as "innovative" but atrocious for the experiments that laboratory rats had to endure on their brains. Can this ever be ethical research?
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Blindsight is the new chip from Neuralink, the brain technology company of Elon Musk. Still, it received U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval, which since the announcement has caused a very heated debate on the various ethical ramifications of the technology.
The FDA described the experimental device as “innovative”, and Musk himself tagged it as a revolution that would permit people “who have lost both eyes or the optic nerve to see again,” he said in a tweet. But at what price?
The Blindsight device from Neuralink will enable even those who have lost both eyes and their optic nerve to see.
Provided the visual cortex is intact, it will even enable those who have been blind from birth to see for the first time.
To set expectations correctly, the vision… https://t.co/MYLHNcPrw6 pic.twitter.com/RAenDpd3fx
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 17, 2024
Questionable Testing on Animals
These implants have been developed through excruciatingly painful and cruel tests conducted on the brains of monkeys, pigs, sheep, mice, and other laboratory animals. The company Neuralink has been open about the “necessary” experiments involved in this process and more often than not has resorted to justifications.
Elon Musk was a self-proclaimed ‘technoking’ until, in a 2023 post, he announced that the first implants were into sort of terminal monkeys-I mean, monkeys that were sort of already close to death, and the process, if you will, somehow or another is, it’s more ethical.
No monkey has died as a result of a Neuralink implant.
First our early implants, to minimize risk to healthy monkeys, we chose terminal moneys (close to death already),
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 10, 2023
Da un’indagine federale è invece emerso che dal 2018 al 2022 più di 1000 animali sono morti per testare i chip di Neuralink in esperimenti sadici. Scimmie immobilizzate su tavoli, crani perforati per impiantare i dispositivi, traumi facciali, infezioni.
A federal investigation, however, revealed that more than 1,000 animals died while testing Neuralink chips in sadistic experiments between 2018 and 2022. Reports described horrific conditions, including monkeys restrained to tables for the implantation of devices in their skulls, causing facial trauma and infections.
This has been echoed by the organization PETA, as they questioned from the moment the chip was announced what happened to the animals sacrificed for the sake of the project.
A broader ethical issue
Musk’s new technology is bringing to the front once more the debate on animal testing, regarding which boundaries are too far concerning experimentation. Every year, experimentation causes the enormous killing of laboratory animals.
Among these, hundreds died after prolonged and intense suffering.
Source: Neuralink/X
