What's this deal with Neuralink, Musk and Monkeys?

DeadNinja@lemmy.world to Ask Lemmy@lemmy.world – 49 points –

Unfortunately I have been living under a rock recently.

Can someone please ELI5 it for me ?

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From my limited knowledge of the matter:

  • Elon Musk wants Neuralink (his product/company) to become an actual product that people can buy someday
  • Testing has been done on monkeys and Elon wants human trials approved ASAP (might have already?)
  • Researchers from Neuralink have since come out against human testing apparently due to the horrible inhumane conditions that the monkey trials had on their test subjects.

Everyone feel free to correct me on anything or elaborate. I just thought that a not so good answer is better than none.

The question for me which remains, is whether the monkeys at neuralink are undergoing a particularly bad treatment or if this is a symptom of generalized animal testing. Basically, is it any better at any other location where animal testing is done? Of course, in no way does this justify or defend any of the bad behavior, but I'm cautious because there sometimes seem to be unjustified focus on some places which get all the criticism while others keep doing what they do, free of any oversight, which is quite hypocritical.

No, no. It's not about the lab conditions. Altho that may be a thing too. What they mean is that the product itself was causing brain damage to the monkeys and stuff like that. That makes human trials very dangerous

Iirc they didn't actually make any progress in the field of neuroscience and all the neuroscientist quit long ago because Musk rushed everything.

From my understanding, human trials seem to already be approved by the FDA