Musk’s Neuralink Faces Federal Inquiry After Killing 1,500 Animals In Testinghttps://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/05/neuralink-animal-testing-elon-musk-investigationElon Musk's brain-computer interface company Neuralink is under investigation by the US Department of Agriculture for possible animal welfare violations amid allegations from current and former employees that the company abused animals in slapdash research leading to "hack job" surgeries that led to needless pain and suffering of animals before they were euthanized, spurred by Musk's rushed timelines, according to documents reviewed by
Reuters and sources familiar with the investigation and company operations.
The federal investigation, which has not been previously reported, was opened in recent months by the US Department of Agriculture’s inspector general at the request of a federal prosecutor, according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation. The inquiry, one of the sources said, focuses on violations of the Animal Welfare Act, which governs how researchers treat and test some animals.
The investigation has come at a time of growing employee dissent about Neuralink’s animal testing, including complaints that pressure from Musk to accelerate development has resulted in botched experiments, according to a
Reuters review of dozens of Neuralink documents and interviews with more than 20 current and former employees. Such failed tests have had to be repeated, increasing the number of animals being tested and killed, the employees say. The company documents include previously unreported messages, audio recordings, emails, presentations and reports.
... In all, the company has killed about 1,500 animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs and monkeys, following experiments since 2018, according to records reviewed by
Reuters and sources with direct knowledge of the company’s animal-testing operations. The sources characterized that figure as a rough estimate because the company does not keep precise records on the number of animals tested and killed. Neuralink has also conducted research using rats and mice.
Current and former Neuralink employees say the number of animal deaths is higher than it needs to be for reasons related to Musk’s demands to speed research. Through company discussions and documents spanning several years, along with employee interviews,
Reuters identified four experiments involving 86 pigs and two monkeys that were marred in recent years by human errors. The mistakes weakened the experiments’ research value and required the tests to be repeated, leading to more animals being killed, three of the current and former staffers said.
The three people attributed the mistakes to a lack of preparation by a testing staff working in a "pressure-cooker environment".Overall, employees blamed the avoidable accidents on Musk pushing researchers for faster progress with rushed timelines and deadlines.
One employee, in a message seen by Reuters, wrote an angry missive this year to colleagues about the need to overhaul how the company organizes animal surgeries to prevent
“hack jobs”. The rushed schedule, the employee wrote, resulted in under-prepared and over-stressed staffers scrambling to meet deadlines and making last-minute changes before surgeries, raising risks to the animals.
This year, the chief executive sent staffers a news article about Swiss researchers who developed an electrical implant that helped a paralyzed man to walk again. “We could enable people to use their hands and walk again in daily life!” he wrote to staff at 6.37am Pacific time on 8 February. Ten minutes later, he followed up: “In general, we are simply not moving fast enough. It is driving me nuts!”
On several occasions over the years, Musk has told employees to imagine they had a bomb strapped to their heads in an effort to get them to move faster, according to three sources who repeatedly heard the comment. On one occasion a few years ago, Musk told employees he would trigger a “market failure” at Neuralink unless they made more progress, a comment perceived by some employees as a threat to shut down operations, according to a former staffer who heard his comment.
One former employee who asked management several years ago for more deliberate testing was told by a senior executive it wasn’t possible given Musk’s demands for speed, the employee said. Two people told
Reuters they had left the company over concerns about animal research.
... The mistakes leading to unnecessary animal deaths included one instance in 2021 when 25 out of 60 pigs in a study had devices that were the wrong size implanted in their heads, an error that could have been avoided with more preparation, according to a person with knowledge of the situation and company documents and communications reviewed by
Reuters.
The mistake raised alarm among Neuralink’s researchers. In May 2021, Viktor Kharazia, a scientist, wrote to colleagues that
the mistake could be a “red flag” to FDA reviewers of the study, which the company planned to submit as part of its application to begin human trials. His colleagues agreed, and the experiment was repeated with 36 sheep, according to the person with knowledge of the situation. All the animals, both the pigs and the sheep, were killed after the procedures, the person said.
On another occasion, staff accidentally implanted Neuralink’s device on the wrong vertebra of two different pigs during two separate surgeries, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter and documents reviewed by
Reuters.
The company veterinarian Sam Baker advised his colleagues to immediately kill one of the pigs to end her suffering.
“Based on low chance of full recovery … and her current poor psychological wellbeing, it was decided that euthanasia was the only appropriate course of action,” Baker wrote colleagues about one of the pigs a day after the surgery, adding a broken heart emoji. 💔
Neuralink executives have said publicly that the company tests animals only when it has exhausted other research options, but documents and company messages suggest otherwise. During a 30 November presentation the company broadcast on YouTube, for example,
Musk said surgeries were used at a later stage of the process to confirm that the device worked rather than to test early hypotheses. “We’re extremely careful,” he said, to make sure that testing is “confirmatory, not exploratory”, using animal testing as a last resort after trying other methods.
In October, a month before Musk’s comments, Autumn Sorrells, the head of animal care, ordered employees to scrub “exploration” from study titles retroactively and stop using it in the future.
Neuralink records reviewed by Reuters contained numerous references over several years to exploratory surgeries, and three people with knowledge of the company’s research strongly rejected the assertion that Neuralink avoids exploratory tests on animals. Company discussions reviewed by Reuters showed several employees expressing concerns about Sorrells’ request to change exploratory study descriptions, saying it would be inaccurate and misleading.
One noted that the request seemed designed to provide “better optics” for Neuralink.
