Elon Musk’s Neuralink probed over material shipments
Elon Musk’s brain-implant firm Neuralink is being probed over its transport strategies after an animal rights group contacted the U.S. Department of Transportation, U.S. officers stated.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine stated that public information present untrained Neuralink staff transported “contaminated” units that had been faraway from the brains of “infected” monkeys with out safely packaging them. The incidents are stated to have taken place in 2019 on the University of California, Davis, the place experiments on rhesus macaques had been carried out.
Neuralink is one in every of many teams engaged on linking brains to computer systems, efforts aimed toward serving to deal with mind problems, overcoming mind accidents and different functions.
The origins of the know-how dates again to the Sixties, however important advances have been made lately.
Late final yr, in a livestreamed “show and tell” presentation, Musk stated his group is within the strategy of searching for approval from U.S. regulators to check his firm’s machine. He stated on the time that the corporate ought to be capable of put the implant in a human mind as a part of a medical trial in about six months, although that timeline is much from sure.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine stated medical information it obtained for the monkeys recommend that transported neural units could have been contaminated with antibiotic-resistant pathogens together with Staphylococcus and Klebsiella, which may trigger pneumonia, bloodstream infections, and meningitis. The group stated the units have even have been contaminated with Corynebacterium ulcerans, an “emerging human pathogen” that may produce deadly diphtheria. The units may have come from monkeys contaminated with Herpes B.
“The records suggest that Neuralink’s sloppy practices pose a danger to public health and safety,” Deborah Dubow Press, Esq., affiliate normal counsel with the Physicians Committee, stated.
Neuralink, primarily based in Fremont, California didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from The Associated Press.
The Transportation Department’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration is conducting the investigation.
