Neuralink, Elon Musk’s company for developing neural interfaces, is torturing and mutilating monkeys, an animal rights group says in a lawsuit.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine announced on Thursday that it was filing two actions against Neuralink and the University of California, Davis, for their treatment of monkeys in the design of neural interfaces.
“UC Davis may have handed over its publicly-funded facilities to a billionaire, but that doesn’t mean it can evade transparency requirements and violate federal animal welfare laws,” said research advocacy coordinator Jeremy Beckham in a press statement. “The documents reveal that monkeys had their brains mutilated in shoddy experiments and were left to suffer and die. It’s no mystery why Elon Musk and the university want to keep photos and videos of this horrific abuse hidden from the public.”
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The first complaint, filed with the Department of Agriculture over allegations of the two entities violating the Animal Welfare Act, seeks an investigation into the university over the alleged infringements. The second was filed as a public records lawsuit in the Yolo County Superior Court in an attempt to force UC Davis to release additional information about its partnership with Neuralink, including images, videos, and the identification numbers of the monkeys.
Neuralink signed a deal with UC Davis due to the university’s prominence as a primate research facility in 2017, and they worked together until 2020, a spokesperson for the university told the Washington Examiner. During that time, Neuralink installed implants into 23 primates, 15 of whom died or were euthanized between 2017 and 2020, based on veterinary papers from the university. Seven of the remaining monkeys were transferred into the custody of Neuralink, and the eighth monkey’s fate is unclear due to record issues.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine said it believes that UC Davis has withheld photo and video evidence from their information request, hiding critical details about the fate of the monkeys in the process, prompting the action taken in the Yolo County Superior Court, Beckham told the Washington Examiner.
The lawsuit is an amended version building on the initial lawsuit filed by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine in May of last year requesting the initial records, which the advocacy group did not receive until October.
Details about the state of the monkeys emerged in the reports. In one case, a primate had its neural interface attached through a substance called “bioglue” that destroyed parts of its brain, the group claimed based on the records. The substance had not been approved for use by the university’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, yet it was applied to two monkeys, killing them in the process, Beckham told the Washington Examiner.
UC Davis’s research protocols were “thoroughly reviewed” and approved by the school’s committee, the spokesperson said, adding that UC Davis “complied with the California Public Records Act in responding to their request” and that all information had been supplied.
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While some researchers claim that the animals using the neural interfaces appear healthy, Beckham is convinced that the footage is selectively edited to affirm the company’s operations and hopes to see additional details revealed about UC Davis and Neuralink’s relationship entailed.
A representative for Neuralink did not respond to a request for comment from the Washington Examiner.
