Company is seeking people with paralysis to test its experimental device after getting green light from independent review board

Company is seeking people with paralysis to test its experimental device after getting green light from independent review board

Elon Musk’s brain-implant startup, Neuralink, said it has received approval from an independent review board to begin recruiting patients for its first human trial. The company is seeking people with paralysis to test its experimental device in a six-year study.

Neuralink is one of several companies developing a brain-computer interface (BCI) that can collect and analyze brain signals. But its billionaire executive’s bombastic promotion of the company, including promises to develop an all-encompassing brain computer to help humans keep up with artificial intelligence, has attracted skepticism and raised ethical concerns among neuroscientists and other experts.

Last year, the Food and Drug Administration denied the company’s request to fast-track human trials, but in May approved Neuralink for an investigational device exemption (IDE) that allows a device to be used for clinical studies. The agency has not disclosed how its initial concerns were resolved.

  • Discoslugs
    7•9 months ago

    https://www.pcrm.org/ethical-science/animals-in-medical-research/pcrm-response-neuralink-claims

    From the article posted in anothers comment:

    Animal 11”: They were killed in a terminal procedure at UC Davis on March 15, 2019. Prior to this procedure, the monkey had a cranial implant surgically placed inside their brain on Dec. 3, 2018. Following this procedure, the implant became chronically infected. The monkey began to have a depressed appetite.

    October 2018, UC Davis staff noted that the monkey was “missing multiple digits [on] both hands, [right] foot,” possibly from self-mutilation or some other unspecified trauma.

    On Dec. 18, 2018, staff decided to “prophylactically or conservatively start [antibiotic treatment]” for the monkey after observing that “the skin was eroded” surrounding the implant. In the following two months, there are frequent observations of the monkey having a bloody, infected head wound from the device experimenters attached to their skull. The monkey was prescribed several types of antibiotics during this period. In January 2019, staff observed that the monkey had a “bloody head…dried blood around base at cranial implant.”

    • @bookmeat@lemm.ee
      8•9 months ago

      If people haven’t figured out how to mitigate rejection of implants to at least 99% they shouldn’t even be attempting this kind of nonsense.