Elon Musk’s Neuralink has received approval to begin human trials for the brain-computer prototype it is working on, called BCI.
Founded in 2016, Neuralink aims to commercialize BCIs for stroke and spinal cord injury rehabilitation, among others.
BCIs essentially translate the analog electrical impulses of the human brain into 1s and 0s.
Neuralink criticized for failed animal tests
In March, the FDA rejected Neuralink’s request to begin human trials, largely because animal tests had failed, with many of those animals dying.
According to internal documents obtained by Reuters in December, more than 1,500 animals were killed by Neuralink in 2018.
“The agency’s major safety concerns involved the device’s lithium battery; the potential for the implant’s tiny wires to migrate to other areas of the brain,” he told Reuters in March.
“Although Neuralink recently received FDA approval to begin the study, the company is not yet seeking volunteers. This is the result of the incredible work of the Neuralink team in close collaboration with the FDA and is an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people,” Neuralink tweeted on Thursday.
On May 25, 2023, Elon Musk’s brain-computer interface company Neuralink tweeted that it had received approval from the FDA to begin human clinical trials.
It is important to remember that such FDA approval is not an acquittal of Neuralink’s well-documented history of animal cruelty and sloppy scientific studies. Approval is also no guarantee that a Neuralink device will one day be commercially available, as a significant number of medical devices that begin clinical trials never reach the market.
In addition, Neuralink will likely continue to conduct experiments on monkeys, pigs and other animals even after clinical trials have begun. Previous animal experiments have revealed serious safety issues stemming from the invasiveness of the product and the hasty and careless actions of company employees. As such, the public should remain skeptical about the safety and functionality of any device produced by Neuralink, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine advised.
