Elon Musk’s brain implant startup, Neuralink, and the University of California, Davis, have been accused of “egregious violations of the Animal Welfare Act” by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), citing documents obtained through a public records lawsuit.
The nonprofit — which successfully pressured U.S. medical schools including Johns Hopkins to stop using live pigs for surgical training — is asking the USDA to investigate the research facilities at UC Davis and Neuralink, saying the “carelessness by these facilities resulted in the suffering and death of several monkeys.”
Neuralink did not respond to a request for information from Medical Design & Outsourcing, but UC Davis said Neuralink researchers used facilities at the school’s California National Primate Research Center, with university staff providing veterinary care and monitoring of the monkeys. The university said the research protocols were approved by the UC Davis Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, and that the research collaboration with Neuralink ended in 2020.
