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Elon Musk’s Neuralink is searching for its first human test subjects for a brain chip implant study. Medical experts warn, volunteers “should have serious concerns.”
In 2019, Neuralink revealed that it had created technology that allows monkeys to control computers with their minds.
In 2020, Musk and his Neuralink company reported that they were developing a chip that can be implanted into humans’ heads which will allow people to stream music directly to their brains.
That is just one part of the surgery. For this to scale, it must be fully automated, like LASIK.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 19, 2020
Preferably not this song…
In 2021, Musk announced that he believed Neuralink would be ready to put chips in people’s brains by the year 2022. They weren’t.
Unfortunately, in 2022, Elon Musk’s Neuralink company came under fire for testing its brain chip technology on monkeys after multiple internal staff complaints.
Reportedly, 15 of the 23 monkeys used in the experiment died and had to endure “extreme suffering.”
“Pretty much every single monkey that had had implants put in their head suffered from pretty debilitating health effects,” said Jeremy Beckham, research advocacy director of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM). “They were, frankly, maiming and killing the animals.”
Now, in 2023, Neuralink says it is ready to start human testing.
“We are happy to announce that we’ve received approval from the reviewing independent institutional review board and our first hospital site to begin recruitment for our first-in-human clinical trial,” the company announced in a statement this week.
During the study, the R1 Robot will be used to surgically place the N1 Implant’s ultra-fine and flexible threads in a region of the brain that controls movement intention. Once in place, the N1 Implant is cosmetically invisible and is intended to record and transmit brain signals wirelessly to an app that decodes movement intention. The initial goal of our BCI is to grant people the ability to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone.
Unfortunately, again, this call for human volunteers by Neuralink is being met with some negative reactions.
“Patients should have serious concerns about the safety of Neuralink’s device,” Ryan Merkley, director of research advocacy for the PCRM, wrote to PopSci this week. “There are well-documented reports of company employees conducting rushed, sloppy experiments in monkeys and other animals.”
In his email to PopSci, Merkley reiterated the FDA’s past concerns regarding the Neuralink prototypes’ potential electrode migrations and removal procedures, and urged Musk’s company to “shift to developing a noninvasive brain-computer interface, where other researchers have already made progress.”
Prior to its approval for human testing, Neuralink was investigated by the Food and Drug Administration, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Transportation over an assortment of complaints made against the company.