ELON Musk has faced immense scrutiny for horrific and ‘unethical’ experiments, as scientists express concern.
In 2016, the world’s richest man founded Neuralink, a neurotechnology company that hopes to soon implant chips into people’s brains.
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Dubbed Link, the chip would monitor, and even stimulate brain activity.
Most notably, it holds promise for the “restoration of sensory and motor function and the treatment of neurological disorders,” according to Musk.
That’s just one of several claims the billionaire has made regarding the work that Neuralink is conducting.
However, the reality of the situation may be a bit grimmer than Musk lets on, according to experts.
Here’s everything we know about Neuralink.
There have been ‘unethical’ animal deaths
Earlier this year, Neuralink confirmed that at least some of the 23 macaque monkeys involved in Link experiments either died from trauma or euthanization.
The experiments were conducted from 2017 to 2020, and even prompted the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine to file a complaint against Neuralink for subjecting monkeys to abuse.
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Facial trauma, seizures, and loss of toes and fingers were just some of the trauma the animals endured, according to the Physician’s Committee report.
Shortly after the report was filed, many animal activists took to social media to publicly decry Musk and Neuralink as unethical.
Experts are worried ‘brain hacking’ isn’t safe
Researchers and scientists have expressed both fear and horror at Musk’s goal of connecting human brains to computers.
This mainly stems from many questions regarding the safety of the devices.
“What I’ve seen in the field is we’re really good at implanting [the devices],” Dr. Laura Cabrera, who researches neuroethics at Penn State told The Daily Beast.
“But if something goes wrong, we really don’t have the technology to explant them” safely without damaging the brain.
Meanwhile, Dr. Johnson of SUNY Upstate, questioned whether the science backs Musk’s vision at all.
“If Neuralink is claiming that they’ll be able to use their device therapeutically to help disabled persons, they’re overpromising because they’re a long way from being able to do that,” Johnson said.
The technology may be misused
Other reasonable concerns include the misuse of this technology for profit.
“I don’t think there is sufficient public discourse on what the big picture implications of this kind of technology becoming available [are],” said Dr. Karola Kreitmair, assistant professor of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“I worry that there’s this uncomfortable marriage between a company that is for-profit… and these medical interventions that hopefully are there to help people,” she added.
Dr. L. Syd Johnson, an associate professor in the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at SUNY Upstate Medical University, also worries that human research subjects are being “exploited and used in risky research for someone else’s commercial gain.”
“Our brain is our last bastion of freedom, our last place for privacy,” said Dr. Nita Farahany, a scholar on emerging technologies at the Duke University School of Law.
However, the device carries a “risk of misuse by corporations, by governments, by so-called bad actors,” Farahany added.
“So when you have a company like Neuralink, [which] is talking about going into human trials, I think it really should put the world on alert that the time to be developing robust concepts like cognitive liberty is now.”
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