US investigating Elon Musk's brain implant company Neuralink. Here's why

The United States administration said on Thursday (February 9) that it was investigating Elon Musk's Neuralink- a brain implant company over the potentially illegal movement of hazardous pathogens. A spokesperson from the Department of Transportation informed news agency Reuters about the investigation after the Physicians Committee of Responsible Medicine (PCRM) wrote to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg to alert it of records it obtained on the issue.

The PCRM, which is an animal-welfare advocacy group, said it had obtained emails and other documents which suggested unsafe packaging and movement of implants removed from the brains of monkeys. The PCRM added that these implants may have carried infectious diseases in violation of federal law.

On Thursday, the Department of Transportation spokesperson told Reuters that the above allegations levelled by the PCRM should be taken very seriously. "We are conducting an investigation to ensure that Neuralink is in full compliance with federal regulations and keeping their workers and the public safe from potentially dangerous pathogens," the spokesperson added.

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Neuralink is developing a brain implant which it hopes would help paralysed people walk again and cure other neurological ailments. The PCRM has raised concerns about this company of Elon Musk in the past. In December last year, Neuralink had been under a federal investigation over potential animal welfare violations, and some of its employees made internal complaints about experiments being rushed which caused needless suffering and deaths.

As per documents cited by the PCRM, incidents which involved potential breaches of hazardous material transportation regulations happened in 2019, when the company relied on the University of California, Davis (UC Davis) to help carry out its experiments on primates. Neuralink's partnership with UC Davis ended a year later (in 2020).

However, the PCRM said that Elon Musk's company continued to employ the neurosurgeon who oversaw experiments and other staff involved might also still be employed.

A letter by PCRM said that pathogens were carried on removed from monkeys after improper sanitisation and packaging. It added these pathogens could cause serious health problems in human beings including severe brain damage and pneumonia. The PCRM did not identify any harm as a result of these above incidents but pointed out that Neuralink's actions might pose a serious and ongoing public health risk, Reuters reported.

The animal-welfare advocacy group further said that it found instances that appeared to describe UC Davis employees urging immediate biohazard training for Neuralink employees following incidents which caused contamination concerns. In one such case in 2019, an employee in the university wrote in an email that the university's primate centre was “at risk” for “monkey-contaminated hardware.”

Also in 2022, PCRM wrote to federal officials about the alleged animal-welfare issues during Neuralink's research partnership with the University of California, Davis, citing a set of records it obtained. Reuters had earlier reported that a prosecutor in the Northern District of California had referred the PCRM's complaint to the inspector general of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which later launched the federal investigation.

(With inputs from agencies)

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