The head of the U.S. agency responsible for animal welfare has told lawmakers that it did not find any violations of animal research rules at Elon Musk's Neuralink beyond a 2019 incident the brain implant company had already reported.
Officials with the Department of Agriculture conducted a "focused" inspection in response to a complaint about the company's handling of animal experiments, but identified no compliance breaches, the agency's secretary Thomas Vilsack wrote to Congressman Earl Blumenauer in a July 14 letter reviewed by Reuters.
Musk has expressed grand ambitions for his brain-implant startup, saying its chip would allow healthy and disabled people alike to pop into neighborhood facilities for speedy surgical insertions of devices to treat obesity, autism, depression and schizophrenia. He even sees them being used for web-surfing and telepathy.Vilsack said in his letter his agency did not include in its inspection citations an "adverse surgical event" at Neuralink that occurred in August 2019.
The complaint that triggered the latest inspection was made in February 2022 by PCRM against Neuralink and the University of California, Davis, which was collaborating with the company at the time. It alleged the company carried out deadly experiments on 23 monkeys between 2017 and 2020. Neuralink ended its collaboration with UC Davis in 2020.
Vilsack offered no update on the progress of the OIG probe. "Should investigate the Neuralink facility and find that USDA should take additional actions, we will fully cooperate to take those actions," he wrote.Blumenauer responded by calling for greater urgency in the probe. "I urge the Office of the Inspector General to quickly conclude their investigation and make public their findings," he said in a statement.
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