Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, July 19 (Reuters)-U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Thomas Vilsack (Thomas Vilsack) said in a letter to Congressman Earl Blumenner on July 14 that the department had not found any violations of animal research rules by Neuralink, Elon Musk's brain-computer interface company, except for the reported 2019 incident.

Ministry of Agriculture officials conducted a "priority" inspection after receiving a complaint about the company's handling of animal experiments, but found no compliance problems, Vilsack wrote. This inspection includes visits to two facilities in Neuralink in January 2023, and more inspections will be carried out.

Musk has big ambitions for his brain implant startup, which he has said will make it easy for healthy and disabled people to perform rapid surgeries at nearby facilities to treat obesity, autism, depression and schizophrenia. He even thinks they can be used for Internet surfing and telepathy, and Neuralink is preparing to test its brain implants on humans.

Vilsack said in the letter that the department did not include in the inspection record an "adverse surgical event" that occurred in Neuralink in August 2019. Because the company took the initiative to report the incident and took corrective measures, which was in line with the policy at that time. The Ministry of Agriculture changed the rules in 2021 so that self-reported violations can no longer go unpunished.

According to emails and public records obtained by the Council for responsible Medicine (PCRM), an animal welfare advocacy group, during the 2019 incident, a Neuralink surgeon used a sealant that had not been approved by the Animal Research Surveillance team to seal holes drilled in monkey skulls.

The complaint that triggered the latest inspection was filed by PCRM in February 2022 against Neuralink and the University of California, Davis (UC Davis), which was working with the company at the time, accusing the company of conducting lethal experiments on 23 monkeys between 2017 and 2020. Neuralink ended its partnership with UC Davis in 2020.

In addition, Reuters found through years of interviews and internal documents that four Neuralink experiments involving 86 pigs and two monkeys were problematic due to human error. These errors weaken the research value of the experiment and require repeated tests, resulting in more animals being killed.

Vilsack, who did not provide an update on the progress of the investigation by the Office of the Inspector General of Agriculture (OIG), said: "if (OIG) investigates Neuralink facilities and finds that the Department of Agriculture should take additional actions, we will cooperate fully with these actions."

CTOnews.com previously reported that the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently approved Neuralink's request to start testing its brain implant device in humans. The agency rejected Neuralink's request to conduct a human trial last year for safety reasons.

Even with FDA's approval, the company faces other challenges. The Department of Transportation is investigating whether Neuralink illegally transported dangerous pathogens removed from monkeys' brains without proper isolation.

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