Agency inspectors found problems with record keeping and quality controls for animal experiments at Elon Musk’s Neuralink, less than a month after the startup said it was cleared to test its brain implants in humans, according to an agency report reviewed by Reuters.
Tag Archive for: animal welfare
Officials with the Department of Agriculture (USDA) conducted a “focused” inspection in response to a complaint about the company’s handling of animal experiments.
The FDA nod “represents an important first step that will one day allow our technology to help many people,” Neuralink said in a tweet. It did not elaborate on the aims of the study, saying only that it was not recruiting yet and more details would be available soon.
The membership of the panel at Musk’s company, Neuralink, raises questions about potential violations of conflict-of-interest regulations aimed at protecting research integrity, a dozen animal-research and bioethics experts told Reuters. Neuralink is conducting animal experiments as it seeks regulatory approval for human trials of a brain chip intended to help paralyzed people type with their minds, among other ambitious goals.
The proposal, brought forward by animal rights non-profit PETA, suggests Charles River annually disclose the species and the country of origin of the non-human primates that it imports into the United States as a part of animal research services it offers to drug developers.
