15 Monkeys Have Reportedly Died While Testing Elon Musk's Midlife Crisis Brain Chip

thegamer.com:

Neuralink, an Elon Musk-owned company that develops brain chip technology, has attracted controversy once more. Animal trials of the brain chips have been linked to the deaths of 15 monkeys used in experimentation, with only seven said to have survived.

These allegations come from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), which says it has discovered this through over 700 pages of documents acquired through the University of California Davis. The apparent deaths span 2017 to 2020, which if true, would explain why human experimentation was pushed back two years from its projected date.

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The allegations come from reports in Business Insider and the New York Post. The sources say that monkeys used in animal trials of the Neuralink chips - which are apparently threaded into their brains - undergo "extreme suffering". Both physical and neurological side effects are reported, ranging from brain haemorrhaging to self-harming behaviour. In one instance, a monkey was found to have missing fingers and toes, "possibly from self-mutilation or some other unspecified trauma". Others are reported to have died of infection as a result of poor care after the chip was inserted.

This report is a far cry from a video shared last year, which portayed a monkey calmly playing Pong. The company claims that the game was being played with the chip, without the need for a controller and using brain activity alone.

Human trials were originally said to start in 2020, but this was pushed back to 2022. Recent reports say that the company is still going ahead with these plans, and has already started hiring for the experimentation.

Musk has,