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Neuralink: miracle, monkey deaths, or both?

The first human implants, a regulator’s findings and the hype

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The human trials

What the implant does and what the company has disclosed.

The FDA approved Neuralink’s first human trial in May 2023, and the first implant was placed in January 2024. The patient, paralyzed from the shoulders down, demonstrated moving a cursor and playing games by thought. Neuralink also disclosed that some of the implant’s threads retracted from his brain and that it adjusted the software to compensate. [1][3]

The company’s later updates describe more patients and longer use. These are company reports, not peer-reviewed studies. [2]

What we can’t tell you. Independent, peer-reviewed results have not been published.

The sources

The animal-welfare claims

What regulators actually found.

Former employees and animal-rights groups accused Neuralink of rushed experiments that caused needless suffering and deaths. A federal inspector general opened a probe in December 2022. [1]

In July 2023, USDA said it found no breaches of animal-welfare rules beyond one incident in 2019 that the company reported itself. In February 2024, FDA inspectors reported problems with record-keeping and quality controls at the company’s animal lab. [2][3]

What we can’t tell you. The inspector general probe’s outcome has not been made public.

The sources

WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT THIS FILE

The claims, rated.

3 claims people make about this file, each rated documented, partly true, disputed, unproven or false. Think a rating is wrong? Use Dispute or Support, or join the Discussion.

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Discussion

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