Elon Musk's Neuralink 'has been mutilating and killing monkeys'

Elon Musk plans to hold a 'Show and Tell' event for his brain chip company Neuralink today (November 30), but a group of physicians claims the firm is 'mutilating and killing monkeys' to create a 'brain-machine interface.'

Musk announced the event, which the company holds each year to showcase its latest updates, on Twitter. The first Show and Tell in 2020 demonstrated the brain implant in a pig and in 2021, the world saw it used by a monkey that died months after receiving the implant.

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) recently launched a website detailing the gruesome stories of monkeys that are said to have suffered from sloppy experiments conducted at the University of California, Davis (UC Davis).

PCRM shared lab notes detailing several experiments conducted on monkeys that had received implanted electrodes during surgeries. 

Nueralink's head neurosurgeon Matthew MacDougall's name is shown within the messages as 'running the procedures.'

Reina Pohl, the communication specialist for PCRM, said that the lab notes were provided to the group by UC Davis due to a lawsuit filed against it by PCRM in February - but notes Neuralink employees conducted the experiments.

The lawsuit states the animals 'suffered infections from the implanted electrodes placed in their brains' and an 'unapproved substance' known as BioGlue 'killed monkeys by destroying portions of their brains.'

PCRM, which includes more than 17,000 physicians, states that the experiments were conducted at UC Davis, and Neuralink paid $1.4 million to use the university's facilities.

Neuralink has confirmed it conducted tests at the university and previously noted several animals were euthanized during experiments.

'As part of this work, two animals were euthanized at planned end dates to gather important histological data, and six animals were euthanized at the medical advice of the veterinary staff at UC Davis,' reads a Neuralink blog post.