11 ms·

At Musk’s brain-chip startup, animal-testing panel is rife with conflicts

140 points by wootland 3y ago

awb 3y ago
> Nineteen of the board’s 22 members were Neuralink employees as of late 2022, according to a company document reviewed by Reuters. The oversight board’s chair was the Neuralink executive who led the company’s animal-care program, and at least 11 other members were employees directly involved with animal care or research. Employees controlling the board sounds highly unusual for most companies, but for maybe not for a moonshot company? Didn’t Zuckerberg negotiate total control of the FB board? And aren’t most boards incentives linked to company performance? I’m definitely concerned about the ethics for animal testing, but I’d never trust a company or board to regulate itself. That’s what the government and the law is for. If there are concerns the government should step in.
- elil17 3y ago
  Isn’t it an ethics board, not a corporate board? So very different from FB?
- meepmorp 3y ago
  > institutional animal care and use committees That's what they're talking about, not corporate governance. If you do animal experimentation, you have an independent board that reviews the protocols, etc., to ensure things are done ethically. Similar to an IRB with human experiments. The heavy weighting towards employees isn't a sign that it was selected for its independence from the company.
  - hackernewds 3y ago
    So how did the board if independent, end up electing company representatives?
    - meepmorp 3y ago
      The board isn't sui generous, it's established by the company. But if you're going about the selection process in good faith, you try to balance the membership so the decisions aren't driven by the interests of the company vs the ethics. I'm not positively asserting that it was unethical, but prima face it doesn't look especially great.
justrealist 3y ago
[flagged]
- debatem1 3y ago
  > whose lives were vastly, immeasurably worse than any research animal. You say this very confidently, but my own experience has been the opposite. Are you speaking knowledgeably here?
  - CatWChainsaw 3y ago
    I imagine there's Neuralink, and then animal research facilities that go to great lengths to be as humane as is possible in such a line of work. In the same way, I bet free-range animals live very humane lives, yet factory farms kind of suck: https://benthams.substack.com/p/factory-farming-delenda-est https://benthams.substack.com/p/factory-farming-delenda-est
- meepmorp 3y ago
  So, basically - if we don't fix everything, then we should fix nothing.
  - justrealist 3y ago
    I am asking that indignation be a genuine reflection of one's moral balance, and not be used as a tactical cudgel on issues where one is actually ambivalent.
    - pastacacioepepe 3y ago
      That's the same thing I ask for wars, if you abhor one then you should abhor all of them and reject all warmongers, but I'm always accused of "whataboutism".
  - sebzim4500 3y ago
    More like if we're going to accept some amount of animal harm then potentially giving paraplegics a decent life should take priority over your happy meal.
jjk166 3y ago
> In response to an inquiry from Reuters, the USDA said it had found no conflicts of interest on Neuralink’s board when the department inspected its animal-research operations during 10 inspections since 2020. The company has passed all inspections with no citations, according to public records and a person with knowledge of the examinations. I'm not going to get too worked up by a private company doing something that has received no complaints from the federal agency in charge of overseeing it. If you think the USDA's regulations are too lax, that's something that we the people can potentially change.
- JacobThreeThree 3y ago
  From what I can tell by looking at the IACUC membership lists for various institutions, it's completely normal to have almost all members of these committees come from the same institution. For example, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, there are only two non-affiliated members out of an IACUC member list of 21 people. https://animalcare.illinois.edu/about/institutional-animal-care-and-use-committee https://animalcare.illinois.edu/about/institutional-animal-c... In my opinion, this Reuters article is another manifestation of the anti-Musk media bias that preys on the ignorance of your average person who won't know that this IACUC structure is entirely par for the course.
  - meowkit 3y ago
    This article and others are most certainly just baseless hit pieces. They have shown up before, and seem to be extreme animal activists leveraging anti-Musk sentiment. A neurosurgeon at Neurallink was just on Huberman Lab. He discussed, in detail: why they do the kind of animal testing they do, the humane parts, inhumane practices, the internal culture. I’ll take his word for it to be honest.
    - Veserv 3y ago
      In the interview you mention [1] at 1:27:20 “If tomorrow laws were changed and the FDA said okay you can do some of this early experimentation in willing human participants that would be a very interesting option I think there would be a lot of people who would step up.” Holy shit that is a terrifying opinion for the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink to have. He thinks it is morally acceptable to experiment on humans with untested medical procedures that have demonstrably killed at least dozens of animal subjects and using processes that have resulted in inserting the wrong fucking implants in animal subjects. That is not merely immoral, that is capital E Evil. If that is the sort of person they keep as the head of neurosurgery then I too will take his word for it and say they should be shut down and entire leadership team banned from management in any medical research as they have no business designing processes that may impact the lives of humans or other creatures when they have such a callous disregard for those same lives. https://youtu.be/3ZGItIAUQmI https://youtu.be/3ZGItIAUQmI
bilvar 3y ago
[flagged]
- bottlepalm 3y ago
  I'm sure writers are reviewed on how many eyeballs their articles bring in. It probably has more to do with how easy it is to bring in traffic when you write a controversial article about anything related to Elon than anything else. Every news org is doing it.
- valianteffort 3y ago
  It's more troubling that people are buying into this because of whatever preconceived notions they have of Musk (whether organic or influenced by the media they consume). People in general should be skeptical of everything they read in the media. No media source I have ever found is 100% honest.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    > No media source I have ever found is 100% honest. It's very hard to constantly caveat everything you communicate with your biases. It can be argued that this same skepticism should be trained on everything anyone communicates.
dmbche 3y ago
"The USDA employs 122 inspectors to inspect 11,785 facilities, ranging from zoos and breeders to labs, according to a Congressional Research Service report last July." What? Jesus that's so absurd
- boringg 3y ago
  100 per year add travel time. Easy metrics to hit. Fyi im being sarcastic- thats a bananas amount add in travel time + paperwork + pretravel prep. Maybe every 3 years, maaaybe.
  - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
    Labs, at least, are often clustered in geographic areas. Zoos are often near large metro areas with other places to inspect. Breeders and remote zoo-like facilities are probably the most difficult to get to.
- gpm 3y ago
  100 facilities per inspector doesn't seem absurd? That's roughly 2 days of inspection per year per facility.
  - dmbche 3y ago
    Well it's not like a building inspection - how many animals are in each building? You have to assess them to see their welfare - on top of checking that the enclosures and practices are up to code. Some practices might not get done in those days - and might not be reviewed. Imagine no animals has to be put down during these two days, there will be no actual review of that procedure - and so on. In slaighterhouses in Canada, we have federal inspectors during all work hours but activists still film abuse happening.
    - gpm 3y ago
      I guess you can broadly split compliance work like this into two categories, spot checks and audits. The former where you're pseudo-randomly checking that they are following the rules, and punishing them where you aren't (taxes work like this), the latter where you are systematically checking that the rules have been followed (I believe building inspections work like this). 1 inspector/100 facilities seems within the realms of reason if you're doing spot checks. It's absurd if you think you need to be doing continuous audits. It sounds like you're saying there's good reason to think the slaughterhouse business needs the latter (that there is a documented history of abuse despite them happening - I don't really know anything about the industry), but most industries seem to survive on spot checks. I don't know much about the zoos and breeders that the USDS is inspecting either, maybe continuous auditing would be a good idea, but it doesn't seem absurd to think that spot checks are sufficient. Is there some particular reason to think that they're like slaughter houses and that spot checks are clearly insufficient?
RoyGBivCap 3y ago
[flagged]
Haga 3y ago
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zorinfan 3y ago
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140 points by wootland 3y ago

awb 3y ago

> Nineteen of the board’s 22 members were Neuralink employees as of late 2022, according to a company document reviewed by Reuters. The oversight board’s chair was the Neuralink executive who led the company’s animal-care program, and at least 11 other members were employees directly involved with animal care or research. Employees controlling the board sounds highly unusual for most companies, but for maybe not for a moonshot company? Didn’t Zuckerberg negotiate total control of the FB board? And aren’t most boards incentives linked to company performance? I’m definitely concerned about the ethics for animal testing, but I’d never trust a company or board to regulate itself. That’s what the government and the law is for. If there are concerns the government should step in.

elil17 3y ago
Isn’t it an ethics board, not a corporate board? So very different from FB?
meepmorp 3y ago
> institutional animal care and use committees That's what they're talking about, not corporate governance. If you do animal experimentation, you have an independent board that reviews the protocols, etc., to ensure things are done ethically. Similar to an IRB with human experiments. The heavy weighting towards employees isn't a sign that it was selected for its independence from the company.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  So how did the board if independent, end up electing company representatives?
  - meepmorp 3y ago
    The board isn't sui generous, it's established by the company. But if you're going about the selection process in good faith, you try to balance the membership so the decisions aren't driven by the interests of the company vs the ethics. I'm not positively asserting that it was unethical, but prima face it doesn't look especially great.

justrealist 3y ago

[flagged]

debatem1 3y ago
> whose lives were vastly, immeasurably worse than any research animal. You say this very confidently, but my own experience has been the opposite. Are you speaking knowledgeably here?
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  I imagine there's Neuralink, and then animal research facilities that go to great lengths to be as humane as is possible in such a line of work. In the same way, I bet free-range animals live very humane lives, yet factory farms kind of suck: https://benthams.substack.com/p/factory-farming-delenda-est https://benthams.substack.com/p/factory-farming-delenda-est
meepmorp 3y ago
So, basically - if we don't fix everything, then we should fix nothing.
- justrealist 3y ago
  I am asking that indignation be a genuine reflection of one's moral balance, and not be used as a tactical cudgel on issues where one is actually ambivalent.
  - pastacacioepepe 3y ago
    That's the same thing I ask for wars, if you abhor one then you should abhor all of them and reject all warmongers, but I'm always accused of "whataboutism".
- sebzim4500 3y ago
  More like if we're going to accept some amount of animal harm then potentially giving paraplegics a decent life should take priority over your happy meal.

jjk166 3y ago

> In response to an inquiry from Reuters, the USDA said it had found no conflicts of interest on Neuralink’s board when the department inspected its animal-research operations during 10 inspections since 2020. The company has passed all inspections with no citations, according to public records and a person with knowledge of the examinations. I'm not going to get too worked up by a private company doing something that has received no complaints from the federal agency in charge of overseeing it. If you think the USDA's regulations are too lax, that's something that we the people can potentially change.

JacobThreeThree 3y ago
From what I can tell by looking at the IACUC membership lists for various institutions, it's completely normal to have almost all members of these committees come from the same institution. For example, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, there are only two non-affiliated members out of an IACUC member list of 21 people. https://animalcare.illinois.edu/about/institutional-animal-care-and-use-committee https://animalcare.illinois.edu/about/institutional-animal-c... In my opinion, this Reuters article is another manifestation of the anti-Musk media bias that preys on the ignorance of your average person who won't know that this IACUC structure is entirely par for the course.
- meowkit 3y ago
  This article and others are most certainly just baseless hit pieces. They have shown up before, and seem to be extreme animal activists leveraging anti-Musk sentiment. A neurosurgeon at Neurallink was just on Huberman Lab. He discussed, in detail: why they do the kind of animal testing they do, the humane parts, inhumane practices, the internal culture. I’ll take his word for it to be honest.
  - Veserv 3y ago
    In the interview you mention [1] at 1:27:20 “If tomorrow laws were changed and the FDA said okay you can do some of this early experimentation in willing human participants that would be a very interesting option I think there would be a lot of people who would step up.” Holy shit that is a terrifying opinion for the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink to have. He thinks it is morally acceptable to experiment on humans with untested medical procedures that have demonstrably killed at least dozens of animal subjects and using processes that have resulted in inserting the wrong fucking implants in animal subjects. That is not merely immoral, that is capital E Evil. If that is the sort of person they keep as the head of neurosurgery then I too will take his word for it and say they should be shut down and entire leadership team banned from management in any medical research as they have no business designing processes that may impact the lives of humans or other creatures when they have such a callous disregard for those same lives. https://youtu.be/3ZGItIAUQmI https://youtu.be/3ZGItIAUQmI

bilvar 3y ago

[flagged]

bottlepalm 3y ago
I'm sure writers are reviewed on how many eyeballs their articles bring in. It probably has more to do with how easy it is to bring in traffic when you write a controversial article about anything related to Elon than anything else. Every news org is doing it.
valianteffort 3y ago
It's more troubling that people are buying into this because of whatever preconceived notions they have of Musk (whether organic or influenced by the media they consume). People in general should be skeptical of everything they read in the media. No media source I have ever found is 100% honest.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  > No media source I have ever found is 100% honest. It's very hard to constantly caveat everything you communicate with your biases. It can be argued that this same skepticism should be trained on everything anyone communicates.

dmbche 3y ago

"The USDA employs 122 inspectors to inspect 11,785 facilities, ranging from zoos and breeders to labs, according to a Congressional Research Service report last July." What? Jesus that's so absurd

boringg 3y ago
100 per year add travel time. Easy metrics to hit. Fyi im being sarcastic- thats a bananas amount add in travel time + paperwork + pretravel prep. Maybe every 3 years, maaaybe.
- anonymouskimmer 3y ago
  Labs, at least, are often clustered in geographic areas. Zoos are often near large metro areas with other places to inspect. Breeders and remote zoo-like facilities are probably the most difficult to get to.
gpm 3y ago
100 facilities per inspector doesn't seem absurd? That's roughly 2 days of inspection per year per facility.
- dmbche 3y ago
  Well it's not like a building inspection - how many animals are in each building? You have to assess them to see their welfare - on top of checking that the enclosures and practices are up to code. Some practices might not get done in those days - and might not be reviewed. Imagine no animals has to be put down during these two days, there will be no actual review of that procedure - and so on. In slaighterhouses in Canada, we have federal inspectors during all work hours but activists still film abuse happening.
  - gpm 3y ago
    I guess you can broadly split compliance work like this into two categories, spot checks and audits. The former where you're pseudo-randomly checking that they are following the rules, and punishing them where you aren't (taxes work like this), the latter where you are systematically checking that the rules have been followed (I believe building inspections work like this). 1 inspector/100 facilities seems within the realms of reason if you're doing spot checks. It's absurd if you think you need to be doing continuous audits. It sounds like you're saying there's good reason to think the slaughterhouse business needs the latter (that there is a documented history of abuse despite them happening - I don't really know anything about the industry), but most industries seem to survive on spot checks. I don't know much about the zoos and breeders that the USDS is inspecting either, maybe continuous auditing would be a good idea, but it doesn't seem absurd to think that spot checks are sufficient. Is there some particular reason to think that they're like slaughter houses and that spot checks are clearly insufficient?

RoyGBivCap 3y ago

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Haga 3y ago

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zorinfan 3y ago

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