The US Transportation Division is investigating Elon Musk’s brain implant company, Neuralink Corp., after an animal rights group stated it obtained emails suggesting the startup didn’t comply with correct process when transport probably hazardous supplies.
The group alleged that Neuralink took doubtlessly contaminated gadgets from sickened primates and transported them with out following correct procedures in 2019. The group cites emails obtained by way of public document request exhibiting correspondence between Neuralink workers and workers on the College of California at Davis. On the time, Neuralink had contracted with UC Davis for primate analysis. It now has its personal in-house primate amenities.
The Pipelines and Hazardous Supplies Security Administration, a part of the Transportation Division, stated it took the allegations severely. “We’re conducting an investigation to make sure that Neuralink is in full compliance with federal rules and protecting their staff and the general public secure from doubtlessly harmful pathogens,” the company stated in a press release.
Representatives for Neuralink didn’t reply to request for remark. Reuters earlier reported information of the investigation.
The animal welfare group, the Physicians Committee for Accountable Drugs, wrote in a letter on Thursday addressed to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg that Neuralink had engaged in “sloppy, unsafe laboratory practices.”
A tool from the mind of a monkey who was killed in March 2019 might have been transported with out Neuralink following appropriate procedures, the group claimed, doubtlessly risking transmission of a lethal herpes virus. The report additionally alleged that in April 2019, three gadgets that had been utilized in monkey brains earlier than being eliminated and moved off-site had been discovered again on the college’s Primate Heart, in an open field with no secondary container, a violation of regulation.
“That is an publicity to anybody coming involved with the contaminated explanted {hardware} and we’re making an enormous deal about this as a result of we’re involved for human security,” a Primate Heart worker wrote in an electronic mail cited within the paperwork.
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