Maybe it's my background in medical devices, but none of this seems gruesome.<p>Infections, wounds bleeding, broken devices, complications from brain implants like bleeding or brain damage. These are certainly bad outcomes, but I wouldn't say unexpected or something you wouldn't see with other animal tests for medical devices.<p>Keep in mind this description comes from Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine which seeks to <i>abolish animal testing entirely</i>. Not an unbiased source.<p>If Musk's company were doing this alone, I might assume something bad is happening, but it's not, the tests are done in partnership with "California National Primate Research Center (CNPRC), a federally funded bioresearch facility at UC Davis".<p>I'd find it hard to believe a government run, non-profit center which are experts in primate research (and operating within a public university) aren't follow laws around animal testing and appropriate care and effort to prevent suffering.
It’s downright criminal what they did. This should never ever have been allowed, the company should be dissolved. Also Musk should be jailed for his role in all of this, as a founder and the one pushing for results, resulting in all of this. Fucking hell.
Neuralink is basically doing ground breaking micro electrodes implantation through robotics assisted open brain surgery. Sometimes the implants cause complications. If you are familiar with how brain surgery works, nothing about what happened to the monkeys is considered remotely gruesome. This stuff has been going on in research labs and hospitals for decades. Lay people just don't get to hear about them often.
Monkey killing ethics questions aside, it really is typical of Elon to blatantly lie about this when he could have just pointed out there is plenty of other research being done with monkeys.
The studies are now in humans, and any such gruesomeness that occurs there will be scrutinized. With the complex coverage Neurolink gets and the polarity of opinions on Musk, it will be interesting to see how patient enrollment goes.