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Here are the details on the grisly deaths of Elon Musk’s Neuralink monkeys
(www.theverge.com)
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this post was submitted on 21 Sep 2023
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So I think people here need to be mindful of how much they don’t know about animal testing, how easy it is for the topic of animal testing to become inflammatory and how much musk-hate makes that even more likely.
Animal testing and experimentation is happening all over the place. And in such work accidents to happen, as with any surgery. And a common measure to prevent suffering is to euthanise. In fact I think euthanasia is prescribed so often that it’s controversial, but you should keep in mind that any animal experimentation setup is likely to have an intentionally antagonistic relationship between experimenters and animal carers and ethicists.
There are groups deeply and actively opposed to animal experimentation of any sort and will infiltrate and target labs and try to expose them any way they can. There’s a real chance that something like that is behind these revelations. Point is that it’s often not objective and misleads you into thinking the targeted lab is particularly bad when it’s actually just a selected target for political reasons.
All of which is NOT to condone animal experimentation (I’m a vegan for example). But you really should be mindful of how dumb media hype around this issue can be.
If you’re outraged for instance, when was the last time you ate meat and how well do you think that animal was treated both before it’s killing and even during? Better than the monkey in this story? Hell, when was the last time you ran over an animal in your car and did you really need to be driving at all? Did that animal die peacefully? Did you even realise?
How many benefits come to both humanity and animals too from progress from animal experimentation and is that worth some of the mistakes and suffering caused?
These are some of the better thoughts IMO, where musk hate is really not relevant here. From what I could tell from the article, it did not seem odd at all. If you care about animals, take the issue seriously and don’t make it about one very famous person who’s cool to hate right now. Animals, and humanity, frankly deserve better.
Animal testing is awful in the best case, agreed.
What this article and other articles about Neuralink allege is that the company blew right past any kind of ethical guidelines that the industry has in a desire to be fast. The industry standard is to avoid any "undue suffering". They admit animals will suffer but all effort must be taken to minimize it.
What whistleblowers have exposed is that Neuralink started putting devices in primate's brains when they knew the devices won't work and were deadly in predictable ways. For instance a lot of monkeys got their brains cooked alive because the device put out too much waste heat. This was done because Elon was getting impatient and wanting to see progress in primate trials, so they just YOLOed a bunch of obviously deadly devices into a bunch of primate brains and in doing so, tortured and killed all the animals needlessly.
Musk is unplugging servers with customer data and then transporting them in a van. He 100% has zero interest in proper procedure. Look at the QA of Tesla ffs.
Musk is a petulant child. There’s no chip. It’s an abandoned project that killed a bunch of monkeys for a bit of press.
I mean:
I haven’t read beyond the Verge article and it would make sense that neurallink is YOLO-ing it as you say.
IME, I think people would be surprised at how much this isn’t entirely true. There are grey zones and industries with people with careers and deadlines. There are groups that know staying out of the limelight and not talking about the slightly dodgy thing they do is a good strategy. Yes there are ethics groups and oversight and a general awareness of the importance of not being evil. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if neurallink isn’t categorically different from a lot of animal industries.
If I haven't eaten meat for over 20 years and don't drive can I continue to take the moral highground on testing?
If you never use medicine that was developed with the help of animal testing I guess you could. If you do use pretty much any kind of antibiotics though, or are unfortunately diabetic and have to use insulin, then it would be pretty hypocritical.
I think part of my general point was that seeking "moral high grounds", at least as a judgmental behaviour, is a trap and can be dumb and can be part of the problem.
In a world rife with deferred ethics, I'd argue moral high ground urges and behaviours are an opiate to help us cope with the realities and difficulties of issues.
I also haven't eaten meat or animal products or driven or owned a car for a while, but personally, I'm wary of wanting to take moral high grounds or being too judgmental of those who eat meat or believe in animal testing to progress medical science. I don't think it helps the issue, argument or any animals frankly.
IMO, to get people to be better at empathy, you have to start with empathy. And then, if someone turns out to be a cunt, then well, call 'em what they are.
Otherwise, beyond all that, I personally am really not sure focusing on animal testing makes any sense if you care about the general state of animal welfare and the way humans treat animals. I personally suspect scientists in lab coats make an easy scarecrow with some subtle prejudices creeping in, and kinda probably judge people would prefer to target testing rather than the animal farming industry and the industries that destroy habitats. Outside of scientific research though, yea animal testing is probably complete trash.
As for my view on animals in scientific research, I think the whole thing could do with a pretty significant clean up where the model of scientific practice is probably in need of reform to be more efficient. Awkwardly, I suspect the scientific industry would find this difficult and for entirely shitty reasons.
Generally, I'm personally not sure where I stand on whether any animal experimentation is justified, but I'd bet much of what does happen is not entirely justifiable at all.
Very well said. As a fellow vegan I wish more of us took an approach like this. Too often I see the militant side focused on shaming and I don't think that works. It raises people's defences, gives the movement a bad name, and puts them in fight or flight mode.
You can have a moral high ground either way. It would be impossible to live in such a way that you are totally free of hypocrisy and anything someone could possibly criticize you for, which is what these people are basically asking in bad faith. They are saying you would have to live an impossible life because they do not want a moral high ground to exist at all. Just because we do not always meet our ideals does not mean we cannot have ideals, or that we cannot note when those ideals have not been met in others. I have not lived a 100% violence free life, but that isn't necessary to call out something like a murder.
i don't need to pass a purity test or stake out a moral high ground to recognize right and wrong.
no one does.
Not sure I understand you here. I wasn’t talking about purity tests. I was talking about the quality of the debate and public understanding of the general issue.
You can recognise this as wrong all you like but it won’t alter whether the broader dynamic between the media, the public and the various industries involved is mostly an uninformed and ineffectual circus that ends up not caring that much about animal welfare.
Also, if these experiments are so self evidently wrong but the meat/dairy industry is ok by you, that’s beyond a mere lack of purity, and I’d have to ask you whether the habits and pleasures of meat really are worth the suffering caused and whether you’re even aware of the sort of suffering behind the meat industry.
The overseeing bodies of humanity just isn't unbiased. We have biases and adapt and change slowly to conform to logic and reason. It has never been fair. Smoking is legal only if it is tobacco. There is no real checks on big money and their taxes they don't pay, yet you have to or face dire consequences.
There’s not much to debate or understand. Anyone can look at a primate suffering and see the wrongness there. People need years of education and training to the contrary in order to reach the opposite conclusion.
I find it illuminating that you opened up with “oh gee, what purity test” and ended with “if you eat meat you have no standing to care about animal rights”.
Instead of convoluting the discussion, why not come right out and say what you want to clearly and plainly?
Come on ... you know what I said is more nuanced that! You've got standing ... I'm talking to you about it!
And yea, I'm totally with one seeing "wrongness" in much of how humanity interacts with animals, whether they could personally do better or not.
Where we differ and maybe start talking past each other is that I think an article or incident like Neural link is a good opportunity to not just get sucked into some main stream media click baity outrage and instead think about the broader system and culture involved, where, as I've said, there's a real enough chance Musk and his company isn't especially evil but rather representative of a multiple industries.
The point about whether someone is regularly eating meat is that the meat industry is comparatively huge and something which forms a central and direct part of everyone's lives ... it's where the majority of our relationship with animal welfare begins and ends and it's the one that we can clearly think about, that we have personal stakes in and can easily investigate and do something about. Which means if you care about animal welfare, and don't want to only engage in click baity online outrage, it's the obvious place to start and have a conversation. Which, of course, isn't to take away from what may have transpired in Neuralink.
Other than all of that ... yea look, if you want to get upset about the monkeys but not even talk about the meat industry, then yea, you can have a point about the monkeys, but it'll be, IMO, a relatively easy one and it will run the risk of actually ignoring the medical/scientific progress that might maybe depending on your ethics justify at least the idea of the experiment.
I'm not rejecting it though, or the validity of your stance on it ... just trying to push for a better conversation.
It’s not engaging in online click baity outrage to recognize that the company developing the brain sepsis device in order to send ads into our dreams and monetize our ids is especially evil.
People are not seeing the usual animal cruelty victims in the primates described, but the environmental storytelling beats of every day after tomorrow video game, the foreshadowing of what will haunt the protagonist in a William Gibson novel and the inevitable end to every post apocalyptic television shows exploration of the question “did science go too far”.
The person enraged with a company developing the Bash Your Head Against the Floor implant is rarely provoked to ire because of their love of the animal subject of testing but because they are forced to ask the question “why?”
Even if people can’t explain it they know full well that this technology is intended to be used as mass media, radio, television and the internet before it.
We do not see ourselves in the monkey because we believe the monkey has the same rights as us, but because we know the monkey is only holding our seat until the train is ready to leave the station.
It’s evil. We don’t need nuanced discussion about it. No one is getting click baited into a rage. Rage and revulsion are the natural response to evil.
This didn't seem odd to you?
To be clear it sounds like it could have been horrific. But it’s also vague enough on the details that I don’t trust it be free of some inflammatory spin. Otherwise, it sounds like something went wrong with one animal and they had to euthanise.
How wrong it went and why could be negligence or it could be experimentation that was reasonably handled. Months sounds like a long time but we don’t really know how bad it was over that period. It could have gotten bad only just before they decided to act on it. Shaking in front of lab workers doesn’t necessarily mean much, though I’m no veterinarian.
Even if it were negligence or at least some degree of indifference to the welfare of the animals, no, I don’t believe that’s odd, because that’s the world we live in. And that’s my broader point, this sort of shit is all over the place. It probably sounds bad because it’s a brain implant and there’s brain damage, but there are all sorts of ways animals can and do suffer, with farming and animal experimentation occurring all over the world.
Oh well if things are bad everywhere I guess we should never bring up anything bad ever or criticize bad behavior or try to be better. Got it 👍
Ummm … I’m criticising it, just pointing out that it’s a much bigger issue than musk doing something dodgy and missing that fact would do a disservice to animals. If you know about the state of animal experimentation and farming already, my posts don’t say anything new.
Otherwise taking down musk and neurallink and not doing anything about the broader industries out of ignorance would be negligent IMO.
Or worse, expressing outrage online while not doing something actually within your control like altering the way your actions affect animals … that’d be petty poor behaviour too IMO.
I agree with you, just wanted to add a couple things.
Be aware that not eating meat, while being an amazing stance for many reasons, doesn't prevent animal testing, since animals used in labs are bred specifically for that purpose, they don't come from the food industry nor they have anything to do with it. In the country I live there's a law that says that each lab animal can be used only for one experiment and when experimenting is done, if they don't end up with permanent damage, they can be given away to rehab organizations for adoption, otherwise they must be euthanized.
I think many countries (EU at least) might have similar laws, people just don't know, like I didn't until I went to a non-profit org specialized in rehab of rabbits, guinea pigs and rats used for animal testing, to adopt a rabbit (I kept them as pets for many years, they're fantastic pets). I learned a lot from them.
Their intentions are good but infiltrating labs to release animals, without knowing anything about them, is wrong, it's being ignorant of the consequences.
For example, rabbits used in labs are mostly new zealand breed because they are very tame compared to other breeds, they're also among the biggest. Rabbits in general have very fragile bones, big breeds (more than others) need to grow up in spaces that grant them movement to be able to develop muscles to sustain their weight, they don't in labs, they're kept in very small cages all their life, so if you release them without proper rehab, the first time they try to stand up on their hind legs (rabbits do that instinctively) they'll break their spine and die, just like that.
All lab animals in general live in cages all their lives, suddenly "throwing" them out in the wild to fend for themselves, is condemning them to die horrible deaths. That's not to say staying in a lab is better, but what those people do is irresponsible.
To an extent, but I think the concern is that there were still documented device failures in live subjects, and if it's going to start human trials on quadriplegic they are going to have a tough time convincing IRBs, providers, and patients of it just as effective as existing treatments with side effect profile. As there are none, IRBs are going to really push back on the whole "yeah this will explicitly kill people," instead of like cancer research "the patient will have treatment with nothing worse than standard treatment of care."
Or, put another way, in the U.S., a quadriplegic receives no treatment and lives, vs a quadriplegic who under goes the implant and dies from the implant (as specified in the article).
If you're testing on animals, you're a horrible person. Full stop.
Animals cannot consent
What would you say to medical research and using any medical advancements we have now that we’re discovered on the back of animal experimentation?
What about the meat and dairy industries and people who eat meat?
What if the experiments on the animals were rather harmless and they were kept under caring, clean and safe conditions?
I think you didn’t understand my post.