The first human to have received a Neuralink brain implant, according to its CEO Elon Musk, is “recovering well.”
Neuralink, Musk’s brain chip company, launched its first human trial in September amid mounting criticism over the company’s safety procedures. For this initial trial, the company sought out patients with quadriplegia — the intention at this early stage is to test the functionality of Neuralink’s brain-computer interface for “enabling people with paralysis to control external devices with their thoughts,” according to its website.
The company has yet to release an official update on the progress of the trial, and did not respond to TheStreet’s request for comment.
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Musk said that “initial results show promising neuron spike detection,” adding in a separate post that the first Neuralink product is called “Telepathy.”
“Enables control of your phone or computer, and through them almost any device, just by thinking. Initial users will be those who have lost the use of their limbs,” Musk wrote. “Imagine if Stephen Hawking could communicate faster than a speed typist or auctioneer. That is the goal.”
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Ethics, hype and other issues
Despite its U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval to conduct human trials, which was granted in May, Neuralink has faced scrutiny from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a nonprofit group that claimed in September that, based on records obtained through a lawsuit, Neuralink had euthanized a dozen priorly healthy test monkeys “as a direct result of problems with the company’s implant.”
After Musk refuted those claims in a post on X, the group asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to investigate Musk for securities fraud.
“Because the invasiveness of Neuralink’s device poses serious health risks to patients, Musk is misleading investors about the safety and marketability of the company’s device,” the committee said at the time.
The committee said that records regarding experiments from 2017 to 2020 evidence a number of health impacts from the device, from chronic infections to paralysis, brain swelling, loss of coordination and depression.
“It seems obvious to everyone but Elon Musk that Neuralink’s device is unsafe and dangerous,” Ryan Merkley, director of Research Advocacy with the Physicians Committee said at the time. “Now he is deliberately misleading investors and the public by outright lying about the company’s monkey experiments.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) said at the conclusion of a lengthy investigation into Neuralink in July that it found no evidence of animal welfare violations by the company.
The PCRM called the move a “free pass” for Neuralink.
Neuralink’s device, which is penetrated into the brain tissue, additionally poses the risk of damaging and inflaming brain tissue, Dr. Gregory Cogan, assistant professor of neurology at Duke University, told TheStreet earlier in January.
Several groups — including both European startup Neurosoft and Cogan — are working to develop a flexible brain implant that could bring all the medical potential of brain chips without damaging patients’ brain tissue.
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Neuralink: ‘A Fitbit in your skull’
Separate from the immediate work Neuralink is doing, Musk has been hyping future evolutions of the technology for years. He has claimed — without evidence — that Neuralink’s chips might one day be able to cure autism, schizophrenia and memory loss, likening the device in 2020 to a “Fitbit in your skull.”
More recently, he claimed that future versions of the chip might be able to restore vision in blind people and even allow people to experience past, historical or alternative realities.
He has yet to explain how or when this might be achieved.
Anna Wexler, an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at Penn, said in June that Musk’s hype could be “misleading.”
“There’s still so little known about the brain that getting people’s hopes up about what’s possible in the near term may be misleading and may lead to skepticism around neurotech,” she said.
Neuralink, which is currently a private corporation, achieved a $5 billion valuation in June.
Contact Ian with tips via email, [email protected], or Signal 732-804-1223.
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