The US government reportedly rejected Elon Musk’s company Neuralink’s plans to test Brain chips on humans that could ‘help the blind see,’ citing serious safety concerns, gistpeople reports
Musk previously stated that his BCI company, Neuralink, would begin human trials in November of this year.
He shared a video demonstrating the Neuralink’s BCI, or brain-computer interface. In the video, Pager, a nine-year-old monkey with a Neuralink chip implanted in his brain, is taught to play Pong with a joystick.
The joystick was disconnected after the monkey learned the patterns, and his brainwaves were linked to the game, allowing him to play it.
The video received extensive media coverage, with tech pundits claiming that it would revolutionize medicine and forever alter how humans interacted with computers.
According to a new Reuters report, Musk’s Neuralink implants will be less widely available and adopted than Musk would have liked because US regulators rejected Musk’s bid to test brain chips on humans, citing safety concerns.
Despite being rejected by US health agencies, Elon Musk has predicted that Neuralink will soon begin human testing of a revolutionary brain implant to cure chronic diseases such as paralysis and blindness on at least four separate occasions.
The rejection of Neuralink by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was previously unknown to the media.
According to Reuters, Musk and Neuralink must resolve dozens of issues before beginning human testing, a critical step toward final product approval.
The FDA’s primary safety concerns included the device’s lithium battery, the possibility of the implant’s microscopic cables migrating to other regions of the brain, and whether and how the device could be removed without causing harm to brain tissue. Even as recently as November 2022, Musk was denied.
During the hour-long protest in November, Musk stated that the company had submitted “most of our papers” to the FDA, but he did not name any formal applications. Following the presentation, Neuralink executives falsely claimed that the FDA had asked them a few safety questions as part of an ongoing and open discussion.
