this post was submitted on 24 Mar 2024
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I mean, it's at the very edge of what science can do and realistically there's not that much else you could do except test on relatively highly developed animals. You'd kind of expect that to happen, but I don't see a viable alternative.
Working on the bleeding edge of scientific research does not relieve someone of treating animals with ethical consideration. A "move fast and break things" approach might be good for a startup and maybe even for a rocket company, but that approach isn't okay if "breaking things" includes living, feeling animals.
What’s the alternative for brain related experiments? Just not advance ever?
I believe experiments like these should move slower and with more scrutiny. As in more animal testing before moving on to humans, esp. due to the controversies surrounding Neuralink’s last animal experiments.
The least they should do is make sure no animal suffers needlessly and no more animals than necessary are used for testing. I don't have confidence in moral standards, when employees say the number of deaths is higher than needed because of demands of faster research.
Also there is some research on non-invasive ways to get signals from the brain. Why not try that before testing implants on animals?
Some people think 1 death is too many.
They did, it’s probably not as good tech, which is why they are looking for better….
Synchron has a similar technology and their death count appears to be lower than Neuralink's in animal trials. Unfortunately, this article doesn't actually show the death rate of the trials.
Use a fucking EEG device, instead of opening their skulls and messing with their brains.
You can in fact test many of these devices in mice and even zebrafish.
You repeat testing in animals (with modifications) til it is actually safe or you at least understand what the risk is and how to mitigate it to tell the people who are going to trial it.
So your solution to animal testing is other animal testing? Strange solution.
Nothing will ever be risk free, and most of the subjects stayed alive until euthanized to see the results. How else would you get the results?
Yes, but lower order animals. There are creatures with more or less intelligence and therefore more or less capacity of suffering.
Euthanasia is fine for an end point but as an implanted device is lifelong such a short time with the implant before sacrifice is not as useful as longer timepoints.
…. So it’s okay to make less intelligent creatures suffer…? Intelligence has literally nothing to do with something’s capacity to suffer. Where the hell did you get that from? Let’s see some citations on that asinine claim lmfao.
You need data from every step of the way… so no…. Not at all.
We've had brain-computer interfaces for DECADES, which didn't need to be inside the skull. This isn't bleeding-edge research, it's just a bloody edge used to kill research subjects.
EEG is an extremely limited tech, they are looking for a way to advance past those limitations.
We can’t just not advance ever since someone might get hurt, that’s just asinine.