Feb 20, 2022, 21:12 pm
Elon Musk’s brain-chip company Neuralink is facing a legal challenge from an animal rights group that has accused the company of subjecting monkeys to “extreme suffering” during years of gruesome experiments.
Neuralink’s brain chips — which Musk claims will one day make humans hyper-intelligent and let paralyzed people walk again — were implanted in monkeys’ brains during a series of tests at the University of California, Davis from 2017 to 2020, according to a compliant from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed with the the US Department of Agriculture on Thursday.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a non-profit made up of more than 17,000 doctors, obtained nearly 600 pages of documents about the testing. The organization concluded that the “disturbing” tests caused “extreme suffering” to the 23 primates involved.
And, that the experimentation violated the US’ Animal Welfare Act. As such, PCRM filed a complaint against the University of California, Davis, which was handed more than $1.4 million from Neuralink to conduct the experiments.
In one example, a monkey was allegedly found missing some of its fingers and toes “possibly from self-mutilation or some other unspecified trauma.” The monkey was later killed during a “terminal procedure,” the group said in a copy of the complaint shared with The Post.
In another case, a monkey had holes drilled in its skull and electrodes implanted into its brain, then allegedly developed a bloody skin infection and had to be euthanized, according to the complaint.
In a third instance, a female macaque monkey had electrodes implanted into its brain, then was overcome with vomiting, retching and gasping. Days later, researchers wrote that the animal “appeared to collapse from exhaustion/fatigue” and was subsequently euthanized. An autopsy then showed the monkey had suffered from a brain hemorrhage, according to the report.
The experiments involved 23 monkeys in all. At least 15 of them died or were euthanized by 2020, according to the group, which based the report on records released through California’s open records law.
“Pretty much every single monkey that had had implants put in their head suffered from pretty debilitating health effects,” Jeremy Beckham, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s research advocacy director, told The Post. “They were, frankly, maiming and killing the animals.”
The macabre report comes as Neuralink plans to begin its first human tests. Musk said in December that he wants to start human trials for the devices in 2022 and the company posted a job listing for a clinical trial director this January.
The organization is accusing Neuralink and UC Davis of nine violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act — a federal measure designed to reduce suffering during animal experiments.
“Many, if not all, of the monkeys experienced extreme suffering as a result of inadequate animal care and the highly invasive experimental head implants during the experiments, which were performed in pursuit of developing what Neuralink and Elon Musk have publicly described as a ‘brain-machine interface,’” the group wrote in its complaint to the USDA.
“These highly invasive implants and their associated hardware, which are inserted in the brain after drilling holes in the animals’ skulls, have produced recurring infections in the animals, significantly compromising their health, as well as the integrity of the research.”
‘Left to suffer and die’
The charity is pushing UC Davis to release photos and videos of the tests. The university has so far refused to do so, maintaining that Neuralink is a private company and is therefore not subject to California’s Public Records Act.
But PCRM argues that projects carried out at public facilities, such as UC Davis, are covered under the act and must be disclosed.
“UC Davis may have handed over its publicly funded facilities to a billionaire, but that doesn’t mean it can evade transparency requirements and violate federal animal welfare laws,” commented Jeremy Beckham, MPA, MPH, and research advocacy coordinator at PCRM. “The documents reveal that monkeys had their brains mutilated in shoddy experiments and were left to suffer and die. It’s no mystery why Elon Musk and the university want to keep photos and videos of this horrific abuse hidden from the public.”
Neuralink denies animal abuse claims
The alleged abuses come in stark contrast to publicly shared materials from Neuralink. In a video posted on YouTube last April, the company showed a healthy and happy-seeming monkey playing the video game Pong with its brain.
A UC Davis spokesperson told The Post that its work with Neuralink ended in 2020 and that the university’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee had “thoroughly reviewed and approved” its project with Neuralink.
Since 2018, more than $13 million has been spent on monkey experiments in the US.
https://nypost.com/2022/02/10/elon-musks...suffering/
https://plantbasednews.org/culture/ethic...p-monkeys/
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Elon Musk has made sure that everyone knows he will pay more in income taxes this year than anyone ever has—about $11 billion—as a result of his exercising a massive package of Tesla stock options in 2021. What he has not been so vocal about, though, is the fact that Tesla the company will pay $0 in federal tax despite raking in a record profit of $5.5 billion in 2021.
In its annual report filed with the SEC on February 7, Tesla said in an inconspicuous note section on page 86, as first reported by CNN, that its U.S. operations recorded a loss of $130 million in 2021 and that all of its pre-tax net income stemmed from overseas operations.
As a result, Tesla said it expects to pay $0 in federal corporate income tax and $9 million in state tax (Tesla relocated its headquarters from California to Texas on December 1, 2021.) On its foreign profit, Tesla will pay $699 million in income taxes, which translates into an effective tax rate of 11 percent, far below the 21 percent federal corporate tax rate in the U.S.
U.S. sales accounted for 45 percent of Tesla’s global revenue in 2021, the company said. So, how come it didn’t generate any domestic profit?
There could be two explanations: one, Tesla could be structuring its global operations in such a way that income is reported from entities in overseas subsidiaries, often registered in tax havens like Bermuda and Ireland, while U.S. operations have little or no taxable income to report.
Tax experts say it’s a common practice for American multinational corporations. “It’s very common. It’s almost malpractice not to do that. That defies common sense, but it does not defy the U.S. tax code,” Martin Sullivan, chief economist for Tax Analysts, told CNN.
Tesla didn’t disclose in its financial statements which countries it reported 2021 profits from.
Another possible explanation is that Tesla was really losing money at home, as pointed out by Gordon Johnson, CEO of the equity research firm GLJ Research and a prominent Tesla critic.
Tesla had been losing money for a decade until turning its first quarterly profit in 2019, the same year it opened a Gigafactory in Shanghai, China. Johnson has said he believes Tesla was able to turn a profit only after it began making cars in China, where costs are lower than in its home factory in Fremont, Calif.
Tesla, which no longer has a media department, didn’t immediately respond to an Observer inquiry for comment.
Tesla didn’t pay any federal corporate income tax in 2020 and 2019, despite reporting profits in both years, thanks to a tax benefit known as “net operating loss carry-forward,” which allows businesses to deduct past losses from future profits when reporting taxes.
Tesla has accumulated a huge amount of loss carry-forwards from its decade of losses, which will help it reduce tax bills for the years to come. Its annual report, Tesla said it had $31.2 billion in federal and $21.6 billion in state net operating loss carry-forwards at the end of 2021. Some of these are set to expire in 2022 if not utilized.
https://observer.com/2022/02/tesla-2021-...al-income/
Neuralink’s brain chips — which Musk claims will one day make humans hyper-intelligent and let paralyzed people walk again — were implanted in monkeys’ brains during a series of tests at the University of California, Davis from 2017 to 2020, according to a compliant from the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine filed with the the US Department of Agriculture on Thursday.
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a non-profit made up of more than 17,000 doctors, obtained nearly 600 pages of documents about the testing. The organization concluded that the “disturbing” tests caused “extreme suffering” to the 23 primates involved.
And, that the experimentation violated the US’ Animal Welfare Act. As such, PCRM filed a complaint against the University of California, Davis, which was handed more than $1.4 million from Neuralink to conduct the experiments.
In one example, a monkey was allegedly found missing some of its fingers and toes “possibly from self-mutilation or some other unspecified trauma.” The monkey was later killed during a “terminal procedure,” the group said in a copy of the complaint shared with The Post.
In another case, a monkey had holes drilled in its skull and electrodes implanted into its brain, then allegedly developed a bloody skin infection and had to be euthanized, according to the complaint.
In a third instance, a female macaque monkey had electrodes implanted into its brain, then was overcome with vomiting, retching and gasping. Days later, researchers wrote that the animal “appeared to collapse from exhaustion/fatigue” and was subsequently euthanized. An autopsy then showed the monkey had suffered from a brain hemorrhage, according to the report.
The experiments involved 23 monkeys in all. At least 15 of them died or were euthanized by 2020, according to the group, which based the report on records released through California’s open records law.
“Pretty much every single monkey that had had implants put in their head suffered from pretty debilitating health effects,” Jeremy Beckham, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s research advocacy director, told The Post. “They were, frankly, maiming and killing the animals.”
The macabre report comes as Neuralink plans to begin its first human tests. Musk said in December that he wants to start human trials for the devices in 2022 and the company posted a job listing for a clinical trial director this January.
The organization is accusing Neuralink and UC Davis of nine violations of the federal Animal Welfare Act — a federal measure designed to reduce suffering during animal experiments.
“Many, if not all, of the monkeys experienced extreme suffering as a result of inadequate animal care and the highly invasive experimental head implants during the experiments, which were performed in pursuit of developing what Neuralink and Elon Musk have publicly described as a ‘brain-machine interface,’” the group wrote in its complaint to the USDA.
“These highly invasive implants and their associated hardware, which are inserted in the brain after drilling holes in the animals’ skulls, have produced recurring infections in the animals, significantly compromising their health, as well as the integrity of the research.”
‘Left to suffer and die’
The charity is pushing UC Davis to release photos and videos of the tests. The university has so far refused to do so, maintaining that Neuralink is a private company and is therefore not subject to California’s Public Records Act.
But PCRM argues that projects carried out at public facilities, such as UC Davis, are covered under the act and must be disclosed.
“UC Davis may have handed over its publicly funded facilities to a billionaire, but that doesn’t mean it can evade transparency requirements and violate federal animal welfare laws,” commented Jeremy Beckham, MPA, MPH, and research advocacy coordinator at PCRM. “The documents reveal that monkeys had their brains mutilated in shoddy experiments and were left to suffer and die. It’s no mystery why Elon Musk and the university want to keep photos and videos of this horrific abuse hidden from the public.”
Neuralink denies animal abuse claims
The alleged abuses come in stark contrast to publicly shared materials from Neuralink. In a video posted on YouTube last April, the company showed a healthy and happy-seeming monkey playing the video game Pong with its brain.
A UC Davis spokesperson told The Post that its work with Neuralink ended in 2020 and that the university’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee had “thoroughly reviewed and approved” its project with Neuralink.
Since 2018, more than $13 million has been spent on monkey experiments in the US.
https://nypost.com/2022/02/10/elon-musks...suffering/
https://plantbasednews.org/culture/ethic...p-monkeys/
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Related News:
Tesla will pay $0 federal tax despite record profit of $5.5 billion in 2021
Published: February 11, 2022
Elon Musk has made sure that everyone knows he will pay more in income taxes this year than anyone ever has—about $11 billion—as a result of his exercising a massive package of Tesla stock options in 2021. What he has not been so vocal about, though, is the fact that Tesla the company will pay $0 in federal tax despite raking in a record profit of $5.5 billion in 2021.
In its annual report filed with the SEC on February 7, Tesla said in an inconspicuous note section on page 86, as first reported by CNN, that its U.S. operations recorded a loss of $130 million in 2021 and that all of its pre-tax net income stemmed from overseas operations.
As a result, Tesla said it expects to pay $0 in federal corporate income tax and $9 million in state tax (Tesla relocated its headquarters from California to Texas on December 1, 2021.) On its foreign profit, Tesla will pay $699 million in income taxes, which translates into an effective tax rate of 11 percent, far below the 21 percent federal corporate tax rate in the U.S.
U.S. sales accounted for 45 percent of Tesla’s global revenue in 2021, the company said. So, how come it didn’t generate any domestic profit?
There could be two explanations: one, Tesla could be structuring its global operations in such a way that income is reported from entities in overseas subsidiaries, often registered in tax havens like Bermuda and Ireland, while U.S. operations have little or no taxable income to report.
Tax experts say it’s a common practice for American multinational corporations. “It’s very common. It’s almost malpractice not to do that. That defies common sense, but it does not defy the U.S. tax code,” Martin Sullivan, chief economist for Tax Analysts, told CNN.
Tesla didn’t disclose in its financial statements which countries it reported 2021 profits from.
Another possible explanation is that Tesla was really losing money at home, as pointed out by Gordon Johnson, CEO of the equity research firm GLJ Research and a prominent Tesla critic.
Tesla had been losing money for a decade until turning its first quarterly profit in 2019, the same year it opened a Gigafactory in Shanghai, China. Johnson has said he believes Tesla was able to turn a profit only after it began making cars in China, where costs are lower than in its home factory in Fremont, Calif.
Tesla, which no longer has a media department, didn’t immediately respond to an Observer inquiry for comment.
Tesla didn’t pay any federal corporate income tax in 2020 and 2019, despite reporting profits in both years, thanks to a tax benefit known as “net operating loss carry-forward,” which allows businesses to deduct past losses from future profits when reporting taxes.
Tesla has accumulated a huge amount of loss carry-forwards from its decade of losses, which will help it reduce tax bills for the years to come. Its annual report, Tesla said it had $31.2 billion in federal and $21.6 billion in state net operating loss carry-forwards at the end of 2021. Some of these are set to expire in 2022 if not utilized.
https://observer.com/2022/02/tesla-2021-...al-income/