You might be aware that Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla Motors and currently the CEO of Twitter, has been doing many other things as well. He has not only entered the automotive industry but has also been doing a lot of research in space and health industry as well. You must be aware that Elon Musk runs a company called SpaceX and it is quite popular among space researchers. Apart from that, there is this company called Neuralink which is also owned and operated by Elon Musk.
Talking about Neuralink, this is a company where Elon Musk wants to implant chips into the brain of humans and create a brain-computer interface that is supposed to be better for humans. However, the problem with Neuralink is that the FDA might be against this idea as they have already rejected their human testing request once. Reportedly, Elon Musk was frustrated by the rejection of FDA but it is also worth noting that this was expected because of the nature of this implants.
As far as FDA is concerned, they are totally within their rights to question the Neuralink’s human testing efficacy as they have cited reasons such as the “neural lace” that could migrate through the brain’s soft tissue as well as what if it overheats inside the brain or implanted battery could fail or if it needs to be removed then it could damage the brain. We believe that such an experiment could be very risky for any human and whatever money Elon gives to the testers, they might not agree to insert these implants inside their brain.
On the other hand, if Elon Musk decides to be the first to test its own Neuralink brain implant then that could be a different altogether but I think he will also understand that the risks are too high and it could not be worth it. Neuralink is also known to have done cruelty to animals in its animal testing but the nature of these implants is such that surgery is required. While Neuralink is trying to solve FDA’s concerns, we will have to see how much adoption these brain implants get from the public if at all it comes in public domain.
