Elon Musk’s proposal to implant a brain chip in humans has reportedly been rejected by the feds due to security risks.

  • Reuters reported that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has rejected Neuralink’s request for approval to begin human trials of its brain chips.
  • The agency cited dozens of problems with the device, including concerns that it could overheat or move around in the brain.
  • Elon Musk promises that the company will soon begin human trials from 2019.

Neuralink’s attempt to get approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was rejected last year, according to a new Reuters report.

Since 2019, Musk has repeatedly set and missed his own predictions as to when Neuralink, his brain chip startup, will start implanting its devices into the human brain. But the company only began seeking FDA approval for human trials last year, Reuters reported, citing seven current and former Neuralink employees.

Reuters reported that the FDA has identified “dozens of issues” that Neuralink needs to address before it can begin human testing in the US. The FDA said there were a number of safety concerns, including that the wires of the brain chip could travel to other areas of the subject’s brain and that the chip could overheat and damage tissue, Reuters reported. There were also concerns about how to remove the implant without damaging the brain, according to Reuters.

A spokesperson for Neuralink did not respond to a request for comment prior to posting, and the company did not say its application was rejected. Musk said in December that the company would be approved for human trials by spring 2023. At the time, the billionaire said he was so confident in the device that he implanted it in his own brain.

To date, Neuralink has yet to conduct human trials, instead experimenting with the device on animals, including pigs and monkeys. Last year, Musk showed a demo video of a monkey with an implant “telepathically typing.”

The Reuters report comes after the U.S. Department of Transportation said it was investigating Musk’s startup following claims by an animal rights group that Neuralink was transporting potentially dangerous pathogens by moving brain chips after they were removed from test animals without complying with federal regulations. .

Musk co-founded Neuralink in 2016 as a brain-computer interface company. The firm plans to implant chips in the human brain, which will allow people to perform tasks using only their minds. In the past, the billionaire has claimed that Neuralink chips — coin-sized devices designed to be implanted in the brain by a surgical robot — could one day do anything from treating paralysis to giving people telepathic powers, calling the device “the Fitbit in your skull.”

Read the full story from Reuters on its website.

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