For the third time this year, the US Securities and Exchange Commission is being urged to investigate allegations of whether Elon Musk made misleading claims to investors about the deaths of primates used for research by Neuralink, his brain-chip startup. The latest claims center around his recent statements at the New York Times DealBook Summit that primates who died after implant surgeries were selected for experimentation because they were already close to death. In a letter sent to federal regulators today, an animal rights advocacy and research group claims that Musk's statements are inaccurate and amount to "possible securities fraud." This marks the third letter to the SEC since late September requesting an investigation into Musk's comments about Neuralink's test subjects. Records related to Neuralink's research reviewed by WIRED paint a complicated picture of the health of the monkeys used to develop the company's brain-chip implants, which will soon be used in human trials.

Fresh allegations of potential securities fraud have been leveled at Elon Musk over statements he recently made regarding the deaths of primates used for research at Neuralink, his biotech startup. Letters sent this afternoon to top officials at the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) by a medical ethics group call on the agency to investigate Musk's claims that monkeys who died during trials at the company were terminally ill and did not die as a result of Neuralink implants. They claim, based on veterinary records, that complications with the implant procedures led to their deaths. Musk first acknowledged the deaths of the macaques on September 10 in a reply to a user on his social networking app X (formerly Twitter). He denied that any of the deaths were "a result of a Neuralink implant" and said the researchers had taken care to select subjects who were already "close to death."

The US Department of Transportation (DOT) is said to be investigating Elon Musk's Neuralink over claims the company illegally transported hazardous pathogens. The probe is in response to allegations from the Physicians Committee of Responsible Medicine (PCRM), which state Musk's company unsafely packed and moved implants removed from the brains of monkeys that may have been infected. PCRM, an animal-welfare advocacy group, wrote to Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg earlier on Thursday to alert it of records it obtained on the matter from the University of California (UC) Davis, according to Reuters. The letters state that the implants were not properly sanitized and packaged, thus carrying pathogens that could cause serious health issues in infected humans. The lasted investigation follows months of allegations against Neuralink, which is said to have violated animal welfare laws with'botched experiments.'

Elon Musk's brain-chip firm Neuralink has admitted monkeys died during tests, but denied claims of animal abuse put forward by an animal rights group. The biotech firm is developing a brain-computer interface, that it claims could one day make humans hyper-intelligent, and allow paralyzed people to walk again. Last week the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) lodged a complaint with the US Department of Agriculture, alleging several counts of animal abuse between 2017 and 2020, involving test monkeys owned by Neuralink. They claimed the macaque monkeys, housed at a University of California Davis research facility, were subject to experiments that amounted to torture, with evidence of rashes, self-mutilation and brain hemorrhages seen in documentation. Neuralink has hit back at the claims of abuse, calling out the PCRM as a group that oppose any use of animals in research.