South African billionaire Elon Musk announced Monday night that Neuralink had performed its first brain implant in a patient, but his neuroscience research company has been embroiled in several controversies over the years.

Court documents seen by Reuters earlier this month showed that Neuralink was fined by the US Department of Transportation (DOT) for violating hazardous materials regulations.

The violations were discovered during inspections last February of Neuralink facilities in Texas and California, when US federal inspectors discovered that Neuralink was not registered as a hazardous materials carrier.

They also found that hazardous waste was improperly packaged, including bags containing xylene, a flammable gas. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, exposure to xylene can cause dizziness, confusion, headache, loss of muscle coordination, and even death.

The Department of Transportation fined Neuralink $2,480, an amount that detractors thought the company was ridiculous, but was lenient because it admitted wrongdoing and promised to fix it.

A representative for the Office of Hazardous Materials and Pipeline Safety, the DOT agency that conducted the inspections at Neuralink, confirmed the media report, saying the investigation has since been closed.

Neuralink did not respond to requests for comment.

The internal DOT documents were obtained by the Physicians Commission for Responsible Medicine, a nongovernmental organization that opposes the use of animals in medical research. PCRM received the documents through a request for access to information of public interest.

However, the official documents do not specify why Neuralink needed to transport hazardous waste and whether violations of safety standards caused harm to people’s health.

In December 2022, Neuralink was caught in an even bigger scandal

A separate investigation published by Reuters in December 2022 revealed that Neuralink is the subject of a US federal investigation into possible violations of rules on the use of animals in medical experiments, including internal documents from Musk’s company that show his employees’ concerns about the matter. .

More than 20 former Neuralink employees and some who were still working at the company at the time agreed to be interviewed about the issue, most of them on condition of anonymity, saying that Neuralink’s tests had to be repeated because they were done in a hurry, that without need led to the death of many animals.

Among the documents obtained during the investigation were internal messages sent by Neuralink employees, Audip records, emails, presentations and reports. The investigation was launched after animal rights activists reported alleged violations in Neuralink experiments with monkeys back in February 2022.

U.S. regulations do not specify the number of animals companies can use in research, as scientists have wide discretion in this regard.

In total, between 2018 and December 2022, Neuralink slaughtered about 1,500 animals, including 280 sheep, pigs and monkeys. Sources at the company, however, stressed that this figure is an estimate because Neuralink does not keep accurate data on the number of animals tested and killed.

Neuralink also conducted tests on mice and rats.

While the total number of animals killed does not necessarily indicate that Neuralink violated the rules regarding the experiments, current and former employees of Neuralink say that it is higher than it should be because of Elon Musk’s claims to speed up testing.

Reuters was able to determine from interviews and documents obtained that four experiments conducted over the years on pigs and monkeys were marked by human error.

The errors affected the final results of the study, which was repeated to confirm the initial findings. Several employees blamed the errors on a lack of careful preparation of the experiments, saying that this was in turn due to a stressful work environment.