A former employee at Elon Musk’s brain chip company Neuralink claims she was scratched by a monkey infected with the herpes B virus and was fired after telling her boss she was pregnant, according to a lawsuit.
Lindsay Short, who began working as an animal care specialist at Neuralink in August 2022, accused her previous company of failing to provide her with proper protective equipment while working with the animals, some of which were carrying the virus that can cause severe brain damage and death in humans.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in a California court and obtained by The Washington Post, accuses Neuralink of creating a hostile work environment, including setting unrealistic deadlines and belittling employees..
Short claims that in September 2022, the monkey reached through the bars of her cage and scratched her through her gloves, “breaking her skin,” causing her to become “contaminated” and “in the process contract herpes B.”
In a separate incident, which allegedly took place in March last year, Ms Short claimed her face was scarred by a monkey carrying the herpes B virus.
According to the lawsuit, Short claims that when she sought medical treatment for injuries caused by the monkeys, her superiors threatened her with “severe retaliation” if a similar incident occurred again.
Ms Short also claimed her boss promised her that she would accommodate her request for flexible working hours to care for her children, but then reneged on this promise.
In her lawsuit, Short claims that after she expressed concerns about hygiene and the company’s “failure to accommodate her requests or honor her verbal agreement regarding a flexible work schedule,” her supervisor retaliated by demoting her “on the false pretext of poor work performance.”
Last June, Short notified Neuralink’s human resources department that she was pregnant and asked the department to “engage with her in a dialogue process to determine appropriate action.”
Short spoke to human resources instead of her supervisor because she “had often said she disliked children” and that having children would ‘get in the way of my career,'” the lawsuit alleges.
The next day, she was fired by her supervisor for “performance issues,” according to the lawsuit.
“The one-day gap between Ms. Short’s disclosure of her pregnancy and her wrongful termination strongly suggests retaliation,” according to the lawsuit.
She is suing Neuralink for retaliation, wrongful termination and gender discrimination.
The Post has reached out to Short and Neuralink for comment.
In December 2022, it was revealed that the federal government was investigating Neuralink for possible animal welfare violations after complaints from the company’s internal staff that tests were being rushed, causing unnecessary suffering and death.
Neuralink, which developed brain implants that it hopes will help paralyzed people walk again and cure other neurological diseases, was under scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s inspector general.
More than a dozen current and former employees who spoke to Reuters said pressure from Musk to speed up development led to the failed experiment.
Employees say these failed tests have to be repeated, leading to an increase in the number of animals being tested and killed.
The company has killed about 1,500 animals in experiments since 2018, including more than 280 sheep, pigs and monkeys, according to records seen by Reuters and a source with direct knowledge of the company’s animal-testing operations.
Sources said the figure was an estimate because the company did not keep accurate records of how many animals it tested and killed.
Current and former Neuralink employees say the company is experiencing higher than necessary animal deaths for reasons related to Musk’s demands to speed up research.
Earlier this year, Neuralink implanted the chip in its first volunteer, 29-year-old Noland Arbaugh, who was paralyzed from the neck down in a diving accident eight years ago.
Last month, the company announced that Arbaugh’s brain implant, which helped him telepathically control the mouse, was experiencing problems after some of the threads came loose.
With post wire
