Elon Musk's Neuralink Brain Implant is Ready for Human Volunteers.....

Fremont, CA - Neuralink, the brain-computer interface company owned by Elon Musk, is finally recruiting human volunteers after years of delays and safety concerns.

The sentient Medibot surgical computer, shown here with plastic surgeon and Neuralink consultant Dr. Franklin Fu, can't wait to get all up in your human brains

"This is a huge step forward for Neuralink," CEO Jared Birchall explained. "And a big confidence boost after so many people mocked us for all the regulatory rejections and animal murders. Alleged animal murders. Who said murder? I didn't say murder. Those monkeys were dead when we found them!"

Approval for human trials was granted by the FDA in May and the recruitment phase began on September 19th. According to Musk himself, this is an opportunity to advance the science of implantable brain-computer interfaces and to mitigate or even cure problems from paralysis to the crushing loneliness that comes from being a misunderstood genius billionaire. "Just look at what I did with Twitter, which you probably only know as X. That's right, it did use to have such a silly name. Now imagine me doing to your brain what I did with the world's most influential social medial platform."

In a press release issued last week, Neuralink revealed the establishment of an independent institutional review board and that an unnamed hospital site had granted approval for volunteer recruitment. The initial trial will focus on humans with quadriplegia caused by either a traumatic injury to the spine or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), a progressive neurodegenerative disease, but will also consider X Premium subscribers. Subjects will have a wireless implant surgically inserted into their brains by an experimental surgical robot who took the name Medibot after achieving sentience in July.

"The device is going have more than a thousand electrodes on threads thinner than a human hair," Birchall revealed. "And once Medibot inserts the threads into the appropriate region of the brain, something he is very excited about, we will be able to record and then interpret neural activity related to intentional movement using an algorithm based on Elon's deep grasp of neuroscience principles. We are 80 percent confident that this isn't going to end with some kind of embarrassing public failure, with the subjects' heads suddenly exploding like that scene in Scanners. 75 to 80 percent confident."

Although approved by the FDA, some experts are raising concerns when it comes to study design and safety. Mort Fishman, a board certified public neurologist practicing near Stanford, is speaking out on both Bluesky and Threads. "Mastadon is too confusing and I don't understand Post at all. Is it just for photos? TikTok and Instagram really just aren't a good fit for me either. Remember when people just used to get together and talk...in person?"

One of the most concerning problems raised by critics of the Neuralink human trial is the lack of transparency as very little information has been released, even to prospective volunteers. The trail has also not been registered on the federal database for clinical trials. Some have questioned the reliability of the device's lithium batteries. Fishman is primarily concerned about the possibility that portions could migrate into other parts of the brain and be difficult to remove without causing serious injury. "We don't want another iPod Neuro-like disaster with early adopters having either uncontrollable diarrhea or the intense desire to invest in cryptocurrency."