Learning, Teaching and Leadership

Last month CBC’s Geoff Leo did a great article on called, ‘No consequences’, for violating human rights in privately funded research in Canada. This was a bit of an eye opener, even for me.

He writes that, “Roughly 85 per cent of clinical trials in Canada are privately funded” and that research undergoes very little scrutiny by anyone.

One of the cases Geoff wrote about involved a research study that ran from 2014-2016 involving Indigenous children in Saskatchewan, aged 12-15, who were research subjects in a study that monitored their brainwaves. Student participants were recruited with the help of a Canadian school board.

The study was led by James Hardt, who runs something called the Biocybernaut Institute, a privately run business. According to Leo, James Hardt claims that “brainwave training can make participants smarter, happier and enable them to overcome trauma. He said it can also allow them to levitate, walk on water and visit angels.”

Geoff Leo digs deep into some of the ethical issues and I recommend reading his article.

So, that was last month. This month, I happened to notice that according to Elon Musk’s Neuralink website, Musk’s product has now been approved by Health Canada to recruit research participants. There’s a bright purple banner at the top of the Neuralink home page showing a Canadian flag that says, “We’ve received approval from Health Canada to begin recruitment for our first clinical trial in Canada”.

When you click on the link, you get to another page that shows the flags for the US, Canada, and the UK, where clinical trials are either underway or planned, it seems.

The Canadian version is called CAN-PRIME. There’s a YouTube video promo/recruitment video for patients interested in joining, “this revolutionary journey”.

According to the website, “This study involves placing a small, cosmetically invisible implant in a part of the brain that plans movements. The device is designed to interpret a person’s neural activity, so they can operate a computer or smartphone by simply intending to move – no wires or physical movement are required.”

So, just to connect the dots here… ten years ago in Canada there was a study involving neurotechnology that “exploited the hell out of” Indigenous kids, according to Janice Parente who leads the Human Research Standards Organization. 

Now we have Elon Musk’s company actively recruiting people from across Canada, the US, and the UK, for research that would involve implanting experimental technology into people’s brains without, it seems, much research ethics oversight at all.

What could possibly go wrong?

Reference

Leo, G. (2024, December 2). ‘No consequences’ for violating human rights in privately funded research in Canada, says ethics expert. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatchewan/ethics-research-canada-privately-funded-1.7393063

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Sarah Elaine Eaton, PhD, is a Professor and Research Chair in the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary, Canada. Opinions are my own and do not represent those of my employer.