(Bloomberg) — Elon Musk’s brain implant startup Neuralink Corp. forced an employee to work with monkeys carrying the Herpes B virus in conditions where the animals scratched her bare skin, according to a complaint filed Friday in California court.
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The employee, Lindsay Short, said that when she transferred to the company’s Fremont, California, location in August 2022, she faced “a work environment full of guilt, shame and impossible deadlines.” She said she was later fired after telling her supervisors she was pregnant.
Short sued the company for, among other things, retaliation, wrongful termination and discrimination based on her gender.
Neuralink did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit.
The startup is in the early stages of clinical testing for its device, which aims to restore function to paralyzed patients. An Arizona man, Noland Arbaugh, recently underwent surgery and became the first human patient to have the device implanted. Arbaugh is paralyzed and can now successfully play video games using only his thoughts.
The company has also come under fire in the past for its mistreatment of monkeys and other animals, including botched operations when it conducted research on monkeys housed at the University of California at Davis. It has since moved monkey research to its own facilities.
Short said she was working with monkeys carrying the Herpes B virus when she was scratched by a glove. She accused the company of failing to provide proper protective equipment to work with the monkeys. In another incident, after she was forced to perform a procedure she was unfamiliar with, a monkey scratched her face. When she insisted on medical treatment, her boss threatened “severe consequences” if it happened again, the complaint said.
In the lawsuit, Short also said Neuralink failed to deliver on a flexible-hours promise to accommodate her family, then demoted her in May 2023, two months after a promotion.
The following month, she told Neuralink’s human resources department that she was pregnant. Short was fired the next day, with the company saying the firing was due to performance issues, the lawsuit said.
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