DOGE Purges FDA Workers Reviewing Elon Musk’s Neuralink Brain Chip
The department has worked at breakneck speed to gut federal programs and cut tens of thousands of government workers.
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The department has worked at breakneck speed to gut federal programs and cut tens of thousands of government workers.
Federal scientists reviewing
Elon Musk’s Neuralink brain chip were fired as part of the
Department of Government Efficiency’s latest purge, a report revealed Monday.
The group of 20, from the Food and Drug Administration’s office of neurological and physical medicine devices, were abruptly axed over the weekend as “part of a broader purge of the federal workforce,” sources told
Reuters.
DOGE and its young staffers have moved at breakneck speed to cut federal spending at the expense of tens of thousands of jobs in the federal government.
Critics have claimed Musk’s team should not have the power to make such sweeping firings in part because his businesses, including SpaceX and Tesla, have a number of contracts with the federal government.
This weekend’s FDA firings again sparked conflict of interest discussions with Musk at the helm of DOGE. Reuters reported alarm bells are already going off within the medical community.
“It’s intimidating to the FDA professionals who are overseeing Neuralink’s trial,” said Victor Krauthamer, a former FDA official for three decades, told the wire service. “We should be worried about the whole trial, and the protection of the people in the trial.”
President Donald Trump has said Musk would excuse himself from any conflicts of interest at DOGE. It is unclear if Musk had a personal say in the FDA scientists’ firing, but two sources in the agency told
Reuters they do not believe their work on Neuralink specifically led to them being targeted.
The latest cuts come amid a purge of about 5,200 workers in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The cuts largely impacted probationary employees—workers who have been in their position for less than two years who do not have the same protections as senior workers.
Neuralink is actively undergoing FDA trials. It promotes itself as allowing people with paralysis and other physical disabilities to control things in their environment using only their thoughts, but has faced headwinds in
ensuring its users safety.