I don't understand how the FDA could have given approval for human trials, after what happened to those monkeys. I thought that the FDA was quite stringent about these things.

Aren't there published guidelines for what constitutes too much discomfort/pain for animal testing? Rules?

What happened to the monkeys is secondary to Elon not understanding why and what would happen to them: He publicly stated the monkeys were terminally ill. They were not. That's not how anything works. If you don't grok that, you should be nowhere near decision making about animal testing.

Evidently Elon did not understand that "terminal" meant the test animals would likely or certainly be euthanized if they did not perish due to the experiments being run: https://futurism.com/neoscope/elon-musk-neuralink-terminally...

That said, there are standards for animal suffering in research, and that should be checked as well.

The real concern is that the patients will be Musk fanboys, and insufficiently cautious about their own health.

"I love my brain-Tesla, but..."

Look it is ENTIRELY NORMAL for a <s>steering wheel</s> arm to fall off.

Tough to choose between this and being on the first attempt to Mars, I only regret I have one life to give for Elon's scifi projects