Scientists reviewing medical devices for Elon Musk’s company Neuralink who lost their jobs in a flurry of Food and Drug Administration firings have already been hired back, according to reports.
The FDA is attempting to claw back around 300 staffers after Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) axed thousands of jobs from the Department of Health and Human Services, sources told Reuters.
Earlier this month it was announced that 5,200 probationary employees across its agencies, which include the National Institutes of Health, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the FDA, were being let go.
At least 11 of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, which oversees medical device reviews, have been rehired, sources told Reuters.
Insiders described the process as “abrupt and haphazard” to health news outlet STAT as workers weighed up whether or not to return. It was not known who ordered the firings and the rehirings.
“I get that [Trump administration officials] are trying to do the Silicon Valley ‘move fast, break things,’” one scientist who was rehired told Reuters. “But how are you going to be able to hire good people when you're not offering Silicon Valley stock or pay, and you've taken away their stability?”
The Independent has contacted the FDA for comment.
The billionaire’s computer-brain interface company Neuralink develops brain implants that aim to allow people with paralysis to operate an electronic device using only their thoughts. The implants have been registered for two U.S. trials with the FDA and the agency has the power to halt a trial at any time.
Eyebrows were raised earlier this month when an FDA official overseeing the team that reviews Neuralink’s implants, Ross Segan, was let go. It is not known whether the former director of the Office of Product Evaluation and Quality at the FDA’s medical device center has been rehired.
In 2023, the FDA initially rejected the company’s request to begin clinical trials over safety concerns.
Some of the roles let go by the FDA are not funded by the American taxpayer, it also emerged last week, but are paid for by medical device companies.
The latest rehirings follow a similar episode last week where DOGE scrambled to bring back some of the nation’s top nuclear specialists after they were let go.
Sources told CNN that DOGE staffers apparently did not realize that the National Nuclear Safety Administration oversees America’s nuclear weapons stockpile when the employees were fired. The terminations were quickly rescinded, CNN reported.
The workers were fired because “no one” had “taken any time to understand what we do and the importance of our work to the nation’s national security,” one source told CNN.
As many as 400 workers from the agency were fired within a broader employee termination at the Energy Department as part of Musk’s government cost slashing, sources told CNN and Bloomberg.
“Congress is freaking out because it appears DOGE didn’t really realize NNSA oversees the nuclear stockpile,” another source told the network.
