As for the empathy, this is a classic trolley problem - on one hand you have a pack of monkeys, on the other you have many people and pets (and may be even animals) with certain conditions which could be (potentially) fixed by neuralink. On which side will you guide a trolley, where will you apply your empathy?
It's pointless because Neuralink solves literally none of mankind's problems (like in "our life sucks mightily without that thing") that would warrant someone, let alone someone from a different species, dying in any shape or form. Not even mentioning that those devices would primarily serve us approaching the most grim cyberpunk dystopia ever.
The description also hints that those surgeries were botched as fuck. Likely because who would care, it's just a monkey after all. I'd expect higher standards, and here they seem to have no standards at all. This is really the "forgot a meter of gauze inside someone's skull" level of botching things, I thought we'd left those in the early XX century.
As for the empathy, this is a classic trolley problem - on one hand you have a pack of monkeys, on the other you have many people and pets (and may be even animals) with certain conditions which could be (potentially) fixed by neuralink. On which side will you guide a trolley, where will you apply your empathy?