The risk of lab experiments on animals extends to people, too 

I’m a wildlife veterinarian specializing in monkeys, so I know there are ways to prevent the recent incident in Mississippi where eight monkeys escaped during transport from a research lab in New Orleans. 

Five of the monkeys were killed by authorities, two others were shot dead by members of the public and only one was recovered alive.  

This was not an isolated incident. Over the past two decades, there have been at least 15 publicly reported monkey escapes in transit and directly from labs. 

Earlier this year, the California National Primate Research Center at the University of California – Davis was cited by the USDA after a monkey was severely injured from a malfunctioning cage closure. 

These incidents demonstrate a pattern of incompetence that harms monkeys and illustrates the risks of infectious disease and injury for those who handle or are exposed to monkeys. They are just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the harm caused by animal experimentation. 

I’ve experienced firsthand the dangers of infectious disease transmission while working with wild, captive and rescued macaques in Southeast Asia. After I was bitten by a wild macaque in Malaysia, I was immediately administered post-exposure rabies prophylaxis. 

For those of us who capture or transport wild macaques, there is a risk of contracting infectious diseases they are known to harbor, such as herpes B virus, tuberculosis, yersinia pestis (plague), rotavirus, and leptospirosis, a blood infection.

Infectious disease research is the most common use for monkeys in taxpayer-funded U.S. labs. The research often requires forcefully infecting monkeys with dangerous pathogens and subjecting them to miserable and fatal outcomes. 

Tulane University’s National Biomedical Research Center — the New Orleans primate research facility funded by the National Institutes of Health — reports that the escaped monkeys harbored no known pathogens. But veterinary medical records and necropsy reports have not been released, which illustrates an ongoing lack of transparency in what occurs behind locked laboratory doors. 

For decades, medical research and product safety testing have subjected monkeys to life in the lab. While the animals have some superficial similarities to humans, this research is largely futile and ignores biological differences that lead to difficult and rare translation to human biology and clinical benefit.  

Some of the most common monkey species used in research include rhesus and long-tailed macaques. They live in social groups in the wild. For monkeys in labs, the isolation, transport  and restraint often lead to a reduction of their immune system’s ability to fight infections and diseases and to harmful self-directed behavior, such as self-mutilation, hair plucking, and biting the cage bars, which can impact the reliability of experiments.  

In place of monkeys, there are a variety of more effective methods available to researchers. Some federally-funded monkey studies investigate human nutrition or marijuana use, research that can be and has been conducted with human volunteers. 

Researchers also are increasingly turning to human-based methods called “new approach methodologies,” which use human cells, tissues, and data to model human biology and disease more accurately than animals. Such methods as tissue chips, organoids (lab-grown cells that model organs) and artificial intelligence are advancing rapidly and can overcome species-specific barriers. 

Governments are starting to take steps to overhaul research infrastructures that favor animal use. The Netherlands recently passed a budget that includes a five-year phase-out of public funding for the largest monkey laboratory in Europe, while reallocating funds to animal-free research.

Here in the United States, both the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration have committed to moving away from animal experimentation.  

These changes signify an important shift, but if we continue to fund unnecessary and dangerous research using monkeys, the development of new treatments will slow, and the public will be at risk of deadly zoonotic diseases. 

Halting this research and refocusing funding on human-based methods will ensure that human health research actually benefits humans, and that it doesn’t come with detrimental risks to humans or animals.