Mauritius, an island nation that is the world's second largest exporter of long-tailed macaques, has moved to allow scientific experimentation on the nonhuman primates locally:
The persistent fight by animal welfare activists to end nonhuman primate research has found its way to Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean two-thirds the size of Rhode Island. In the 1700s, Dutch and Portuguese seafarers introduced the long-tailed macaque to the island, where the animals thrived and, in recent decades, formed the basis of an export industry supplying biomedical labs in the developed world. Now, Mauritius has decided to get into the business of nonhuman primate experimentation itself even as such work is becoming increasingly constrained in North America and Europe. Last month the move touched off a heated debate in Mauritius's National Assembly about whether the government could adequately protect the macaques used in research and whether the new industry might endanger a far bigger lifeline for the island—tourism.
The debate is reverberating overseas. Activists, led by London-based Cruelty Free International, see the influence of Mauritius's five monkey breeding companies behind the government's February step allowing licenses to be issued for local research on island-bred macaques. (The new regulations also allow rabbit and rodent studies.) They contend that the companies are alarmed by a successful, high-pressure campaign to discourage commercial airlines from flying nonhuman primates from source countries such as Mauritius to research centers—and are trying to hedge their bets. The London group also argues that the new regulations, which amend the country's Animal Welfare Act, are invalid because they don't further the purpose of the original legislation.
Some scientists see it differently. Tipu Aziz, a neuroscientist at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom who says he was obliged by stringent U.K. animal welfare regulations to abandon studies of Parkinson's disease in long-tailed macaques, commends Mauritius's effort as a "forward-thinking" attempt to build up its biotech sector. But, he says, "They've got a lot of work ahead of them" to attract drug studies and basic research, noting that China has already established sophisticated nonhuman primate research centers that are attractive to Western customers.
[...] The captive-bred Mauritian macaques are valued because, as a result of their island isolation, they are free of simian viruses including B virus, which in rare cases has infected lab workers after bites, leaving them brain-damaged or dead. The animals' genetic makeup—in particular their patterns of expression of certain cell-surface proteins—also makes them useful models for studies of HIV.
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From the article, paraphrased:
When Steven Wise, a 63-year-old legal scholar in the field of animal law, decided to poke around Circle L Trailer Sales to assess the living conditions of the Reindeer living on the company grounds, he was horrified to discover that a former circus chimpanzee named Tommy was forced to live in inhumane conditions:
A rancid milk-musk odor wafted forth and with it the sight of an adult chimpanzee, crouched inside a small steel-mesh cell. Some plastic toys and bits of soiled bedding were strewn behind him. The only visible light emanated from a small portable TV on a stand outside his bars, tuned to what appeared to be a nature show.
Being sufficiently moved by witnessing that heinous crime, Wise and a few cohorts strolled into the Fulton County Courthouse wielding a legal document the likes of which had never been seen in any of the world's courts, a legal package including a detailed account of the "petitioner's" cruel and unusual solitary confinement along with nine affidavits gathered from leading primatologists, underscoring the physical and psychological damages such living conditions endured by a being with such cognitive capability. Tommy would not, however, have anticipated that he was about to make legal history as the first nonhuman primate to ever sue a human captor in an attempt to gain his own freedom.
Granting rights associated with personhood to non-persons has been discussed extensively before, but would be giving personhood to animals be a dangerous slippery-slope? Would be the mark of a more humane and mature society?
In what it is calling the largest resettlement of chimpanzees from a U.S. research center, Louisiana's New Iberia Research Center (NIRC) announced yesterday that it will move all 220 of its chimps to a sanctuary in Blue Ridge, Georgia. The animals include Hercules and Leo, which have been the subject of an intense legal battle over the legal rights of chimps.
[...] Biomedical research with chimps has been on its way out since 2013, when the National Institutes of Health (NIH) said that it would phase out most government-funded chimp research and retire the majority of its research chimps to sanctuaries.
Routine scientific procedures using millions of animals are still being authorised when there is a tried and tested alternative, according to a group of scientists investigating the production of antibodies.
The scientists, writing in the Cell Press journal, Trends in Biotechnology , say the use of animals in consumer society is effectively 'hidden' and products assumed to be 'animal-friendly' are anything but. They say an animal friendly antibody production technique using bacteriophage viruses instead of live animals is being overlooked, despite the enormous potential for reduction in animal use.
The global antibody industry is worth 80 billion dollars and relies heavily on animals to produce the antibodies that are used to detect the vast range of molecules indicative of state of health, safety or the environment. Antibody-based tests are used in consumer and environmental safeguarding—from healthcare, over the counter, point of care and laboratory diagnostic testing to food safety, agriculture and household products.
[...] Dr Alison Gray, a visiting researcher at The University of Nottingham's School of Veterinary Medicine and Science, said: "The antibody-based tests that are commonly used in society appear to be far removed from animal experimentation since no animals were directly tested on. However, the target molecule to be detected is repeatedly injected into the animal, initiating an immune response. Months later, the animal is euthanased [sic] and antibodies to that molecule are extracted and incorporated into an in vitro, 'animal-free' test. So in reality, we are not replacing animals but substituting methods.
"The ultimate aim of scientists in this field should be to replace the use of animals in research and industry but due to a lack of awareness about this technology, this is not happening fast enough. The 20 year old advanced technology called 'phage display' which uses bacteriophage viruses to produce monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies is available and cost-effective and can replace a huge number of animals. In fact this technology has grown to a level of scientific sophistication that outweighs obsolete and outdated animal immunisation protocols."
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is planning to lift its moratorium on chimeric embryo research:
The National Institutes of Health is proposing a new policy to permit scientists to get federal money to make embryos, known as chimeras, under certain carefully monitored conditions. The NIH imposed a moratorium on funding these experiments in September because they could raise ethical concerns.
[...] [Scientists] hope to use the embryos to create animal models of human diseases, which could lead to new ways to prevent and treat illnesses. Researchers also hope to produce sheep, pigs and cows with human hearts, kidneys, livers, pancreases and possibly other organs that could be used for transplants.
To address the ethical concerns, the NIH's new policy imposes several restrictions. The policy prohibits the introduction of any human cells into embryos of nonhuman primates, such as monkeys and chimps, at their early stages of development. Previously, the NIH wouldn't allow such experiments that involved human stem cells but it didn't address the use of other types of human cells that scientists have created. In addition, the old rules didn't bar adding the cells very early in embryonic development. The extra protections are being added because these animals are so closely related to humans. But the policy would lift the moratorium on funding experiments involving other species. Because of the ethical concerns, though, at least some of the experiments would go through an extra layer of review by a new, special committee of government officials.
You can submit a response to the proposal here up until the end of the day on September 4.
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Swallowing just a few drops of a new vaccine could protect against the deadly Ebola virus. The new immunization is not meant for humans, but chimpanzees and gorillas, for which Ebola is a devastating disease as well. Yet the vaccine may never reach these great apes.
[...] U.S. rules on research with chimpanzees are another hurdle, Walsh says. Further improvements on the vaccine, for instance to prevent it from losing its activity in the tropical heat, would require another round of testing on captive animals. And that looks all but impossible at the moment, he says.
Biomedical research on chimpanzees has been declining for years, and a new rule issued by the U.S. government in 2016 requires a permit under the Endangered Species Act. Although the rule still allows research on captive chimps if it benefits wild populations, the restrictions have made it too expensive to maintain chimpanzee groups for research, says Walsh, who cut his own vaccine study short when the rules took effect last September. Walsh has titled his paper "The Final (Oral Ebola) Vaccine Trial on Captive Chimpanzees?"
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/03/ebola-vaccine-great-apes-shows-promise-ethical-hurdles-may-block-further-research
http://www.nature.com/articles/srep43339
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) is considering repealing a rule that exempts captive members of 11 threatened primate species from protection under the federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). If the agency approves a repeal, the captive animals would be designated as threatened, like their wild counterparts, and researchers would need to apply for permits for experiments. To be approved, studies would have to be aimed at species survival and recovery.
[...] Writing to PETA on 1 March, FWS promised to "consider your petition request promptly," and assess whether ESA protection is warranted for each species. There is precedent indicating that the agency might agree with PETA. In 2015, it designated captive chimpanzees as endangered, like their wild counterparts. In doing so, it wrote that its reading of the ESA indicated that "Congress did not intend for captive specimens of wildlife to be subject to separate legal status on the basis of their captive state."
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @12:32AM (3 children)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by idiot_king on Friday May 05 2017, @02:40AM (1 child)
Please keep your shitty trolling to where they belong, places like 4chan and the Republican Party.
Thanks.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @03:18AM
Fuck you up the ass, cunt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @04:01AM
Maybe you can apply for a visum there yourself once, Trump is done with your domestic economy
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @04:37AM (1 child)
If you want to model disease in humans, go to the prisons. Experiment. Learn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 05 2017, @05:21AM
The tech industry is making plenty of people poor and homeless, forget building a wall, we need to build more prisons.