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Medicine United States Science

America Is Facing a Monkey Shortage 159

Posted by BeauHD from the animal-testing dept.
Thud457 shares a report from USA Today: The race for a coronavirus vaccine to help end the pandemic has consumed the scientific community and created an escalating demand for an essential resource: monkeys. Before drug companies call on human volunteers, monkeys are used in preclinical trials to test a vaccine's safety and effectiveness. But with more than 100 vaccines in development around the world, there aren't enough monkeys to go around. "There is a shortage," said Dr. Skip Bohm, associate director and chief veterinary medical officer of the Tulane National Primate Research Center.

Like other aspects of society, the pandemic has underscored an already existing problem. Nonhuman primate research centers have been strained in recent years because of restrictions on imported monkeys from countries like China and India, and a lack of funding to support domestic breeding. "We've always been in a state where we were always very close to the level of production to meeting the demand for research, and that has been the status for several years," Bohm said. "When the COVID pandemic came about, that just pressed us even further." According to a 2018 analysis by the National Institutes of Health, the national primate centers' projected demand for monkeys would increase by 20% to 50%. Most centers were not equipped to accommodate that kind of increase -- then the pandemic hit.

Tulane's primate research center has about 5,000 monkeys but only about 500 are used for research in a normal year because of age, health and colony dynamics. This year, Bohm estimates the same number of primates might be needed across the centers just for COVID-19 research alone. To satisfy the demand, NIH and research centers have had to collaborate more closely than ever. NIH created a committee to prioritize COVID-19 research while centers developed master protocols to optimize research, including sharing control groups.
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America Is Facing a Monkey Shortage More

America Is Facing a Monkey Shortage

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  • Easy fix (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RickyRay ( 73033 ) * on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @02:07AM (#60506780)

    Anybody who doesn't want to wear a mask is turned into a vaccine test subject. Since they don't believe Covid is real, they are in fact the ideal test subjects, since the placebo effect doesn't exist for them. A total win-win ;-)

    • Re: Easy fix (Score:5, Insightful)

      by c6gunner ( 950153 ) on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @02:23AM (#60506812) Homepage

      I like it. People who disagree with you about stuff are subhuman anyway. Nothing bad ever came of such attitudes.

    • I know this is funmy,but the logic is horrible.

      • It wouldn't be the first time that governments have forcibly sent people off to die for the sake of their fellow men.

        (Trump excepted of course, he thinks all those people were losers)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by clovis ( 4684 )

      Anybody who doesn't want to wear a mask is turned into a vaccine test subject. Since they don't believe Covid is real, they are in fact the ideal test subjects, since the placebo effect doesn't exist for them. A total win-win ;-)

      Good idea, but the problem is that those same people believe that the government or Bill Gates or Soros wants to use the vaccinations as a trick to implant microchips, mind control drugs, or alien DNA. They would still be good test subjects were they not so well-armed and ready to kill their own families and neighbors to spare them the horrors of being the victim of cannibal pedophiles.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by fexadzivzsctjuphoy ( 7244368 )

        These people have been manipulated to such a degree that they are incapable of forming rational judgements. Hatred and ridicule are the easy responses, but I feel like we have an obligation to keep fighting no matter how fixed their fears and ignorance are. Regardless of their faults, they still deserve to be treated as human beings. "Letting Darwin sort things out" is not an ethical option.

        Posting Anon because I don't trust that this comment won't come back to haunt me eventually...

        I'm not an anti-vaxxer by any stretch. I've got all my required vaccines, and if I have children one day, they will get vaccinated per the CDC schedule. This one is different. A vaccine for a virus we didn't even know existed a year ago, with every possible pressure to be first to release, and no long-term testing or studies? I don't think it's unreasonable to want to follow Windows Version Logic and wait unt

    • I realize you're joking, but sadly they are likely to become the control subjects. I predict that the mask deniers will also refuse to be vaccinated, either because they believe the virus is a hoax or they will believe the inevitable bizarre stories and conspiracy theories that will arise about the vaccine.

      These people have been manipulated to such a degree that they are incapable of forming rational judgements. Hatred and ridicule are the easy responses, but I feel like we have an obligation to keep figh

      • Regardless of their faults, they still deserve to be treated as human beings. "Letting Darwin sort things out" is not an ethical option.

        At this point they'd have to be forced to accept vaccination. They're not going to be talked into it. Is that ethical if the alternative is Darwination?

    • PETA supports this concept.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Ethics boards will not allow this if the vaccine under test has not been shown to be safe; generally requiring the animal studies, then they WONT allow human test subjects; no matter how willing those subjects might be.

  • they didn't count all the monkeys (Score:5, Funny)

    by MobyTurbo ( 537363 ) on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @02:08AM (#60506784)
    They forgot to count politicians.

    • Where's Dubya when you really need him???

    • Yes,
      It would be also a more humane way of testing to use politicians instead of animals.

    • Huge benefit of using politicians for testing, is that the scientists don't get attached to the politicians.
      Also to my knowledge there is no Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Politicians.
  • a shortage seriously? I think they are just all hiding at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

  • Came here for the comments (Score:3)

    by codeButcher ( 223668 ) on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @02:34AM (#60506828)
    Came here for the comments. Not disappointed. With a headline like that, the results are predictable.

    • Re:Came here for the comments (Score:5, Insightful)

      by SciCom Luke ( 2739317 ) on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @03:05AM (#60506876)
      Indeed. Lots of comments along the lines of 'the people who are different from me are basically monkeys, so you can use them' in all its variety. It is slightly unsettling.

      • I'm pretty sure everyone commenting on this article is kidding except for the "my daily experiences with the modern internet" guy, or at least I hope they are.

        • (TrueScore: 4, Reality Check)

          Some proportion of them are hitting the streets with guns, or covid-coughing on people while getting all huffy about Muh Freedoms. Maybe at the same time.

          Harmless fun isn't always harmless.

      • It's unsettling to hear the incredibly common joke of lawyers and politicians being monkeys? Or is it unsettling that maybe these aren't jokes and deep down inside you also think there we would be no worse off putting monkeys in the white house, and politicians in a lab...

        • If the prefix Con- is the opposite of Pro-

          These come from Latin, but only one was a self-standing word on its own. Pro is a full word, and is also used as a prefix, meaning "for" or forward". (The same prepostion/adverb exists in Greek, both ancient and modern, as pros.)

          But con is the English shortened form of the Latin word contra, meaning against, or opposed to. Pro is the Latin for "for," or "in favour of;" contra is simply the Latin preposition and adverb for "against."

          Then Congress is clearly the opposite of Progress, so what harm could really become of your suggestions?

      • It's not a nice sight but for me was completely predictable: Tribalism is a real thing and tends to make people consider people from other groups as inferior/less human
      • I'm finding it a little unsettling that no one is batting an eye at the fact they they're doing en-masse experimentation on monkeys. When discussions about the ethics of animal experimentation come up, the defense of experimentation on primates is usually something along the lines of: "that's not representative, primate experimentation only represents a tiny handful of animals."

      • You mean it's revolting...and you're right

  • Any other serious options? I don't think they can import monkeys now.I hope they learn and be prepared with more monkeys in future.

  • Lawyers (Score:5, Insightful)

    by quenda ( 644621 ) on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @02:52AM (#60506866)

    In other news, there is an excess of lawyers. Lawyers are primates, so kill two birds with one stone?

    https://www.wsj.com/articles/t... [wsj.com]

  • If monkeys could vote they would support fixing climate change. And free bananas.

    • If monkeys could vote they would support fixing climate change. And free bananas.

      And I'm sure Bernie would have been sure to add bananas to his list of Free Stuff in his stump speech....

  • Yeah, sure, with the pandemic, many people have been laid off, the stimulus package was grossly insufficient, so it's normal that people are out of money... Oh, wait what? *Monkey* shortage?

  • > we were always very close to the level of production to meeting the demand for research, and that has been the status for several years

    OK, what were the alternatives? Should there have been some kind of overproduction, like let's continuously "produce" monkeys, what's the problem, we just slaughter the excess?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Alcari ( 1017246 )
      I was wondering this too. It's easy to have backup capacity on goods production. You can mothball a spare machine and only bring it out in case of emergency. Or you could subsidise machines to run them at 80% capactiy.

      But I fail to see how you do this with living creatures. It's not like you mothball a bunch of female macaques

    • Its called India. No damned shortage

      https://youtu.be/qgRaAA9AaF4 [youtu.be]

      Even if you cannot bring them here, bring the trial vials there and setup the 2 month trial there. Its not that critical of a stage. They are simply looking for adverse reactions. The effectiveness of the vaccine is not part of the monkey trial.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Really, it's a typewriter shortage. (Score:3)

    by remoteshell ( 1299843 ) on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @03:29AM (#60506920)
    Not to minimize the plight of lab animals, but I haven't seen monkeys OR typewriters around recently. No wonder there's a paucity great literary works.
  • I suspect the actual reason for this is the recent explosion of the "reject humanity. Embrace monke" meme. Yes I spelled it incorrectly correctly.
  • Have they checked the White House?

    • Have they checked the White House?

      Go to the big cage and check Congress.. There is a lot more potential there.

  • Maybe I don't really understand how animal testing works, but don't we have detailed readings and observations based on millions and millions of control groups? Can't we just compare a treatment to a pre-established baseline of information we've gathered over the past decades of monkey-testing?

  • Why not use politicians? (Score:3)

    by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @05:03AM (#60507016)

    Or are they not a proper surrogate for humans?

    • Or are they not a proper surrogate for humans?

      You want to risk having them healed? I have ethical concerns about that..

  • I thought india was overrun with the damned things? Thats what, a 14hr flight? Problem solved in less time than it took to write the damn article.

    https://youtu.be/qgRaAA9AaF4 [youtu.be]

    • I think you failed to read the part of the summary where it states there're restrictions to importing monkeys from India and China

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by e3m4n ( 947977 )

        you do realize there are two ends of a line segment right?

        One end... a syringe with a vaccine
        the other end, a monkey in India in need of a vaccine

        now you can either move the monkey to the syringe ... or you can move the syringe to the monkey.

        Holy shit how hard is this concept to grasp for these people? Get your fat ass on a plane and fly to india, Round up 30 monkeys and spend 4 weeks testing for adverse reactions. This is not rocket science. How the hell can people making the vaccine not consider this. Som

  • Republicans think it's a big hoax anyway, use them

  • Now I feel bad for beating my monkey (Score:3)

    by Somervillain ( 4719341 ) on Tuesday September 15, 2020 @09:21AM (#60507572)
    ...while reading slashdot.

  • ...do better job on engineering the vaccines you want to test on them to restrain your simian fatality rate.

  • Fell free to disagree with me, I think we need to leave all primates alone and let them evolve, Who knows after we scorch the earth and we are long gone, they might be the next dominating race on the planet. There are plenty of rats and humans to try new vaccines on.

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