Many medical advances would have been impossible without experiments on monkeys, according to a report published on 2 June by the UK鈥檚 Medical Research Council and the Wellcome Trust.
The report鈥檚 conclusion that monkey experiments should continue is opposed by a report from the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV), published on Monday, which argues for a complete ban on such work on moral grounds.
鈥淣o one likes doing primate experiments, but some research can only be done on monkeys,鈥� says Mark Walport, director of the Wellcome Trust, launching the report. He says benefits from such research have included vaccines for polio, life-support systems for premature babies, and treatments for kidney disease, stroke, Parkinson鈥檚 disease and blindness in elderly people. Monkeys are also vital for research into HIV, Walport says.
Advertisement
The two reports are the latest round in a propaganda battle surrounding a biomedical laboratory being built by the University of Oxford to investigate neurological diseases through experiments on monkeys.
The BUAV report, entitled Next of Kin, says that monkeys are capable of suffering the same kind of pain, anxiety and anticipation as humans might in an experiment. It cites studies suggesting that macaques and other smaller monkeys are more psychologically aware of themselves and of others than previously thought, and argues that this gives them a moral status equivalent to that of humans and great apes.
