Stop monkeying around
You urged Western countries to increase neurological experimentation on primates to keep pace with China and Japan, arguing that brain diseases are becoming a leading human killer and monkey brains closely resemble our own (“Monkey business”, July 24th). Nonhuman primates, from chimpanzees and gorillas to marmosets and macaques, all share many exquisite mental faculties with humans. Indeed, this is what makes nonhuman primates attractive to researchers. However, implanting machinery in their brains remains an undeniably brutal procedure that causes them to suffer immensely, as would humans.
You said that Western countries will inevitably have to choose between accepting therapies produced from nonhuman primate brain experiments or rejecting them on principle. This is not a new problem, and the argument shortchanges ethical alternative methods that show promise of being superior to animal experiments. Moreover, the scientific literature is replete with duplicate and nonreproducible primatebrain studies that suggest the value of these experiments is less than the animalresearch community claims.
The important lesson will not be expressed in the firing neurons of tortured monkeys, but in finding ways to advance human health while also respecting the lives and rights of nonhuman primates.
kevin schneider
Executive director Nonhuman Rights Project New York
The United States actually does have a large colony of freeranging macaques on the small and uninhabited Morgan Island off the coast of South Carolina. Known as Monkey Island to locals, its furry residents can be seen playing on the beach and swinging through dense foliage. The 4,000 or so breeding macaques originally came from Puerto Rico, where they arrived as stowaways from India.
Recognising the need for a reliable source of primate specimens, the federal government rounded them up and deposited them on an island offered by South Carolina. The secretive place is closely patrolled by the coast guard, but the monkeys have the run of the land, free from all but occasional human interference to deposit food, and the removal of some specimens to the mainland for testing. mitchell jackson Greenville, South Carolina