Talk:Animal testing on non-human primates

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Why does this topic need a separate article from what is contained in the Animal Testing article?--Hatch68 04:59, 19 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems to be a viable subarticle to the animal testing article, though it would benefit from a summary paragraph there. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 10:35, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
The Animal testing page is getting very long. Once this page is viable, I'm going to go back and summarize it on Animal testing instead of what's there at the moment. SlimVirgin (talk) 16:08, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] State of the article

This article has just been started, and still needs to be balanced with some sections on the opposite POV e.g. history of using primates, key research projects and the results, why some scientists say primates are still needed in animal testing. SlimVirgin (talk) 09:10, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely. There needs to be coverage of leading primate research facilities and experimental programmes outside (presumably in front of) the poorly-named "Allegations" section. I can do some behavioural labs next time I get a chunk of time, but I don't know anything about drugs or medical research.--Jaibe 09:58, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
We may also want to add a section "impact of the animal rights movement". Primate labs have gotten a lot more humane due to animal rights, but I also know of cases where legitimate university labs were shut down, leading all the neuroscientists to leave a university in protest, and for the animals to be sent to medical labs.--Jaibe 10:00, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
"I also know of cases where legitimate university labs were shut down, leading all the neuroscientists to leave a university in protest..." Really? This sounds more like urban myth than reality. Rbogle 17:45, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

I encountered this article through Random Article and was struck by its not-neutral point of view. The reports of mistreatment of research animals are horrific, and would be sufficient to cause any sane human to question the value of these experiments, except that the author(s?) add their own perjoratives and commentary, which spins the presentation. This would be a stronger article if it really was neutral. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.14.154.3 (talk) 08:44, 28 October 2007 (UTC)


It really doesn't matter. Any editing for POV is immediately reverted by a Wikipedia editor with an animal rights bias. Just look through the history of changes in the last month. I won't say it is a lost cause, but when an editor is bound and determined to exert their biased POV on an article, there is not a lot you can do. I run a primate testing laboratory in the USA. I cannot find a single referenced example of a primate from a zoo, circus, or animal trainer being transferred into a testing lab in the last 9 years, yet the introduction claims it as truth. I read that in the intro and thought it must be a myth. The reference in the intro says it with regard to chimps (from an animal activist web site), but does not offer ANY specifics. Further, when I add a reference on the number of purpose bred animals increasing in proportion (which DEFINITELY fits the reality that someone in my position sees in addition to being referencable), it is similarly reverted because the trend may not fit in the UK, which does a tiny fraction of the primate testing in the USA. After a point, it becomes hard to AGF. --Animalresearcher 01:29, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] My revert

I reverted Animalresearcher's recent edit because the source does indeed say that NHPs in labs are taken from zoos, circuses, and animal trainers, as well as being wild-caught and purpose bred. It's also misleading to say, as AR wrote, that "purpose-bred primates are increasing in prevalence relative to wild-caught," because it gives the impression that there are more purpose bred than wild caught, or that the former is catching up with the latter, and that's not true, so far as I know. One of the sources AR himself supplied says:

"There does not appear to have been any noticeable decrease in the number of primates imported into the EU for research and testing. Most users of old-world primates (about 90% of which need to be imported) report an increase in animal use. In the UK (Europe's main primate user), a survey of user establishments3 found that the number of old-world primates used, and thus imported, has increased by about 50% during 1994-5, at the height of the airline campaign.
"There does not appear to be a significant problem with the supply of the marmoset, the main type of new world monkey used in research and testing in the EU. Most sources confirm that we already breed enough to meet the EU requirement although it may be important to take steps to co-ordinate supply and demand. However, the majority of the primates used in the EU are old-world animals and we currently only breed about 10% of the numbers used." "The supply and use of primates in the EU", European Biomedical Research Association.

SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 19:47, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I provided sources that said the former (purpose-bred) were increasing in number relative to wild-caught, and in addition to being sourced, this point fits well with first-hand impressions. There have been changes in the USA that make it very hard to import primates, and the breeding colony sizes have increased dramatically in the past few years to compensate (part of the NCRR plans). But furthermore, the citation that animals are taken from "zoos" or "animal trainers" is from an agenda-driven site Project R&R. That might be OK, if they provided evidence that animals were actually ever taken from zoos or trainers. It is just stated without source. I searched in vain to find other sources to validate this statement, but I could not. Given the agenda driven nature of the information, and the lack of validation from any other sources, I do not consider it a reliable indicator of current primate procurement. Also, this obviously POV statement occurs in the introduction which is supposed to reflect the content of the article. If you were to find and source reliable information on the current transfer of transfer of primates from zoos and animal trainers to animal testing I would find those statements in the introduction appropriate. As it sits now they do not either reflect the article, or valid sourced information on the current state of primate testing, and that should be fixed. If they are not fixed I will remove them, again, in the near future, feel free to discuss here also. --Animalresearcher 12:04, 11 November 2007 (UTC)
Further research http://www.primate.wisc.edu/wprc/history.html shows that there was a collaborative zoo/research center agreement with some drama between Wisconsin Primate Center and The Vilas Zoo. However, that ended 9 years ago and there are no longer Primate Center primates at the zoo. Other than that, I could not find any source on primates in testing laboratories coming from animal trainers or zoos... Still looking... --Animalresearcher 15:14, 12 November 2007 (UTC)
As a second point, this reference was omitted http://www.researchtraining.org/moduletext.asp?intModuleID=816#lesson10587 which explains the reasons why wild-caught primates are decreasing in prevalence relative to purpose-bred in the USA (whose primate testing dwarfs that of the EU and UK). Importation has become more difficult/costly, and more laboratories are interested in specific pathogen free animals (SPF), which almost only come from purpose-bred facilities. It may also be of interest that recently established primate breeders in multiple places in the USA are now providing 5000+ primates per year for testing - very nearly all purpose bred. These breeders did not exist ten years ago. Alphagenesis, Primate Products, and a third in California, are all very large now. I think all of this will change in another 10 years, because China is setting up very massive primate testing facilities. But for now, there are good sources to support that purpose-bred animals are increasing in numbers relative to wild-caught. I would like even more to find a reference on the absolute numbers, but the USA regulations do not tabulate animal source. --Animalresearcher 15:14, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] No chimps from zoos, circuses, or animal trainers

A further explanation of a revert that will certainly be reverted, again, by Slimvirgin. The use of chimpanzees in US laboratory research uses roughly 1700 animals. The National Research Council finds a need for only 600 of them (according to IDA). http://www.idausa.org/facts/chimpresearch.html There has been a surplus of chimps for over 15 years because they are not euthanized if not needed, and because they were thought to be a promising model for AIDS (but Rhesus are now used instead). The point, is that US researchers have acquired no new chimps have been acquired from the wild or zoos or circuses or animal trainers in well over a decade. And, for 11 years, they have not bred chimps in captivity for the simple reason that there are more chimps than the US researchers know what to do with in captivity already. There are citable examples of US primate centers providing "foster" sanctuary for chimps en route from personal owners to wildlife sanctuaries as well. So when the New England anti-vivisection society says that chimps are taken from the wild, zoos, circuses, or animal trainers, the reliability of the information is extremely dubious, extremely dated AT BEST. And the NEAVS provides no citation for its information, it just simply states it. REPEATING SOMEONE ELSE'S UNSUBSTANTIATED SLANDER is not a good policy for an encyclopedia, and it is the reason for my revert. --Animalresearcher (talk) 17:18, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] UK section

If you look at the sections by country, the first is all about chimps in the USA (and not other NHPs). The second contains extensive citations from an HSUS analysis which is USA specific on chimp and monkey use. It needs to be broken out if UK is to have its own section (which is fine by me). But currently the section, as you ported it here from the Animal Testing page, refers to monkey use in the UK and USA, so I changed the section title to reflect that. Simply reverting the change so that the section is still mislabelled is silly.

Also, I suspect the SIV use of macaques is somewhat misleading, because behavioral pharmacological experiments use about 40 times more primates than other granted experiments, which creates a bias in the HSUS study. So, I changed the citation to reflect their analysis - they looked at grant narratives in CRISP, and papers published on PubMed (for chimps). For Rhesus they looked only at grant narratives on CRISP (which is also troublesome because there is no requirement to mention an animal species in the CRISP narrative, so many researchers avoid mentioning if they use NHPs, the actual number of grants is definitely higher).--Animalresearcher (talk) 09:02, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Would you please add material, but stop removing it? Length is not an issue. If you dispute what the sources say, please outline it point by point instead of posting long explanations, because it makes the material much harder to get through. SlimVirgin (talk)(contribs) 09:28, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
I restored the LEAD section, once again, to better summarize the content of the page, and moved the Weatherall/BUAV issue down the page. --Animalresearcher (talk) 19:45, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
Also, the point about the Conlee study is that she summarized US use by two means. First, she scanned grant narratives in the NIH CRISP archive. These grant narratives generally do not contain the number of animals per grant. For example, suppose I have a grant to perform electrophysiological studies in awake monkeys. I may use 2 animals per year. My colleague may perform behavioral pharmacology, and use 100 monkeys per year. We each have one grant in the CRISP archive. So, Conlee would summarize that there is one grant for cognitive/physiological studies, and one grant for behavioral pharmacology studies. However, there are 50 times as many animals used in behavioral pharmacology. The point is that the attribution to the Conlee study needs to reflect that she surveyed numbers of grants for types of use and species, and not numbers of animals. These can be wildly different as toxicology type studies typically use dozens of animals per year, while physiological studies use less than 5 per grant. --Animalresearcher

(talk) 19:45, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

As a followup to that, I added another reference which notes that toxicology testing in the USA is largely private and contracted. Therefore the analysis of use in the USA would not reflect it, since for monkeys it only queried grant awards, and only from NIH. This leaves open the possibility (a near certainty in my mind) that toxicology use is also the dominant use in the USA, and that this use would be overlooked by the methodology in the Conlee study. --Animalresearcher (talk) 19:51, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:BUAVCambridge2.jpg

Image:BUAVCambridge2.jpg is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

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BetacommandBot (talk) 04:26, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Primate testing

69.128.162.67 (talk) 21:41, 1 April 2008 (UTC) I am an avid hunter, and killing deer and small animals is not a problem for me. But the use of our closest cousins (Chimps, in example, share 98% of our genes) as hariy test tubes greatly angers me. These animals are hurt, mistreated, and killed, all in the name of "Science." If you are not haunted by the saddnes and hoplessness of the animals in this article's pictures, there is something wrong with you. I understand that this "testing" saves lives. What these "doctors" must realise is that it also destroys them. Please stop the cruel treatment of our closest family. If our "ultimate" race can not co-exist with our closest realitives, then how do we treat the animals who are not like us? if we can not co-exist, how can we have the right to live on this planet? -chimps are 98% humans. that's more than people who mistreat them will ever be.

Please note that this is a page for discussion of the content and editing of the associated page and is not a forum for general opinions on animal testing. Wikipedia talk pages are not general bulletin boards or forums for opinions on topics. They are for discussion of editing and formatting of reliable third party sources on the subject matter of the page. This is a page on non-human primate testing. Chimps are a non-human primate and have been, and are currently, the subject of testing, so reliable sources about them are included here, as are reliable sources about the ethical debate about using them (and associated bans and ongoing proposals).--Animalresearcher (talk) 00:06, 3 April 2008 (UTC)