The death of a monkey recently made headlines around the world. He was part of what was originally touted to be a promising vaccine trial for Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV, carried out by Harvard researchers.
This monkey and all the bodies of animals that have littered the journey from the discovery of AIDS in 1982 until now are tragic reminders that the best way to learn about human disease is by studying people.
One of our colleagues at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals decided to do something about it. He volunteered several years ago for a human HIV vaccine trial, in which he still participates. He knows that whatever the researchers learn from his blood and from the data they collect will help them learn more about helping other people. Ultimately, studies like these will bring us forward in the fight against this devastating disease.
And of course, he has the luxury, if one can call it that, of being a volunteer.
The monkey who just died was taken against his will, caged and deprived of fresh air, sunshine, freedom of movement, companionship of others of his troop - just about everything that would make his life worth living. Instead, he could only stare, day after day, at the bars of his isolated prison, and beyond these, at the barren walls of a sterile room in a laboratory.
He was coldly named monkey number 798, as though he didn't feel the chill of the steel bars and yearn to touch and groom a companion, as though he was just a non-living "sample." In 1999, he was injected with the trial vaccine, and from then on experimenters regularly shot him full of virulent forms of HIV. Like all the monkeys in the trial, he tested positive for HIV but didn't develop symptoms. The experimenters trumpeted their success in medical journals, all the while poking, prodding and repeatedly jabbing the monkey with needles to withdraw still more blood.
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Then suddenly, monkey 798 got sick and, after a year of debilitating, wasting AIDS symptoms, he died. So, experimenters are right back where they started - they have no HIV vaccine, and once again, the terrible suffering of animals has brought us no closer to stopping or preventing the disease.
A physician who writes about modern, non-animal methods of research, Dr. Murray Cohen, believes that AIDS experiments on animals will never bring a cure or prevention for the disease. "The reality is that all attempts to develop 'animal models' of AIDS have failed dismally," says Dr. Cohen. "AIDS researchers are recognizing more and more that to understand AIDS, humans must be studied."
More money than the entire budget of a small developing country go into animal studies on HIV/AIDS every year. Every year, more animals are made sick, while the number of AIDS cases worldwide, particularly in Africa and Asia, increases.
For everyone's sake, experimenters should find better, more accurate methods of research that will help people without harming animals.
by Jason Baker and Kathy Guillermo
Knight Ridder-Tribune Columnists
Jason Baker directs the People of the Ethical Treatment of Animals India office. Kathy Guillermo is a writer for the organization.
