The escape of three monkeys from their cages after a crash in central Pennsylvania did more than alarm local residents — it shone a sliver of light into a dark underworld of animal experimentation that normally rumbles through state after state, undetected. It’s something we need to talk about — and end.
Animal experimentation is a dangerous, ugly business, wrought with disease and violence. As the traffic incident in Danville, Pennsylvania, shows, it’s also an industry that casts a wide net that touches quiet little hamlets throughout the U.S. with regularity, exposing residents to unknown dangers tucked inside unmarked trailers. In the past decades, imported monkeys have brought with them multiple strains of Ebola, tuberculosis, measles, simian hemorrhagic fever, herpes B, malaria and other nasty diseases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), some are dead on arrival and many more die within the first month of quarantine.
In 2020, more than 26,000 monkeys distributed across 115 shipments arrived in the U.S. The vast majority of monkeys like these are destined for private pharmaceutical laboratories, where they will be killed in about six months. Others go to university laboratories, including the seven federally funded national primate research centers, where they will be used for years — sometimes decades — in experiment after experiment.
