Question

It is illegal to use primates in product testing research; however, primates are used in biomedical and behavioral research. Can you describe any interesting research which utilizes non-human primates as subjects? Did you find this information on the web, in a journal article, through personal experience, etc.?

Answer 1

ans:)Primates are increasingly used in pharmaceutical and bio experiments, and researchers continue to promote the “development of a of non-human primate models for a variety of human diseases . For example, primates are used in experiments related to infectious disease e.g., AIDS, malaria, TB, Lyme disease, Ebola, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, drug abuse, cross-species transplants, toxicology, vaccinations, age-related research, gene therapy, neurosciences and reproductive biology.

Many species of nonhuman primates are used in biomedical and behavioral research, including cynomolgus macaques, rhesus macaques, pigtailed macaques, African green monkeys, squirrel monkeys, baboons and capuchins, among others.

Invasive research on our closest relative, the chimpanzee. Chimpanzees had been used in diverse research areas including studies pertaining to hepatitis, monoclonal antibodies, infectious diseases, comparative genomics, neuroscience and behavioral research.

Before a new pharmaceutical can be introduced on the market, it has to be tested on humans during clinical trials. The purpose of animal testing is to safeguard the health of the people taking part in these trials. The vast majority of drugs initially selected for development are rejected during this process, either because they are not effective or because they cause unwanted side-effects.

The main use of primates are in research here because there is an urgent need to

Primates may be needed to quickly detect new diseases that could affect a large number of people across the world and spread over a wide geographical area. For instance, studies on primates were used effectively to prevent a pandemic spread of SARS

At present it is impossible to totally replace animal experiments when testing pharmaceuticals for their safety and effectiveness, because laboratory studies cannot yet predict how a drug will affect real, living humans; and it is still necessary to establish below which dose no harmful effects

Because of scientific reasons, testing of new pharmaceuticals on non-human primates is a very small but almost compulsory part of the global testing procedure. The reason is that primates are usually the species that match humans more closely in terms of how drugs affect them and tests on other species are not adequate. Drugs involving the immune system can often only be tested on primates.

In certain cases, genetically modified rodents may replace them but this is usually not yet accepted by regulators, who consider this alternative as a source of supportive data rather than as a means to replace the use of primates.

I take this information from bio journal.