A Shortage of Monkeys Saanvi Kunisetty

 A Shortage of Monkeys

Saanvi Kunisetty

Our entire world is now depending on our population of monkeys to bring us out of the pitfall of the pandemic. In order to test more and more vaccines, Mark Lewis is desperately on the look for monkeys. Many pharmaceutical companies, such as Moderna and Johnson & Johnson need more lab monkeys in order to further test their developing monkeys. These monkeys, now priced in the 10,000 dollar range, are becoming harder and harder to find and use as research animals as the height of the pandemic is being experienced, and researchers are on the look for possible other sources of research animals. 

So, why monkeys? As you may already know, humans actually evolved from apes, and hence, monkeys are very closely related and similar to us humans. In fact, human DNA can be compared to 98% of monkey DNA. Due to their close DNA resemblance, they are the perfect animals to test whether or not a vaccine will work on humans. If the vaccine is successful for a monkey, there is a very high chance that it will be successful for humans too.

American scientists are now searching many other countries and remote locations for more monkey population for testing. Previously, the US used to rely on India for supplying a specific species of monkeys, the Rhesus Macaques. Before the pandemic, the US received over 60 percent of its primate supply from China. This amount of monkey supply is something that no country will ever be able to reciprocate.

Resources:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/23/business/covid-vaccine-monkeys.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20210222&instance_id=27391&nl=the-morning&regi_id=159059366&segment_id=52164&te=1&user_id=e7fae871a7822917ca02c4e486099cec