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Agood10 t1_iw3wvos wrote

Reply to comment by Chiperoni in How do medical researchers obtain lab animals with diseases like specific forms of cancer which arise spontaneously? Do they raise thousands of apes and hope some eventually develop the disease? by userbrn1

I think your statement that “almost nobody works with primates anymore” isn’t really correct. Most of what ive been reading in the past hour suggests NHP use has remained relatively constant or even increased slightly over the past few decades.

This is purely anecdotal, but as a vaccine researcher I haven’t really noticed any significant decline in the use of NHPs in my field over the past decade. Everyone knows that NHP research isn’t ideal from an ethical standpoint but when it comes to testing a vaccine before trying it in humans, there’s really no better alternative.

Edit: source from USDA showing slight increase in NHP use over time in the US

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Chiperoni t1_iw3xl5a wrote

You might be right that their numbers are stable or increased but if you compare researchers that work on NHP to all other animal models or even just mice, they are a drop in the bucket

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Agood10 t1_iw3y633 wrote

Yes, that’s definitely true. I only bring it up because the way you worded your initial comment seemed to imply that NHP use has been on the decline whereas the opposite appears to be true, at least in the US and China. I suspect the low overall use of NHPs compared to other animal models is more so due to the astronomical economic cost of housing NHPs, not so much because of ethical qualms.

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Cosy_Bluebird_130 t1_iw4swbj wrote

It is being more and more discouraged in the EU and UK to use NHPs. In preclinical pharma research in the UK, you now have to provide justification for why you can’t use another non-rodent species in order to use them. Dogs are also starting to go the same way in the UK (you now need to prove you can’t use pigs), in large part due to the recent uptick in protests relating to “camp beagle”.

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FawltyPython t1_iw5m1kc wrote

That use is not really for disease modeling. It's almost all for ADME.

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stage_directions t1_iw7ul6i wrote

Yeah, we’ve found it very difficult to get primates for neuroscience over the past couple of years - they’re all going to vaccine work I suppose.

Be kind to’em!

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