The United States Aims to Limit the Use of Monkeys in Research

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Tuesday its intention to limit the use of monkeys in experiments for testing certain treatments, as part of the Trump administration's efforts to restrict the use of animals for scientific purposes.

"Modern science provides us with far more effective and humane ways to assess the safety of medications," stated Marty Makary, the head of the FDA, in a press release.

He noted that some tests currently conducted on primates to ensure the safety of so-called monoclonal antibodies before they are brought to market could be eliminated or reduced and replaced with other techniques, including computer modeling.

These antibodies, specifically manufactured to treat diseases, are used in the treatment of cancers and various other conditions such as Crohn's disease.

Such a change "could reduce the time needed to bring a drug to market and decrease research and development costs," emphasized Makary, who committed in April to limit animal testing.

His announcement has been widely praised by animal rights organizations.

Zaher Nahle from the NGO Center for a Humane Economy described it as an "important step" to AFP, highlighting that "equivalent or even better results" can be achieved in terms of toxicological prediction "using other approaches."

This sentiment is echoed by Deborah Fuller, director of the Washington National Primate Research Center, an institute conducting medical experiments on primates.

Avoiding the use of monkeys in this specific context "seems perfectly reasonable" to her, she told AFP, while urging caution.

"If we move too quickly, we may shoot ourselves in the foot, as we still need animals for future treatments and biomedical advancements," she insisted, noting that alternative methods are currently not efficient enough to replace all of these tests.

Various animals—primarily mice but also to a lesser extent macaques and dogs—are used in research, particularly in neuroscience and immunology, or to test the efficacy and safety of vaccines and medications.