Puerto Rico island provides lab monkeys for AIDS vaccine

Saturday, August 2, 2008 at 10:08 am

Almost 1,000 monkeys run wild on Cayo Santiago, an uninhabited, 37-acre island just off Puerto Rico’s coast, that supplies primates for behavioural research at the site as well as AIDS experiments in top US laboratories.

These ‘Rhesus Macaques’ have been the exclusive inhabitants of “Monkey Island” for 70 years. In 1938, scientists brought 409 of the monkeys here from India for use in research, and the population grew steadily.

Since ‘Rhesus Macaques’ are vital for the testing of AIDS vaccines, researchers cull some of the population each year for use in laboratory experiments. These monkeys are provided with food and water, and are tattooed for identification but otherwise live freely, as they would in the wild.

The monkeys are relatively tame, and and are accustomed to being observed by teams of primatologists, who boat in from the big island during the day to perform behavioural experiments.

However these monkeys are wild animals, not always friendly, and like many wild monkey populations are infected with a strain of herpes – that can be deadly to humans if scratches or bites are left untreated.

( This post is from an independent writer. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by APakistanNews.Com.)

Puerto Rico island provides lab monkeys for AIDS vaccine

From World:

Todays news from World News Alerts

Advertisement

Email Subscription

Advertisement