Using lab animals to solve human-made problems amounts to more of the same hubris that spawned the COVID-19 pandemic in the first place.
Baby white Mouse
James Gorman, in a March 14th article in The New York Times,
states insightfully that humans “get diseases from other animals, and then
we use more animals to figure out how to stop the diseases.” Spurred by the
COVID-19 pandemic, research labs around the world are scrambling to find the
appropriate “animal model” for a treatment or vaccine for the virus. Right
now is an especially bad time to be a mouse, as labs attempt to genetically
engineer and produce mice who are susceptible to COVID-19 and, crucially,
get sick from the virus in the same way that humans do.
And so it goes. Humans create a dangerous situation by treating other
animals like commodities and then force some animals to shoulder an even
greater burden as part of our “remedy” to the problem. Let’s be clear: the
root cause of the COVID-19 pandemic is humans’ consumption of other
animals—in this specific instance, bats and possibly pangolins. Humans like
to say that the virus “jumped” from bats to pangolins to humans, as though
our exploitation and consumption of these creatures has nothing to do with
the “jump.” Humans invite the spread of pandemic viruses in by valuing only
our base appetites and expressing little concern for the wellbeing of other
animals.
The worst epidemics in recent history have been caused by humans capturing,
marketing, killing and eating other animals, not just wildlife but also
domesticated animals like chickens and pigs. One of the worst viral
diseases, bird flu, originated in the Chinese chicken markets in 2003 and
2013; in these markets, animals are crammed together with other species and
sold “warm and wet”—i.e. alive or freshly killed—making the chickens superb
reservoirs for viral mutation and reproduction. Another viral disease, the
swine flu of 2009, was caused by intensive factory farming of pigs in the
U.S. and Mexico. Zoonotic diseases are not new, or even rare.
Gorman highlights the possibility that once research labs have enough mice
to begin initial research, they will move on to “ferrets, hamsters, and
monkeys.” Some labs are already intentionally infecting rhesus macaque
monkeys with COVID-19. Chimpanzees who have been abandoned by the National
Institutes of Health (NIH) may be another target. Nearly four dozen
chimpanzees at a biomedical primate facility in New Mexico have been turned
down for transfer to sanctuaries, ostensibly because they are “too old and
sick to move.” Chimpanzees at other federally-owned or -supported biomedical
primate facilities also may not retire to sanctuaries. Will these
individuals “sitting on the shelf” be used for medical research if humans
get desperate enough? In an interview that aired on PBS in 2012, Dr. John
Vandenberg of the Texas Biomedical Research Institute—a vivisection lab in
San Antonio—stated, in a blunt plea to keep chimpanzees in research labs, “I
think of the chimpanzees in the same way that I think of a library. There
are many books in the library that will never be used this year or next
year… But we don’t know which ones will be needed tomorrow, next year or the
year after.”
Using other animal species to solve human-made problems amounts to just more
of the same hubris and human exceptionalism that spawned the COVID-19
pandemic in the first place. Until our species learns to respect the lives
and wellbeing of members of other species, plagues will continue to occur.
The next pandemic may be even worse. As long as humans continue to
use other animals as the “fall guys” when disasters strike, ignoring our own
behaviors that directly cause these crises, we will always falsely believe
that other species’ purpose is to provide a “safety net” for humans. Never
taking full responsibility for the consequences of our actions may
ultimately be the downfall of Homo sapiens.
Lori is the Founder and Executive Director of The Kimmela Center For Animal Advocacy. She holds a Ph.D. in biopsychology from the State University of New York at Albany.
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