It's telling that the clinical trial is loaded with patient safeguards while the monkey experiment was seemingly only wanted in order to document just how sick a monkey could be.
[Please read "We All Operate in the Same Way.": The Use of Animals at the University of Wisconsin-Madison by Rick Bogle]
As I write this, there is "an adaptive, randomized, double-blind,
placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of novel
therapeutic agents in hospitalized adults diagnosed with COVID-19" underway.
It will evaluate the use of a drug called Remdesivir as a treatment for
COVID-19. "The study is a multicenter trial that will be conducted in up to
approximately 75 sites globally." It is estimated that there will be about
440 patients enrolled in the study. More
INFO HERE.
Remdesivir was originally developed by Gilead Pharmaceuticals to treat
Ebola. It seems to have had mixed results. Monkeys were experimented on and
killed during its development. Gilead is already in Phase 3 trials of
Remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19.
On April 17, 2020, I received a news release from NIH titled
"Antiviral
remdesivir prevents disease progression in monkeys with COVID-19." The NIH
clinical trial's first patient was enrolled on February 21, 2020.
If the NIH and Gilead are already testing remdesivir in world-wide large
human trials, why experiment on monkeys? Here's what the NIH says:
Early treatment with the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir
significantly reduced clinical disease and damage to the lungs of rhesus
macaques infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19,
according to National Institutes of Health scientists.
The study was designed to follow dosing and treatment procedures used for
hospitalized COVID-19 patients being administered remdesivir in a large,
multi-center, clinical trial led by NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and
Infectious Diseases (NIAID)... The findings are not yet peer-reviewed and
should not be considered clinical advice, but are being shared to assist the
public health response to COVID-19.
There doesn't appear to be a reasonable or logical reason other than the
fact that they could. Experimenting on animals is just what they do.
Here's the paper: Williamson, Brandi, et al.
"Clinical benefit of remdesivir
in rhesus macaques infected with SARS-CoV-2." bioRxiv (2020).
This passage caught my eye: "The animals were observed twice daily for
clinical signs of disease using a standardized scoring sheet as described
previously(10); the same person, who was blinded to the group assignment of
the animals, assessed the animals throughout the study."
The scoring sheet they referenced, slightly modified in size and layout to
fit here:
The chart paints numerous possibilities for suffering. There doesn't seem to
be a justification for hurting and killing these animals in light of the
large global carefully monitored clinical trial underway. It's telling that
the clinical trial is loaded with patient safeguards while the monkey
experiment was seemingly only wanted in order to document just how sick a
monkey could be.