Big Pharma's Great Lab Monkey Shortage
The arrest of a Cambodian wildlife official for alleged monkey smuggling at J.F.K. Airport in New York City in November 2022 was the latest domino to fall in a cascading crisis for America’s $586 billion biopharmaceutical industry that is still playing out. The industry warns the supply chain disruption will slow innovation and delay the development of much needed new medicines. Conservationists say the biomedical trade threatens the survival of an endangered primate species. The whole affair has emerged as another front in the long-running battle between animal rights activists and the research community, and it has thrown a spotlight on an aspect of biomedical work that many prefer to keep in the shadows—the uncomfortable and unpopular reality that medical progress, at least for now, depends on sacrificing some of our closest mammalian relatives.
