OPINION:
Federal officials recently rejected an activist proposal that would have restricted access to certain animal models that play a key role in U.S. medical research. That was the right decision. Without these models, future patients would lose out on hundreds of cutting-edge therapies.
But they won’t stop here. Activists are continuing to press the government to ban imports of the long-tailed macaque, a primate species native to Southeast Asia. At first glance, this may sound like a well-intentioned conservation effort, but it would deal a devastating blow to America’s entire biotech industry. Most importantly, activists’ arguments are based entirely on scientific falsehoods.
Why would restricting imports of a species most Americans have never heard of prove so catastrophic?
Simple. Long-tailed macaques share most of our DNA, and they respond to medicines much as humans do. They’re uniquely suited for the nonclinical testing that the Food and Drug Administration typically requires before an experimental new medicine can be tested in human clinical trials. The primates have led scientists to advancements in regenerative medicine, immunology, cancer therapies, vaccine development and behavioral pharmacology, among other fields.
No other species could adequately fill that void. Without reliable access to long-tailed macaques, key medical research and development could grind to a halt — and patients wouldn’t ever receive new, cutting-edge medicines that could save their lives.
It would be one thing if animal welfare groups had the data on their side. But long-tailed macaques aren’t actually endangered. Not even close. The primates are so prevalent in many Southeast Asian countries that they are treated as pests there.
Yet activists have tried to obscure this reality through subterfuge — and they almost fooled one government agency.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently conducted an undercover investigation, dubbed “Operation Long Tail Liberation,” to gather information about a Cambodian business amid allegations it was illegally selling wild long-tailed macaques rather than those bred in captivity. The Fish and Wildlife Service paid about $225,000 to an undercover Chinese informant embedded in the business.
But that Chinese spy was no ordinary worker.
As a House Committee on Natural Resources oversight investigation recently revealed, the informant was referred to the service by an employee of Cruelty Free International, an animal welfare group. That employee also had professional ties to two other animal welfare groups — the Long-Tailed Macaque Project and Action for Primates.
In other words, these groups referred one of their own to the Fish and Wildlife Service, which planned to use the informant’s reports to inform its decisions on long-tailed macaques.
Fortunately, the House committee’s investigation seems to have convinced the agency that the informant might not be a reputable, unbiased source after all. In October, the agency rejected a petition from the same animal welfare groups to place the long-tailed macaque on the endangered species list.
But that near-miss hasn’t sapped animal welfare groups’ enthusiasm. They’re still trying other strategies to shut down the sale of long-tailed macaques to researchers.
Most notably, the Long-Tailed Macaque Project, Action for Primates and PETA persuaded the International Union for the Conservation of Nature to change the conservation status of long-tailed macaques to “endangered” in March 2022.
While that group, known as the IUCN, can’t directly make regulatory or legislative decisions, the nongovernmental organization is widely viewed as authoritative.
The IUCN based its ruling on cherry-picked data from a study that has serious methodological flaws. The study asserted that long-tailed macaque numbers have declined 40% over the last 40 years — and will face a further 50% decline in the next 40.
But a more recent study in the American Journal of Primatology “found no data to support a major decline in the abundance of long-tailed macaques, and previous publications misrepresent cited literature.”
Fortunately, in June, the IUCN announced it was reassessing its “endangered” classification of long-tailed macaques after my organization pointed out the shoddy research underpinning its 2022 decision. The reassessment process could last up to eight months.
If the IUCN reverses its ruling, it could cut the legs out from activist groups’ efforts to disrupt lifesaving biomedical research.
But if activists get their way, it’d be a boon to competitors such as China, which also relies on primates to create lifesaving medicines and has made no secret of its intention to outcompete the United States in biotech.
The federal government undoubtedly has an obligation to protect endangered species from extinction. But policymakers — and the NGOs who influence them — also have a duty to make decisions based on sound data.
In the case of the long-tailed macaque, failure to do so could imperil patients across the world for decades to come.
• Matthew R. Bailey is president of the Foundation for Biomedical Research (fbresearch.org).
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