Animal Aid

About the author: Animal Aid, founded in 1977, is the United Kingdom's largest animal rights group.

Nonhuman primates make poor subjects for experimentation, and their use may even cause harm to humans. For example, one drug for arthritis killed sixty-one people, despite having been tested successfully on primates. Infectious disease research on primates has encountered devastating failures as well, particularly in AIDS research. Similar problems have arisen in experiments on neurological disorders, including studies on stroke treatments. Since primate brains work differently than human ones, data from neurological studies on primates is invalid. Other forms of testing, such as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) or in vitro (test tube) experiments, along with human-based studies, would produce more valid outcomes than do experiments on primates.

The public is strongly opposed to the use...