Monkey clones born as animal research models
Published on January 25, 2018
Animal Free Research UK is angered by the news that the first monkey clones have been born for use as animal research models.
Pictured with the news are the cute, innocent faces of the two identical long-tailed macaques. However, Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua have no idea yet of the horrifying life they have been born into.
A life of having cruel experimental procedures inflicted upon them.
A life of living with artificial human diseases that have been injected or surgically put into them.
A life of not understanding why they are in so much pain, why they are no longer hungry or why they can’t go outside and play.
Both of the fluffy youngsters will suffer unnecessary pain, and ultimately death, for the anticipated personal gain of their human relatives. Agonisingly, the outcomes of the torturous experiments might not even be relevant to humans.
Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua’s freedom has already been stripped away. As seen in an accompanying video, they are already trying to escape from their artificial plastic cage. Soft toys do not compensate for a natural environment and the warmth of a mother’s fur.
However, the horror does not stop here. Monkeys died while the researchers perfected their cloning technique and more clones are expected to be born into a life of torture over the coming months. Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua are the start of a generation of ‘genetically uniform monkey models for basic research and biomedical applications’.
Why is society investing in creating new lives to experiment on, when we can instead invest in creating human-relevant research methods to advance biomedical science?
Animal Free Research UK is investing in a cruelty-free scientific future without experimenting on animals, where we see Zhong Zhong and Hua Hua’s relatives in their natural habitat and not restrained on an operating table in a laboratory.
Our work is funded entirely by your generous support. Your donation helps to fund some of the most advanced and successful human-related techniques in many areas of medical research. We do not use animals.