Morgan Island has a breeding colony of about 3,500 free-ranging rhesus macaques, and that between 400 and 600 a year are removed, locked in labs, tortured and then killed.
TONY BARTELME: For more than 40 years, Morgan Island, a kidney-shaped island near Beaufort, has been used to breed monkeys for federal government research laboratories. It’s a well-documented and occasionally controversial operation that pits animal rights groups against medical researchers who say experiments on monkeys save countless human lives.
But on a sunny afternoon Dec. 16, U.S. Rep. Nancy Mace led a phalanx of media and animal rights activists on a chartered boat toward the island, saying she’d long thought it was merely a “retirement community” for monkeys. The Charleston Republican blamed Anthony Fauci, director of the agency responsible for the colony, for what she called “disgusting and barbaric” medical experiments…
The public is barred from setting foot on the island, a rule designed to protect monkeys and humans from spreading diseases. And as the boat neared the island, a small vehicle could be seen along the shore, prompting speculation that the monkeys were being shooed away…
South Carolina’s Morgan Island, a mix of high ground and marsh in the heart of South Carolina’s ACE Basin. The island itself has about 400 acres of high ground, most of which is surrounded by marsh grass. While the public owns the land, signs dotting the shore issue stern warnings against trespassers. This lack of access has created an air of secrecy among some locals, who have long worried that some monkeys might escape…
The FDA in the mid-1970s used rhesus monkeys in Puerto Rico to develop and test polio vaccines. In the late 1970s, monkeys from the Puerto Rican colony arrived in South Carolina. “Upon arrival, each animal was uncrated and given a complete physical exam, and then released to the wilds of ‘Monkey Island,’ as Morgan Island was immediately christened,” he wrote. The colony tripled in size over the next decade, generating “all manner of Dr. Moreau-like rumors,” referencing the H.G. Wells classic…
At the time, Labs of Virginia ran the operation. But in 2007, Charles River Laboratories, a large pharmaceutical company based in Massachusetts, took over. The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NAID, actually owns the monkeys and has paid Charles River Laboratories more than $13.5 million since 2018, according to its latest contract…
Asked about Mace’s comments, NAID said in a statement that Morgan Island has a breeding colony of about 3,500 free-ranging rhesus macaques, and that between 400 and 600 a year are removed and used for “research that helps develop life-saving prevention tools and treatments for diseases affecting public health.” No research is done on the island itself…
On the boat off Morgan Island, Mace said she’d long been interested in animal rights issues, an interest going back to her school days when she went hunting with her father and wanted to become a veterinarian. She said her motivations were more personal than political, but she quickly moved the conversation toward politics — how her stances on animal rights had drawn bipartisan interest, both from fellow lawmakers and constituents. “
To be honest, Republicans haven’t led on animal rights issues, and here’s a chance to do so,” she said… “It used to be almost like pulling teeth to get Republican support for animal rights,” said Marty Irby, executive director of Animal Wellness Action, who joined Mace’s expedition. “But now we’re seeing bipartisan support for these issues”…
Mace said she first learned about the use of Morgan Island’s monkeys from the White Coat Waste Project. Anthony Bellotti, a former Republican strategist, created the group in 2013, saying that he’d worked in a hospital laboratory after high school but found the animal experiments cruel. “I wanted to unite the animal lovers and the liberty lovers,” he told Science magazine in 2016…
The scientific community has been debating the ethics of using monkeys, often referred to as non-human primates, for years. Many researchers argue that testing non-human primates is a critical tool to understand infectious diseases, from Alzheimer’s to cancer. And even before the pandemic, demand for non-human primates had created a shortage, according to a 2018 federal report.
At the same time, animal rights groups and some in the scientific community argue that such research is unnecessary, immoral and should be phased out. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has said it would stop funding animal tests by 2035.
On Dec. 16, Justin Goodman also joined Mace during the floating press conference, saying that the National Institutes for Health was behind the EPA and other agencies. He said that once the monkeys are removed from Morgan Island, they’re “locked in labs, tortured and then killed. We want to see this program stopped”… Meanwhile, Mace defended her focus on Fauci. “At the end of the day, Fauci is the face of NAID and NIH”. SOURCE…
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