English
It recently came to light that the number of monkeys used in the United States in biomedical research in 2017 was 22% higher than in 2015.
Monkeys are an important component of research into the prevention and treatment of life-threatening and infectious diseases in humans. The importance of monkeys to biomedical research was recently reaffirmed by the SCHEER report commissioned by the European Commission.
Increase
A record number of almost 76,000 monkeys were used in biomedical research in the USA in 2017. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) expect that over the next few years the number of monkey studies will only increase. This is partly due to the rising level of research involving monkeys into infectious diseases and brain disease.