Inside the Science Crisis You've Never Heard Of: A Plane of Monkeys, a Pandemic, and a Blown Deal

A cargo flight heading for the US was planned to leave Mauritius, an island roughly the size of Maui that is located just east of Madagascar, on May 15, 2020. I knew the following four important details regarding the flight:

Monkeys were transported as part of it.

The purpose of the monkeys was for Covid study.

The overall price included the cost of the gasoline, the crew, the insurance, and other costs.

It was never intended for the general public to learn about it.

In a retroactive sense, the fact that the flight never took place is the only reason I can provide you with any information about it.

Two organizations—a Delaware-based company named International Logistics Support, which had organized the flight, and an airline called Skybus Jet Cargo—were engaged in the arrangement, and both of them could not have sounded more inconsequential. However, the agreement between the two businesses finally failed. The aircraft never lifted off. And soon after, International Logistics Support filed a lawsuit against Skybus in a Miami court seeking damages. I was able to put these fundamentals together using the court records that totaled more than 300 pages as a consequence.

I had to learn the hard way that navigating the monkey industry is somewhat similar to traversing a jungle.

However, the picture still had a lot of gaps. Who, for instance, paid for the animals? What was the number? which kind? (Long-tailed macaques, which are frequently supplied from Mauritius, was my best estimate.) Where were the monkeys meant to end up—which lab or labs? And why specifically did the airplane not take off as scheduled?

So I carried on digging. I read every available article regarding the case. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the United States Department of Agriculture—all of which regulate the trade, transportation, and research involving nonhuman primates—received my public records requests. I enquired about the situation with academics, government officials, and animal rights organizations. I contacted the companies involved, but instead of getting any response, I ended up conducting a number of fairly pointless interviews with the owner of International Logistics Support, a man by the name of Matthew Block, who it turns out is somewhat of a notorious figure among animal rights organizations. almost everyone else? Crickets.

I had to learn the hard way that navigating the monkey industry is somewhat similar to traversing a jungle.

However, my research carried me far beyond this isolated trip. The Skybus case really provides a unique window into the larger monkey trade—a notoriously opaque sector—during the greatest health crisis in a century. The specifics of the trip led to a much larger story: Primate research is in jeopardy, according to the data I was able to discover, talks with the few people who were ready to talk, and the history I was able to mine. Furthermore, the stakes in the conundrum it faces are hugely important, urgent, and personal.

The United States is experiencing a years-long monkey scarcity as a result of a number of causes, including a total halt to the shipment of primates from China, an inadequate monkey reserve there, persistent resistance from animal rights organizations, and, of course, the Covid epidemic. Simply stated, according to biologists, there aren't enough animals to meet the demand. Nearly 34,000 monkeys were brought into the US in 2019, with over 60% coming from China. Following China's ban on primate exports the following year, the overall number decreased by 21% to fewer than 27,000, and the cost of a single macaque allegedly rose to around $10,000 in early 2020 before rising to as high as $20,000 today. Without a consistent source of monkeys, researchers are spending more money, importing younger animals, "recycling" monkeys more frequently, and getting them from foreign countries like Mauritius in order to enhance their studies. Block tells me that the US rejected pleas to increase the size of its own monkey colonies for many years, and that "now we're paying the price."

I sincerely wish there were an alternative to using our closest animal cousins for testing in biomedical research. It may do so in the future. However you or I may feel about the practice, it is certain that it has saved and continues to save lives of people. You may thank monkeys if you received the Covid vaccination, for example. Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson tested their vaccines on monkeys before making them available to the general public. The same is true with Covid medications such remdesivir, an antiviral, or monoclonal antibodies. Additionally, monkeys were used to test vaccinations that can guard against monkeypox.

Thus, the lack of monkeys endangers human life. Scientists claim that crucial medical and scientific research has been postponed or completely stopped, leaving us ill-equipped to continue combating this epidemic and any future ones. It poses a risk to biodefense. It poses a risk to our economy. According to Joyce Cohen, associate director of the Division of Animal Resources at the Yerkes National Primate Science Center located at Emory University, "it poses a danger to our reputation in the field of research." All of these things are quite significant.

However, many of the people affected by the shortage—breeders, pharma workers, scientists—were reluctant to talk about it, ignored my interview requests, requested to remain anonymous, or were generally circumspect about how they described their work. This is similar to how the people involved with the flight reacted to the shortage. Concerns about secrecy and fear of animal rights organizations were among the reasons given by others. Ironically, discussing the issue and enlightening the public about primate research in general may be just what is required to help alleviate the shortage itself.

These elements make the May 2020 flight more complex—and fascinating—than a straightforward contract dispute. Block informs me in an email that he and his unidentified client finally managed to have their cargo of monkeys sent to the US, despite the fact that it "slightly delayed research programs for COVID." Therefore, even though I am unable to provide you with the lab ID numbers of those monkeys or the trials they most likely took part in, I can provide you with information about the background and setting of their arrival as well as what in the world a plane carrying monkeys across the Atlantic says about the state of science in the United States.