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by Simon Doolittle†
March 2003
Japanese Macaque
IMPACTS
If Earth doesn't do us in, our fellow organisms might be up to the task. Germs and
people have always coexisted, but occasionally the balance gets out of whack .
The Black Plague killed one European in four during the 14th century; influenza
took at least 20 million lives between 1918 and 1919; the AIDS epidemic has
produced a similar death toll and is still going strong . From 1980 to 1992, reports the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mortality from infectious disease in the United
States rose 58 percent . Old diseases such as cholera and measles have developed
new resistance to antibiotics. Intensive agriculture and land development is bringing
humans closer to animal pathogens. International travel means diseases can spread
faster than ever. Michael Osterholm, an infectious disease expert who recently left the
Minnesota Department of Health, described the situation as "like trying to swim
against the current of a raging river." The grimmest possibility would be the emergence
of a strain that spreads so fast we are caught off guard or that resists all chemical means of
control, perhaps as a result of our stirring of the ecological pot. About 12,000 years ago, a
sudden wave of mammal extinctions swept through the Americas. Ross
MacPhee of the American Museum of Natural History argues the culprit was
extremely virulent disease, which humans helped transport as they migrated into
the New World
New Virus 'Jumps' From Monkey to Scientist, Causing
Serious Illness
Goodwin 10
A never-before
detected strain of virus that killed more than one-third of a
monkey colony at a U.S. lab appears to have 'jumped' from the animals to
sicken a human scientist, researchers report.
Although it's an unusual move for that type of virus and does warrant further monitoring, the researchers stress there is no
cause for alarm at this time. There is no evidence the virus has spread beyond the single scientist -- who recovered from
her illness -- nor is there even proof that the virus would be transmissible between humans.
event happened," said lead investigator Dr. Charles Chiu, an assistant professor of laboratory medicine and
medicine/infectious diseases at the University of California San Francisco. "I don't think people should be
worried about this right now. It's more of a worry to public health officials
monitoring these new viruses that have the potential for causing outbreaks."
The study was presented Friday at the Infectious Diseases Society of America annual meeting in Vancouver, Canada.
The scientist appears to have caught the virus while investigating an outbreak of
illness among a colony of Titi monkeys at the California National Primate
Research Center in Davis, Chiu said.
Among the monkeys, the virus was highly contagious and deadly: Of 55 monkeys housed at the center, 23 (about 40%)
became seriously ill with upper respiratory symptoms that progressed to pneumonia and an inflammation of the liver.
Researchers later determined the cause of the illness was an adenovirus, a broad class of viruses that can cause
everything from relatively harmless respiratory illnesses such as the common cold, to pneumonia, as well
The new strain, however, had never before been identified, Chiu said.
"This is almost certainly a new species of adenovirus," Chiu said. "By looking at the 'sequence divergence', or how
different the genetic sequence of this adenovirus is relatively to other adenoviruses, we believe it is a new species."
The scientist who fell ill had been in close contact with the monkeys. Though she became seriously ill with pneumonia
around the same time the monkeys were falling ill, she was not hospitalized and recovered after about four weeks, Chiu
said.
Her blood tested positive for antibodies to the virus three months after the epidemic, Chiu said. While not a definitive test,
Chiu said it's very likely the cause of her illness was the new adenovirus.
Infectious disease and public health experts are always on the lookout for new viruses that pose a threat to people, said
Dr. Aaron Glatt, a spokesman for the Infectious Diseases Society of America and president and CEO of St. Joseph
While this sort of event makes infectious disease experts sit up and take notice, "it's not something to be nervous about or
worried about today," Glatt said. "There is not a novel adenovirus associated with a deadly outbreak in humans, but it's
While other viruses can infect more than one species, adenoviruses tend to be species-specific, which makes this
somewhat unusual, he said. But as of now, there is no evidence of an outbreak of the virus outside that single monkey
Chiu and his colleagues are trying to determine the origin of the virus, including whether it started as a monkey virus or
began in a human and was passed to the monkeys. Since no new monkeys had been introduced to the colony in six
years, one possibility is that the virus was circulating, undetected, in rhesus monkeys also housed at the facility and
Researchers are also screening several thousand people to determine if anyone else has antibodies to the virus, which
would indicate prior exposure and that the virus has already been in circulation in the general human population.
Another question is whether it's contagious among people, Chiu said. "There is possibly some evidence it's transmissible,
virus that makes one species very ill may be relatively harmless in another.
SARS coronavirus, for example, colonizes bats and ferrets without causing disease, while in humans the illness triggers
Influenza also jumps between species. Pigs may show no signs of having H1N1 ("Swine flu"), but humans can get very
Researchers are also working to determine if the new adenovirus is a "recombinant," or combined virus, which includes
"When viruses jump they can cause much more severe disease or less severe disease," Chiu said. "These findings might
be an argument to do more broad surveillance of animals. If we can better understand what kind of viruses circulate in
animals, it might help predict what viruses might jump over and when."
Agriculture
Monkeys wreak havoc in Florida Keys
CNN July 10, 1998
Floridas Lois Key looks like a mangroveladen island should lush
and green, fringed with healthy trees.
But on the other side of a fence that divides the key, the
mangrove trees are sick or dead. And in some places, nothing
grows anymore.
The reason is Monkeys specifically, rhesus monkeys , Lois Key and nearby
Racoon Key are owned by Charles River Laboratories, the worlds biggest producer of lab animals. For decades, the
company raised rhesus monkeys on the islands and allowed them to range free on Lois Key.
They ate the trees, they ate the coastal mangroves and actually
killed the trees, said Ed Davidson of the Florida Audubon
Society. The shoreline eroded, and the monkey droppings wash
out into the public waters. This is really a mess.
Charles River Laboratories is a subsidiary of the optical giant Bausch and Lomb. It sells the monkeys raised on the keys
to researchers studying AIDS, Alzheimers disease and other afflictions. The animals cost up to 4,000 each.
Indeed, both islands are inside the Florida Keys National Marine
Sanctuary, 2,800 square miles of bays, reefs and islands that are
supposed to be protected. While Charles River owned the
islands, the shoreline where red mangroves grew remained state
property.
And red mangrove trees, which stabilize shorelines and provide
homes for dozens of species, are protected by law.
Some area homeowners dont understand why the company has been allowed to let the trees be destroyed.
I own the land that I live on here, and yet I am not allowed to cut or trim the mangroves, said island resident Michael
Vaughn. Thats public land out there, and a private corporation, for the sake of making money, is able to destroy the fringe
mangroves that none of the rest of us that own them can touch.
the environmental damage done by the monkeys, and they say theyve taken
steps to repair it.
ANYLTICAL
The destruction of the environment disconnects us from
nature, causes dehumanization. Ever since the beginnings
of human technology, we have become increasingly
separated from our roots, from nature. When we don’t care
about natural animal life, we eventually don’t care about
life In general. The primary indicator of a psychopath is
animal cruelty, death of the environment will cause the
human race to have a psychopathic nature. The current US
law system restricts the rights of the psychopathic and
serial killers, deeming them lower than legitimate US
citizens. Restricting rights dehumanizes, African slaves
were not allowed to vote until they gained rights. Slaves
were considered lower than livestock. Environmental
destruction by monkeys dehumanizes us.
Received October 15, 1998; revision August 24, 1999; accepted October 1, 19 99
Much has been written about insect damage to standing crops, but an area
that has received little attention within agricultural development, conservation,
and primatological literature is that of primates and the potential damage
they can cause to farmers’ fields. This is likely to become an increasingly
important issue for people. monkeys can cause extensive damage
to field crops, such as maize and cassava. in
addition to the direct costs associated with crop losses attributed to baboon
foraging activity, there are indirect costs of monkey crop raiding such as
increased labor demands to protect crops from them and, occasionally, to
replant crop stands badly damaged by monkeys. These results have important
implications for future primate conservation policy.