Nonhuman Primates in Public Health: Between Biological Standardization, Conservation and Care (2023)
By the mid-1960s, nonhuman primates had become key experimental organisms for vaccine development and testing, and was seen by many scientists as important for the future success of this field as well as other biomedical undertakings. A major hindrance to expanding the use of nonhuman primates was the dependency on wild-captured animals. In addition to unreliable access and poor animal health, procurement of wild primates involved the circulation of infectious diseases and thus also public health hazards. This paper traces how the World Health Organization (WHO) became involved in the issue of primate supply, and shows how by the late 1960s concerns for vaccine development and the conservation of wildlife began to converge. How did the WHO navigate public health and animal health? What characterized the response and with what implications for humans and animals? The paper explores how technical standards of care were central to managing the conflicting concerns of animal and human health, biological standardization, and conservation. While the WHO’s main aim was to prevent public health risks, I argue that imposing new standards of care implied establishing new hierarchies of humans and animals, and cultures of care.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Radick, Gregory;
(2005)
Primate Language and the Playback Experiment, in 1890 and 1980
Article
Tone Druglitrø;
Kristin Asdal;
(2024)
Experimenting with care and cod: On document-practices, versions of care and fish as the new experimental animal
Article
Marion Thomas;
(2016)
Between biomedical and psychological experiments: The unexpected connections between the Pasteur Institutes and the study of animal mind in the second quarter of twentieth-century France
Article
Porras, María Isabel;
Báguena, María José;
Ballester, Rosa;
de las Heras, Jaime;
(2012)
La Asociación Europea contra la Poliomielitis y los programas europeos de vacunación
Book
William W. Foege;
Jimmy Carter;
(2018)
The Task Force for Child Survival: Secrets of Successful Coalitions
Article
Gaëtan Thomas;
(2020)
Keeping Vaccination Simple: Building French Immunization Schedules, 1959–1999
Thesis
Brad Bolman;
(2021)
The Voyage of the Scientific Beagle: Dogs in the Physical and Biomedical Sciences
Article
Hochman, Gilberto;
Palmer, Steven;
(2010)
Smallpox Eradication and Brazil: An Interview with Donald A. Henderson
Article
Altink, Henrice;
(2014)
“Fight TB with BCG”: Mass Vaccination Campaigns in the British Caribbean, 1951--6
Article
Palmer, Steven;
Hochman, Gilberto;
Arbex, Danieli;
(2010)
Smallpox Eradication, Laboratory Visits, and a Touch of Tourism: Travel Notes of a Canadian Scientist in Brazil
Article
Ferreira, Aline;
(2008)
Primate Tales: Interspecies Pregnancy and Chimerical Beings
Article
Bishop, Rebecca;
(2008)
“Several Exceptional Forms of Primates”: Simian Cinema
Chapter
Siegel, Sarita;
(2005)
Reflections on Anthropomorphism in The Disenchanted Forest
Article
Castañeda, Claudia;
Suchman, Lucy;
(2014)
Robot Visions
Article
Anita Guerrini;
(2021)
Animals, vaccines, and COVID-19
Article
Gail Davies;
Beth Greenhough;
Pru Hobson-West;
Robert G. W. Kirk;
(July 2018)
Science, Culture, and Care in Laboratory Animal Research: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the History and Future of the 3Rs
Book
Elsa L. Fan;
(2021)
Commodities of Care: The Business of HIV Testing in China
Article
Kosmachevskaia, E. A.;
Gromova, L. I.;
(2011)
Tropics in the Subtropics: I. P. Pavlov and the Sukhumi Primate Station
Article
Alexander Medcalf;
(2018)
Between art and information: communicating world health, 1948–70
Article
George Weisz;
NoÉmi Tousignant;
(2019)
International Health Research and the Emergence of Global Health in the Late Twentieth Century
Be the first to comment!