Beyond the Byline: Was monkey crash handled properly?

Well, it took a truckload of monkeys to get our minds off of the pandemic, NFL playoffs, freezing temperatures and the upcoming midterm elections.

And it sure did.

In case you missed it, the last of the escaped monkeys from the crash of a truck towing a trailer load of 100 of the animals was accounted for by late Saturday — a day after the pickup collided with a dump truck on a Pennsylvania highway, authorities said in a story in Sunday’s Times Leader.

Wait, what?

The story went on to tell us that several monkeys had escaped following Friday’s collision, according to Pennsylvania State Police. And only one had remained unaccounted for as of Saturday morning, prompting the Pennsylvania Game Commission and other agencies to launch a search for it amid frigid weather.

Kristen Nordlund, a spokesperson with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in an email Saturday evening that all 100 of the cynomolgus macaque monkeys had since been accounted for. Three were dead after being euthanized.

The email did not elaborate on why the three were euthanized or how all came to be accounted for, but Nordlund said those euthanized were done so humanely, according to American Veterinary Medical Association guidelines.

Here’s where this bizarre story gets interesting.

The shipment of monkeys was en route to a CDC-approved quarantine facility after arriving Friday morning at New York’s Kennedy Airport from Mauritius, an Indian Ocean island nation, police said. The Atlanta-based CDC said the agency was providing “technical assistance” to state police in Pennsylvania.

The collision occurred Friday on a state highway near an Interstate 80 exit in Pennsylvania’s Montour County.

Now get this, the location of the quarantine facility and the type of research for which the monkeys were apparently destined weren’t clear, but cynomolgus monkeys are often used in medical studies. A 2015 paper posted on the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information referred to them as the most widely used primate in pre-clinical toxicology studies.

There seems to be some concern about these monkeys and Tasgola Bruner, Media Manager/Laboratory Investigations & Regulatory Testing for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), sent an email.

“Because these 100 long-tailed macaque monkeys were headed to a laboratory to be caged, tormented, and killed, they were already in danger — but now the public is, too. The four who got away are undoubtedly terrified and likely injured, and they may be harboring viruses that are transmissible to humans. There is no way to ensure that monkeys are virus-free, and state veterinary and other records show that monkeys in laboratories in the U.S. have been found with tuberculosis, Chagas disease, cholera, and MRSA. The only way to ensure that pathogens don’t jump from monkeys to humans is to stop importing, caging, and experimenting on these animals.”

Oh boy.

So should we all feel comfortable with the way this monkey crash/escape/capture was handled?

Well, Ms. Bruner sent another email.

“Now we know where the monkeys came from and that they weren’t quarantined. Please read new statement from primate scientist and PETA Science Advisor Dr. Lisa Jones-Engel on the news that the truck crash in Pennsylvania yesterday involved 100 monkeys who had just been brought to the U.S. from Mauritius and had not been quarantined:

“U.S. experimenters are playing with fire and the rest of us may get burned. The monkeys scattered across the highway in a truck crash in Danville, PA, on Friday afternoon — in crates that a number of people peered into or touched without any protective gear — had just arrived from Mauritius the same day. They had not been quarantined, their health had not been assessed, and no one knows what pathogens they harbor.

“Anyone who has read The Hot Zone by Richard Preston is aware that in 1989, dozens of imported monkeys who were sent to Hazelton Laboratories in Reston, VA — later known as Covance and since acquired by Envigo — brought a never-before-seen strain of Ebola virus with them. Four humans became ill, and all the monkeys were killed. Ebola-Reston was brought into the U.S. again, this time to Texas, by another monkey. Importing monkeys and tormenting them in laboratories is likely to cause more human illness than experimenting on them will ever prevent.”

Police had earlier urged people not to look for or capture any monkey, with troopers tweeting: “Anyone who sees or locates the monkey is asked not to approach, attempt to catch, or come in contact with the monkey. Please call 911 immediately.”

OK, so again I ask, was this situation handled properly?

Let’s hope so.