UPDATE: Victory for Monkeys as Army Agrees to End Live Chemical Casualty Exercise
After years of pressure from PCRM, on Oct. 13, 2011, the Army announced that it would phase out the use of monkeys for its chemical casualty management courses. The Army completed this transition in November 2011. Now, the Army makes further use of high-fidelity simulators and moulage—superior nonanimal alternatives that meet the needs of U.S. troops far better than the irrelevant monkey laboratory.

Chemical Casualty Care Training

As the U.S. military fights two wars, it is essential that the medical training our service members receive is the best that is available. Unfortunately, despite making impressive strides in the development and utilization of training and troop protection methods, the U.S. military is still relying on the use of live monkeys to teach military personnel to respond to a biological or chemical attack.

Improvements in chemical and biological casualty care training must be made to ensure our troops are safe and the lives of animals are not wasted. The use of vervet monkeys in chemical casualty management training is clinically and physiologically subpar and should be replaced with human-based methods, such as high-fidelity human patient simulators and moulage.

In these courses:

• A live monkey is injected with physostigmine, a drug designed to simulate the effects of a nerve agent attack.

• Once injected with the agent, the monkeys suffer from seizures, breathing difficulty, and possible death.

After the training exercise, the monkeys are given no reprieve. Each monkey is placed back into its cage, only to be used several times every year.

The exercise—which takes place at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland—is demonstrated in the video below obtained by PCRM through the Freedom of Information Act. Using monkeys in this exercise distracts military personnel from the real-world, clinically valid training they need to treat chemical casualties.