AROUND 5,000 monkeys call the suburban sprawl(无序扩张的地区) west of Portland, Oregon home. Behind a row of houses, at the end of a long road with a security checkpoint, lies the Oregon National Primate Research Centre (ONPRC). With its tall firs and grand sequoias the lab can feel like a retreat(隐居处，静养地) in the woods. For nearly a decade Brandon Wilder, an immunologist(免疫学家), has used the monkeys to study malaria, a mosquito-borne(蚊子传播的) disease that kills more than half a million people each year.
大约5000只猴子以俄勒冈州波特兰市西部的郊区扩张地带为家。在一排房屋后面，一条设有安全检查点的长路尽头，坐落着俄勒冈国家灵长类研究中心（ONPRC）。实验室周围高耸的冷杉和巨大的红杉让人感觉像是林间隐居。近十年来，免疫学家布兰登·怀尔德一直利用这些猴子研究疟疾——这种由蚊子传播的疾病每年导致超过50万人死亡。
“It’s not easy, and no one enjoys seeing an animal in a cage,” acknowledges Dr Wilder. But he believes the human stakes(利害关系，风险) warrant(使…有正当理由) it. Earlier this year, some of Dr Wilder’s work on how the immune system responds to malaria was accepted for publication in Nature, one of the world’s most prestigious(有声望的) scientific journals. He hopes the discovery could help with the development of a universal vaccine against the disease, a goal that has long eluded(使…无法实现) scientists. Besides malaria, his colleagues study HIV, dementia(痴呆症) and infertility(不孕症).
“这并不容易，没有人喜欢看到动物被关在笼子里，”怀尔德博士承认。但他认为人类的利害关系使得这样做是值得的。今年早些时候，怀尔德博士关于免疫系统如何应对疟疾的部分研究成果被《自然》杂志接受发表，这是世界上最负盛名的科学期刊之一。他希望这一发现有助于开发针对该疾病的通用疫苗，这一目标长期以来一直让科学家们难以实现。除了疟疾，他的同事还研究HIV、痴呆症和不孕症。
These days, though, such work has become a battleground(战场，斗争领域) in a growing campaign against conducting scientific research on animals. Robert F. Kennedy junior, America’s health secretary, has vowed(发誓，郑重承诺) to end animal experimentation and claimed that the country’s seven federally funded primate-research centres, of which ONPRC is the largest, “have a profit motive(牟利动机)”. In February the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a federal funding agency that awards the ONPRC around $50m a year, proposed converting the lab into an animal sanctuary(庇护所，动物保护区) instead. By July that plan was deemed(认为，视为) too expensive and abandoned. Instead Oregon Health and Science University, which oversees(监督，管理) the centre, announced it would gradually shift research away from primates.
然而如今，这类工作已成为一场日益壮大的反对动物科研运动中的战场。美国卫生部长小罗伯特·F·肯尼迪誓言要终结动物实验，并声称该国七个由联邦资助的灵长类研究中心（其中ONPRC是最大的）“有牟利动机”。今年2月，美国国立卫生研究院（NIH）——一个每年向ONPRC拨款约5000万美元的联邦资助机构——提议将该实验室改造成动物庇护所。到7月，该计划因过于昂贵而被放弃。相反，负责管理该中心的俄勒冈健康与科学大学宣布将逐步将研究从灵长类动物上转移开。
Working across the aisle
跨党派合作