Hurting animals because that's just what they do

(There are no photos from either of the projects mentioned below.)

As I write this, there is "an adaptive, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of novel therapeutic agents in hospitalized adults diagnosed with COVID-19" underway. It will evaluate the use of a drug called Remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19. "The study is a multicenter trial that will be conducted in up to approximately 75 sites globally." It is estimated that there will be about 440 patients enrolled in the study. More info here.

Remdesivir was originally developed by Gilead Pharmaceuticals to treat Ebola. It seems to have had mixed results. Monkeys were experimented on and killed during its development. Gilead is already in Phase 3 trials of Remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19.

On April 17, 2020, I received a news release from NIH titled "Antiviral remdesivir prevents disease progression in monkeys with COVID-19." The NIH clinical trial's first patient was enrolled on February 21, 2020.

If the NIH and Gilead are already testing remdesivir in world-wide large human trials, why experiment on monkeys? Here's what the NIH says:

Early treatment with the experimental antiviral drug remdesivir significantly reduced clinical disease and damage to the lungs of rhesus macaques infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, according to National Institutes of Health scientists.

The study was designed to follow dosing and treatment procedures used for hospitalized COVID-19 patients being administered remdesivir in a large, multi-center, clinical trial led by NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID)... The findings are not yet peer-reviewed and should not be considered clinical advice, but are being shared to assist the public health response to COVID-19.

There doesn't appear to be a reasonable or logical reason other than the fact that they could. Experimenting on animals is just what they do.

Here's the paper: Williamson, Brandi, et al. "Clinical benefit of remdesivir in rhesus macaques infected with SARS-CoV-2." bioRxiv (2020).

This passage caught my eye: "The animals were observed twice daily for clinical signs of disease using a standardized scoring sheet as described previously(10); the same person, who was blinded to the group assignment of the animals, assessed the animals throughout the study."

The scoring sheet they referenced, slightly modified in size and layout to fit here:

The chart paints numerous possibilities for suffering. There doesn't seem to be a justification for hurting and killing these animals in light of the large global carefully monitored clinical trial underway. It's telling that the clinical trial is loaded with patient safeguards while the monkey experiment was seemingly only wanted in order to document just how sick a monkey could be.