Nick Pyenson

And I think back just a few years ago during the COVID worldwide epidemic, and we were witnessing millions of people dying from a disease that we had no preventative for.

And it was monkeys, macaque monkeys, that played an enormous role in coming up with the vaccines that we have today.

This is an enormous sacrifice that these monkeys gave us.

And I dare say, I don't think that if we were not able to have these monkeys as models to test the vaccines, that we would have been able to come up with a vaccine as quickly as we did and saved as many lives as we did.

if we were not able to use monkeys in research.

I can't help but think about the long road it was to get to this point.

People were like, you want to do what?

You want to build a sanctuary for hundreds of chimps and treat them with respect and dignity and try to give back?

You're right.

There is a great irony in all of this and me campaigning against medical research and chimpanzees and hoping to stop it.

Because the reality is that about seven years ago, I had a liver transplant.

And I wouldn't have had that liver transplant and I wouldn't be sitting here today if it weren't for the research that was conducted on chimpanzees when I was a teenager.

So it is an irony, but you know, that's how life works.

You know, things change.

I don't want those things to happen anymore because we have other methods to develop vaccines and medical treatments, but back then we didn't.

I think that I'm still doing what I was meant to do.

But I do want to recognize the great contribution that those chimpanzees made to all beings that are afflicted with hepatitis A, B, and C, and all the others, because it did help millions of people.

I can smell it.

I can taste it.

And it's because of the science.