The UW Primate Center is one of eight across the US. On site the university houses (and tests on) some 2,500 primates (largely marmosets and rhesus monkeys).

While the ends (of further knowledge and medical benefits) are laudable, the means by which to pursue them are questionable at best and utterly cruel at worst. For example, in order to do some testing, monkeys have been kept up to 104 hours in a restraint chair, and this is nothing to say of invasive surgery.

Finding alternatives does not mean the end of scientific research; it merely means shifting the methodology of study to more humane levels as well as refocusing the funding (over $10 billion of federal money is spent on research - money which would prove more effective in prevention and education).