#夏日生活打卡季 #
To ask what is the most valuable thing in the current society, we will get different answers in different countries, in Russia the most valuable is arms and food, in South Korea it is kimchi and instant noodles, in China it is the house and mother-in-law, in India, the most valuable will be cow dung and Ganges water, and if it is the United States? This answer may be beyond your expectations. The most valuable thing in the United States these days is not guns or drugs, but our master brother, the monkey from China.
In the United States, monkeys before guns and drugs?
According to information disclosed by the Japanese media, on the black market in the United States, the original price of Chinese long-tailed macaques that only cost $4,000 a piece has now been speculated to as high as $60,000. The number of monkeys that Americans need to import from China is about 20,000 a year, that is, for a small monkey, the United States pays China an extra 8 billion every year.
For a little monkey, the United States pays China an extra billion dollars a year
But even so, our country just responded domineeringly and waited, and then opened the "closed monkey" mode, gradually reducing the number of monkeys supplied to the United States, and stuck the "neck" of the United States. I believe everyone has some doubts, raising a monkey is not a high-tech high-tech, Americans can raise it themselves, why do they have to spend a lot of money to buy it from China? And China too, there is money and does not earn big fools, what is wrong with giving a couple of monkeys? This story of outrageous decisions made by both China and the United States has to start with the asteroid that extinguished the dinosaurs.
Heavenly punishment? There are no horses and no monkeys in the United States?
55 million years ago, 10 million years after the asteroid that destroyed the dinosaurs hit the earth, the earth finally recovered from this cataclysm of extinction, and the entire earth also entered the new era from the Mesozoic era. And this "new" is what is said to our ancestor mammals.
After the asteroid hit the earth, the entire surface of the earth was like hell on earth, full of 12-magnitude earthquakes and swarms of volcanic eruptions, when the reptiles represented by dinosaurs that dominated the sky, land and sea bore the brunt of the disaster, and the dinosaurs were all extinct, leaving only smaller reptiles such as turtles, crocodiles and lizards. On the contrary, at that time, our ancestors, mammals, because of the competition can not compete with the reptiles at that time, can only hide deep underground, day and night, became a veritable "rat and mouse", of course, there was no such creature as a mouse at that time, some are similar to the following picture of the rat non-rat animal.
Archaeopteryx restoration diagram
As the ground gradually calmed down, the empty earth may think that it is too cold, eager to restore the vibrant, competing scene on the earth's surface, so it planned one of the fastest and most intense global warming events in the existing records of the earth's geological history, known as the Paleocene-Eocene extreme heat event (PETM or IETM). The warm land gave birth to a large number of plants left behind after the disaster, and our ancestors who hid in the ground also came out of the crypt for this rich food, and soon spread out of the whole world. But the good times did not last long, 33.5 million years ago, several extraterrestrial comets hit the earth, although these impacts were not as tragic as 65 million years ago, but also caused a global cooling event, leading to the last mass extinction in the entire history of the earth. In Europe and North America, all primates died out, and to this day, there is no longer a single native monkey in all of Europe and North America.
Map of the primate world distribution
Originally, the lack of a species was not a big deal, after all, there were no horses in the United States. Monkeys are nothing more than relatives closer than horses, and do not affect human life. But with the rapid development of science, the importance of monkeys suddenly rose to the level of a national strategy.
The monkey's path to counterattack – from indifference to an American national treasure
In the last century, modern medicine has developed at an almost outrageous rate, and diseases that were once considered incurable, such as tuberculosis, malaria, etc., have been overcome one by one, and these achievements are inseparable from the popularization of animal testing in modern medicine, and monkeys have become the brightest star in animal experiments.
Animal experiments have propelled monkeys to become U.S. national treasures
The development of a new drug that can be applied directly to the human body without preliminary testing is too risky and contrary to human ethics. Non-human primates are the closest animal models to humans in terms of genetics, physiology and behavior, and applying this new drug to primates represented by monkeys is both in line with human ethics and the closest to real data.
Monkeys are a substitute for clinical trials, and at that time, those developed countries that did not have native monkeys in their territories have classified experimental monkeys into the category of national strategic reserves, and all local pharmaceutical companies are trying in every possible way to get a few monkeys back from those countries with monkeys.
Initially, India was the largest supplier to the United States. Because of the unique factors of the geographical environment, the rhesus monkeys exported from India are cheap and very popular with Americans.
However, monkeys as consumables, even if not counting the deaths in the course of the experiment, just in the loss of the way, as a strategic reserve of monkey sources and other factors, in 1960, the United States alone could digest more than 100,000 experimental monkeys. This data frightened the Indians, and these Buddhist Indian businessmen pinched their fingers and found that if they continued to export monkeys to the United States in this way, India would probably only be able to sell monkeys for more than a decade, after which all monkeys in India would be extinct.
The third brother, who believes in Buddhism, wants to protect the monkeys
The dumb-looking third brother was not really a big fool, and soon the Indian authorities banned the export of monkey sources. Watching India take the lead, other countries followed suit, and in the 70s, many countries introduced regulations banning or quota the export of wild primates.
If you can't import, let's try artificial farming, right? Soon, under the banknote capabilities of these pharmaceutical giants, the U.S. national team came down, led by the National Institutes of Health, and the United States established seven research centers across the country to solve the technical problems of breeding monkeys in captivity. However, to date, the artificial breeding of native monkeys in the United States has not achieved great results, and can only provide about 20%-30% of the production capacity of rhesus monkeys.
What's going on here? Is raising monkeys also a technical job?
We're really right, raising monkeys is really a technical job. Monkey breeding industry is a high-threshold industry, which needs to solve a series of problems such as appropriate environment and breeding methods. Centers and university institutions in the United States have been trying to expand the population, but have failed. In addition, the United States has limited financial support for non-human primates in scientific research, and the cost of monkey breeding has been rising due to inflation and other factors, so it is beyond means. Therefore, these institutions do not have excessive expenses to expand the plant, etc., further limiting the growth of the monkey population.
Americans can't keep monkeys
Those pharmaceutical giants in the United States are crazy, imports can't come in, local cultivation can't be done, then won't we have no monkeys available after that? Then what other company to open, quickly declare bankruptcy, go home and coax the children to go! Just when these capital giants were helpless, the mysterious eastern power appeared.
They said, I have monkeys, do you buy them?
Monkey raising is also high-tech? No one but China can figure it out
The popularity of the experimental monkey market has naturally attracted the attention of our country, and many private enterprises in the mainland have stood up one after another when they see the situation that a monkey is difficult to find in the international market. With an ecological environment suitable for monkey growth, abundant wild common macaque resources, low labor costs and agricultural breeding technology engraved in our memory, the mainland quickly conquered the world problem of breeding monkeys in captivity. Not only ordinary macaques, but also monkey farms in mainland China, but also imported cynomolgus monkeys from Southeast Asia to breed and breed them. Thanks to this, the mainland monkey reserves are more abundant.
As of 2021, the mainland can produce 120,000 experimental monkeys per year, firmly occupying more than 60% of the global market, of which 85% of the experimental monkeys in the United States are from China. Budget-conscious American capitalists found it so cost-effective and convenient to buy from China, and they relaxed their investment and research into domestic monkey farming technology, a monopoly on the US market that lasted until before the pandemic.
Closed-door monkey - don't sell the United States at a high price, for that?
Recently, Science, a well-known top academic journal in the United States, said in an article that "China is monopolizing the monkey research market, and we have to give up some research." "Everyone may feel strange, China has monopolized the US monkey market for so many years, not to mention it sooner or later, why did Science magazine think of fried cold rice at this time and attacked China for monopolizing the US market? The reason comes from China's tightening of export monkey policy. According to the CDC, the United States imported 20,270 experimental monkeys from China in 2019, and by 2020, that number dropped to 3,723. Even China has closed its policy of exporting experimental monkeys.
American laboratories where monkeys cannot be bought
The outbreak of the new crown epidemic at the end of 2019 unknowingly really changed the pattern of the world. Before the epidemic, the world's best pharmaceutical companies were basically concentrated in Europe, the United States, Japan and other countries, and after the epidemic began, these countries stood by and watched China. Not only does China not provide the latest virus research data, but even medical devices, such as masks, and other protective tools are only symbolically provided. Since the health of the people cannot depend on these foreign companies, then firmly take their fate into their own hands.
With the large number of experimental monkey resources in our hands, we quickly began the development experiment of the new crown vaccine. On January 10, 2020, Chinese scientists publicly published the whole gene sequence of the new coronavirus, which consists of 30,000 "biochemical letters", which is the necessary code for human beings to develop the "antidote" to the new crown epidemic. On March 16, Academician Chen Wei took the lead in carrying out clinical trials of new crown vaccines; The world's first batch of vaccines to enter phase III clinical trials on August 6, there are
Half are from China. Behind this series of Chinese speeds, in addition to the scientific research of Chinese scientists day and night, it is also a minute and second that countless experimental monkeys have exchanged their lives and health.
Academician Chen Wei
According to statistics, before the epidemic, the annual use of experimental monkeys in mainland China was about 80,000, and after the epidemic began, this number soared to 130,000. Remember what we said earlier about the annual production capacity of Chinese experimental monkeys? Now our consumption and capacity are just offsetting.
As for exporting to the United States, countries that did not help us in our most difficult times want to get orders? Wait in line!