Threats from the wild: Zoonotic disease

Inside Bay Area - Associated Press content: "For instance, the thousands of monkeys that are imported each year for research from countries like China, Indonesia and Vietnam are quarantined for at least 31 days. While the monkeys are checked for tuberculosis, they aren't tested for other diseases unless they show signs of sickness.

However, monkeys can carry dangerous viruses and bacteria that don't make them sick but can harm people. For example, herpes B virus is a pathogen carried by 80 to 90 percent of adult macaques. The virus may not harm the macaques, but humans can be infected and suffer severe neurological damage or death.

In 1997, a 22-year-old researcher at Emory University's Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta died from herpes B virus weeks after a caged monkey splashed something in her eye.

Though the CDC has prohibited importation of most monkeys as pets since 1975, some macaques imported for research are now being sold on the open market.

'Whatever researchers are using and importing in great numbers is what we see in the pet trade,' said April Truitt of the Primate Rescue Center in Nicholas, Ky.
The government acknowledges it doesn't track where animals go after quarantine."