Collecting animals for vaccine trial turned into a ‘monkey business’ for Globe Biotech Ltd as five of their employees were assaulted by locals following their unannounced arrival in Gazipur on Sunday.
” Although Globe was given permission to collect monkeys from Gazipur forests, we did not know they were coming on Sunday,” said an official of the local wildlife department Tabibur Rahman.
The incident took place in Barmi Bazar area under Sreepur upazila of the district.
According to local sources, hundreds of people in the area got agitated and surrounded the Globe employees upon receiving information that an unidentified group was putting monkeys inside cages after pushing them with anaesthetic injections.
Later police rushed to the spot and rescued the Globe employees.
Globe Pharmaceuticals Ltd Media Consultant Anisur Rahman, one of the employees, portrayed the situation as more or less like an extortion.
“Some of the locals demanded money from us and physically assaulted us when we refused,” he claimed.
However, locals claimed that they mistook the Globe employees as poachers and were enraged observing their attitude towards the monkeys.
Abul Hashem, president of the Barmi Bazar Merchants’ Association, denied allegations and said that the incident could have easily been avoided if local administrations were informed earlier.
The OC of the Sreepur police station also confirmed the incident to UNB.
“We rescued five of them and later let them go after verifying their identities,” he said.
Globe Biotech received a licence to produce their potential vaccine for trial on December 28 last year, and subsequently applied for ethical clearance to begin clinical trials (on human subjects) on January 17. That however was held up for a long time. It was only in June that the Bangladesh Medical Research Council, which oversees all such trials, got back to them with certain conditions that had to be met before the clinical trials could go ahead.
The key condition was that Globe would have to run trials on monkeys or chimpanzees first. Although grudgingly at first, Globe was left with no choice but to meet the condition. One of the bottlenecks the company identified at the time was that the country did not have a third-party clinical research organization (CRO) that could conduct such tests on animals. They would however look to engage one from abroad, they said.
Yesterday’s incident raises a few questions- one being why no legal actions have been taken if the Globe employees were assaulted, and secondly how exactly Globe are planning to conduct their trials. The use of their own employees – with positions in the media and administration departments – to catch the monkeys for trial suggests they are not engaging a CRO for the job, even though that is the usual practice.
Globe at one stage had entered into an agreement with a firm called Clinical Research Organisation Bangladesh to conduct the human trials component of developing Bangavax, but eventually that got scrapped.
The Animal Welfare Act of 2019 makes certain exceptions to allow for the use of animals for research purposes, and is silent on how they are to be sourced. Even the BMRC has no specific guidelines on animal testing.
Globally, most animals used in research are specifically bred for use in medical research, and there are specific ethical considerations for conducting such trials. But the way they are going about the job of collecting their subjects suggests Globe is paying them scant attention.
Most importantly, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change did permit them to source 56 monkeys for clinical trials of their vaccine Bangavax, in the way that they did. They had the necessary No-Objection Certificates to prove it.
They have already collected 30 monkeys from the Bhawal National Park and the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Safari Park.
Source: United News of Bangladesh