On a more positive note, medical researchers seem to have developed a needle-less vaccine that is delivered nasally for the Ebola virus that they have been working on for seven years. The vaccine was tested on nine monkeys in which each were protected 100 percent of the time.

According to NBC News, a common cold virus was used to make the vaccine using a minuscule piece of Ebola DNA. The vaccine saved all nine monkeys infected with Ebola. There is one detail that is holding up development: money. The spokesperson for the research team is seeking a pharmaceutical company or the federal government to fund development. The fact that the vaccine can be administered through nasal passageways and is needle free is an added benefit since Ebola transmission among health care workers has been the result of accidents involving needles.

Hopefully the scientists at University of Texas at Austin’s College of Pharmacy will get the money they need. However, if animal rights groups (like ALF or PETA) had their way, the monkeys used in the medical trials would have been set free and the laboratory prohibited from using them. Like I have said before, individual rights are not based on someone’s ability to feel pain (as animal rights groups allege) but are based on one’s ability to think. Animals survive through sensory perception and reflexive action, as opposed to whom humans survive primarily through deliberation and choice (i.e. reason). The researchers in this and other medical analyses are fully within their rights to use animals for medical testing just like people are fully within their rights to utilize animals for food.