> This is a bad faith reading of what these activists want. It amounts to a strawman.

Not it is not a straw man argument. Non-human primate trials are the last stage before human testing. Eliminating non-human primate trials will increase the risk for human participants(unless they actually stop developing).

Our understanding of biology is nowhere near comprehensive enough to be able to simulate all these interactions and isn’t likely to be for maybe a century.

So if you eliminate non-primate human testing, your options are either to develop therapies at greater risk to humans, or to stop developing them.

Either of those options hurts humans. Thus, you are placing the well-being of non-human animals above the well-being of humans.