AS a veterinarian, I am concerned about the report Diseased monkeys putting city folk at risk (The Star, Jan 7) and the erroneous conclusions that might be drawn from it.

There are literally hundreds of thousands of human-monkey contacts each year throughout the world. Despite this, there have only been a few dozen reported cases of human infection of herpes from monkeys over the last 20-30 years. Moreover, almost all of these have been the result of contact in laboratories.

I am not aware of a single instance of free-living (wild) monkeys transmitting the disease to human beings.

My concern is that people, upon hearing the findings about disease in these monkeys, will use this as an excuse to begin killing or “exporting” the monkeys rather than dealing with human-monkey conflicts in a humane and responsible manner.

NEDIM C. BUYUKMICHI, V.M.D.

Emeritus Professor of Veterinary Medicine,

University of California, USA.

Source: The Star – January 9, 2008