By conducting a critical discourse analysis of a scientific research article that claims additional potential for using transgenic marmosets in biomedical experiments, this article critiques instrumental approaches to scientific progress as they are expressed in scientific research that uses nonhuman animal experiments. Following an analysis that focuses on issues associated with access to publication, assertions about scientific breakthrough and scientific facts, and the construction of science as impartial, the article concludes that manipulating the genetics of nonhuman animals to engineer a (...) predisposition to the development of feared human health hazards represents moral deterioration rather than progress. (shrink)