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posted by martyb on Saturday November 11 2017, @12:37AM   Printer-friendly
from the monkey'ing-around dept.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/science/chimps-sanctuaries-research.html

The era of biomedical research on chimpanzees in the United States is effectively over. Given the nearly 100-year history of experimenting on chimps, the changes seemed to come fairly quickly once they began.

In 2011, the director of the National Institutes of Health, Francis Collins, declared that the N.I.H. would fund no new biomedical research using chimps, which he described as "our closest relatives in the animal kingdom" deserving of "special consideration and respect."

[...] Dr. Collins's decision reflected widespread ethical concerns among scientists about the treatment of such social, intelligent animals. But on a practical level, the care of chimps is costly, and they aren't always a good model in which to study human diseases. They're also a magnet for public concern.

[...] By 2015, the N.I.H. had gone through several stages of decision-making and concluded that it would retire all chimps it owned, retaining none for potential emergency use — in case of a human epidemic, for instance. The agency owns about 220 chimps outside of those now in sanctuaries and supports another 80, which will also be retired.

That year the Fish and Wildlife Service classified all chimpanzees as endangered, removing a longstanding exemption for captive chimps that had allowed biomedical experiments. The decision made such research illegal without a permit requiring that any such experiments benefit chimpanzees. Privately funded medical research on privately owned chimps also was effectively banned.

Currently, about 547 chimps are still held at research institutions, according to ChimpCARE, a site that tracks all chimps in the United States. Some of them are owned or supported by the N.I.H., and some are owned by research institutes like New Iberia, which is part of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.

[...] The sanctuaries hope eventually to put themselves out of business. If all goes as planned, in another 50 years or so, there will be no more lab retirees.


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  • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 11 2017, @03:23AM (1 child)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday November 11 2017, @03:23AM (#595474) Journal

    In fairness, most of the chimp research worldwide has been shut down. Not sure if we were the last holdout, but there isn't much, anywhere. A search found an article that suggests we are indeed the last holdout - https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/06/12/chimps-just-got-major-new-protection-from-medical-researchers/ [washingtonpost.com] You judge for yourself whether that is accurate.

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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @12:24PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 11 2017, @12:24PM (#595560)

    In fairness, most of the chimp research worldwide has been shut down. Not sure if we were the last holdout, but there isn't much, anywhere.

    Actually, you are not quite correct. Research is still done in a number of labs, yes, in western nations. The difference is that this is kept rather on the quiet side. And no, they use smaller primates.

    The thing is, how do you think Ebola research was done? On mice? You have to test vaccine somewhere, and you can't do that with mice. You use monkeys. The alternative is you use people, but infecting people with Ebola is frown upon. This is also about Chimps, but people would view all sorts of primates are equivalent, and this news is not about them.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_testing_on_non-human_primates#Prevalence [wikipedia.org]

    China exported over 12,000 macaques for research in 2001 (4,500 to the U.S.), all from self-sustaining purpose-bred colonies. The second largest source is Mauritius, from which 3,440 purpose-bred cynomolgous macaques were exported to the U.S. in 2001.

    In Europe, an estimated 70% of research primates are imported, and the rest are purpose-bred in Europe. Around 74% of these imports come from China, with most of the rest coming from Mauritius and Israel.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macaque [wikipedia.org]

    So no, Macaque is not Chimps, but both are monkeys.