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Swallowing just a few drops of a new vaccine could protect against the deadly Ebola virus. The new immunization is not meant for humans, but chimpanzees and gorillas, for which Ebola is a devastating disease as well. Yet the vaccine may never reach these great apes.

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[New] U.S. rules on research with chimpanzees are another hurdle, Walsh says. Further improvements on the vaccine, for instance to prevent it from losing its activity in the tropical heat, would require another round of testing on captive animals. And that looks all but impossible at the moment, he says.

Biomedical research on chimpanzees has been declining for years, and a new rule issued by the U.S. government in 2016 requires a permit under the Endangered Species Act. Although the rule still allows research on captive chimps if it benefits wild populations, the restrictions have made it too expensive to maintain chimpanzee groups for research, says Walsh, who cut his own vaccine study short when the rules took effect last September. Walsh has titled his paper “The Final (Oral Ebola) Vaccine Trial on Captive Chimpanzees?”