New standards proposed for biomedical research accepted by NIH.Conclusion: that “while the chimpanzee has been a valuable animal model in the past, most current biomedical research use of chimpanzees is not necessary”.Independent report, “Assessing The Necessity Of Chimpanzees In Research” released Decem.Report requested by Senator Tom Udall after NIH decided to transfer 187 chimpanzees from inactive duty at Alamogordo to active research at Texas Biomedical Research facility.The impact of this investigation and report was immediate and continues to have an impact on all federally-funded research using chimpanzees moving forward. Challenging the use of chimpanzees at the National Institutes of Health (NIH):Ī 2010-11 Institute of Medicine (IOM) investigation and report on the necessity of using chimpanzees for research resulted in NIH announcing an end to most invasive research on chimpanzees by the federal government. Separate efforts to pass the Great Ape Protection Act (GAPA) and the Great Ape Protection and Cost Saving Act (GAPSCA), to end research on all great apes, did not succeed, but subsequent efforts to remove chimpanzees from research have had significant success, making this legislative solution less urgent. This came as the National Institutes of Health determined that it must retire more chimpanzees and new funds were needed for construction of housing and for the care of possibly hundreds more animals. In 2013, an amendment was passed to reauthorize funding for Chimp Haven, just as funds authorized for the construction and care of chimpanzees under the original CHIMP Act were exhausted. Chimp Haven is now home to more than 200 chimpanzees and will be continuing to grow to meet the needs of additional chimpanzees soon to be retired. This law closed a loophole in the CHIMP Act and prohibited chimpanzees retired from biomedical research from being returned to laboratories. In 2007, the Chimp Haven is Home Act was passed. The best solution was to establish a sanctuary for the purpose of caring for these chimpanzees. One of the problems identified by this study was the fact that even if chimpanzees were retired from research, there were not adequate facilities to provide for their long-term care. The idea for creating a national sanctuary was part of a dialogue begun in 1995 between researchers, animal advocates and the government, which undertook an investigation into the long-term care and use of chimpanzees in research. This sanctuary, established at Chimp Haven near Shreveport, Louisiana, was intended to be a public/private partnership to provide for the care of these chimpanzees. In 1997, NAVS spearheaded the effort to introduce the Chimpanzee Health Improvement, Management and Protection (CHIMP) Act that was passed in 2000 to establish a national “retirement” sanctuary for chimpanzees no longer needed for research. To a large extent, these efforts have finally succeeded in the United States.
Legislation, regulations and litigation have all been used to try to end the use and abuse of chimpanzees in invasive research. Carl Sagan (1934-1996), the noted American astronomer and astrochemist, asked, “How smart does a chimp have to be before killing him constitutes murder?” The law has been used on multiple fronts to remove chimpanzees from the laboratory. In addition to debunking this myth by scientists who increasingly recognized that the differences between even closely related species are significant, ethical concerns mounted as growing evidence of chimpanzee intelligence and complex social skills became known. Because they share more than 98% of their DNA with humans, they have been considered an “ideal” research subject, one that can be used to stand in for human subjects in experiments that would not be ethical to conduct on humans. Chimpanzees have been used for decades in biomedical research and testing.
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