Remaining Chimps to Retire from NIH

The US National Institutes of Health has announced an end to the support for invasive research on chimpanzees and retired the 50 chimps it had held over for biomedical research.

The next step for the retired chimps is finding sanctuary. As per a new port, the NIH is now retiring the last 50 chimpanzees which the agency kept reserved in 2013.

Dr Francis S Collins, the director of the NIH said after two and a half years, no proposal requesting use of the remaining chimpanzees had moved forward.

“We find no evidence that there is a need to continue to do research of an invasive sort on chimpanzees – not now, and not going into the future”.

After around 310 chimps were retired in 2013, the NIH made a decision to keep a stock of 50, just in case a major public health emergency required urgent research.

The similarities that led many scientists to see chimps as ideal human analogs – they are genetically and behaviorally similar but without legal rights – are exactly what drives many people to protest chimp research, and the underlying assumption that the apes belong to a different ethical category.

Spraetz expressed a few concern that the chimp influx to Chimp Haven might be overwhelming as her facility will need to be expanded in order to accommodate the hundreds of new animals.

Since the “standby” chimps were arranged, NIH received only one application to use the chimps for research, and it was also withdrawn later.

Chimps were vital in creating important medicines and paved astronauts’ way into space. Earlier this year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service designated chimps in captivity as endangered species. While many sanctuaries are unable to accept research chimps or are almost full, 20 of the NIH-owned chimps will first be transferred from the Southwest National Primate Research Center in San Antonio, Texas, to Chimp Haven, which is a government-funded sanctuary in Louisiana. But in 2011, the Institute of Medicine reported that making use of chimps for research purposes will no longer be justified now.

As for Ebola vaccine candidates, Collins noted that they’re already tested in monkeys, something that won’t change.