The extreme suffering of chimpanzees held captive for the tortures of biomedical research may be coming to an ignominious end in the United States. The National Institutes of Health said it will use fewer chimpanzees in its sponsored research and retire the several hundred primates it currently owns or controls. It left open the possibility of resuming such research if a new disease or other future affliction requires it. The Director said in her announcement that "their likeness to humans made them uniquely valuable for certain types of research, but also demands greater justification for their use." Her capacity for understatement is grotesquely inadequate to describe the horrors inflicted on these intelligent and sensitive animals in the name of science. The decision comes as the US Fish & Wildlife Service prepares to declare captive and wild chimpanzees endangered. The proposed rule was published June 12th and is open for comment. The Service determined that the Endangered Species Act does not allow for captive animals to be assigned a separate legal status from wild ones.
Dr. Jane Goodall, who has championed the interests of chimpanzees for decades, expressed her satisfaction with the proposed rule as belated as it is because indicates man may be finally ready to "understand that our attitudes toward treatment of our closest living relatives must change."
A the turn of the 20th century, an estimated 2 million chimpanzees lived in the forests of 25 African nations. Today only the population is only 150,000 to 300,000 according to the Jane Goodall Institute. Their distribution is discontinuous across Equatorial Africa as their forests homes are being destroyed and fragmented by man. Widespread poaching, capture for illegal trade, and outbreaks of disease cause wild populations to dwindle.
Despite this bleak picture for the chimpanzee's survival NIH plans to keep 50unfortunate captives for future research. It is a life sentence a human could not survive. The fortunate will be sent to the Federal Sanctuary System established in 2002. Currently there are 150 residents of the sanctuary system. Captives for research are confined in medical cages too small to allow a human to stand erect
[photo]. NIH's own advisory council on chimpanzee research stated that a minimum space of 1000 square feet per chimpanzee is necessary for humane enclosure. NIH rejected this finding on the grounds of a "lack of scientific consensus." Perhaps NIH thinks it is also humane to force feed captured islamic militants facing indefinite imprisonment ?
