Chimpanzee
Research
Fact Sheet
www.WorldAnimalFoundation.com
"[Human beings] are not standing in isolated splendor on a pinnacle, separated from the rest of the animal kingdom by an unbridgeable chasm. Chimpanzees--especially those who have learned a human language--help us intellectually to bridge the imagined chasm. This crossing gives us a new respect not only for chimpanzees but for all the other amazing animals with whom we, the human animal, share this planet."
Jane Goodall
Why Research on Chimpanzees Must Come to an End
Chimpanzees are humankind's closest living cousins, sharing more than 98 percent of our genetic code. They are highly intelligent and social beings who have language and distinct cultures. They use tools, teach their young, plan for the future and make moral choices. Chimpanzees in captivity have been taught American Sign Language and their proficiency shows that they can understand and use abstract symbols in their communication. Chimpanzees can even pass these acquired language skills onto their children.
Scientists like Jane Goodall and Roger Fouts have taught us that chimpanzees are capable of skills and behaviors once thought uniquely human. They have demonstrated that the line separating humans from the rest of the animal kingdom has been arbitrarily drawn. Their work stands as a bright beacon of scientific progress.
On the dark side of science is a record of terrible exploitation of our close genetic kin. An estimated six thousand wild chimpanzees were exported from West Africa by just three dealers in the decades before the U.S. signed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), which designated chimpanzees as endangered. The dealers were financed in large measure by the biomedical research industry, which created a huge market for wild-caught infant chimpanzees. With estimates of 5-10 chimpanzees killed for every one exported alive (the predominant collection method involved shooting mothers to collect babies), the impact of biomedical research on wild chimpanzee populations cannot be understated. Just 50 years ago, several million chimpanzees were estimated to reside in Africa. Today there are less than 200,000.
Following CITES, the U.S. began a chimpanzee breeding program at five primate centers--Yerkes Regional Primate Center, Arizona Primate Foundation, University of Texas/Bastrop, Southern Louisiana University at New Iberia, and New Mexico State University Primate Center (now The Coulston Foundation). Currently there are an estimated 1700 chimpanzees in U.S. research laboratories. The majority of them have been captive bred and born.
Historically, chimpanzees have been used in all manner of invasive experiments, from head injury experiments to space research in which they were spun giant centrifuges and placed in decompression chambers to induce unconsciousness. Today, chimpanzees are used predominantly in infectious disease experiments, most commonly hepatitis and AIDS. Once infected, these chimpanzees often remain isolated from other chimpanzees and confined indoors for life.
The AIDS epidemic was the driving force behind the government's chimp breeding program. But the chimpanzee model for AIDS has been a failure. Although chimps are the only known animal other than humans that can get infected with HIV, the infections seldom develop into full-blown AIDS, because the virus replicates differently in chimp cells than in human cells. Chimpanzees are also enormously expensive to use in research. Because euthanasia of chimps is considered taboo, researchers must include funds for of long-term care into the research budgets of protocols using chimpanzees. Since chimps can live for 50 years, these costs can be very high.
For scientific, economic and moral reasons, mainstream science has begun to move away from using chimpanzees in research. The resulting surplus of chimpanzees in laboratories has been recognized by the National Research Council. The NIH itself has recognized a research need for just 600 chimpanzees. What will happen to the remaining 1100 chimpanzees in laboratories is an unanswered question. One solution is the Chimpanzee Improvement Maintenance and Protection Act (HR 3514) introduced in the House of Representatives by James Greenwood (R-PA). It would provide government funds for a network of sanctuaries to retire research chimps.
The CHIMP act is an important first step. Next must come a permanent end to breeding and research on chimpanzees. Thanks to the work of Dr. Goodall and others, we know more today than we did decades ago when chimps were considered little more than furry test tubes. It is time to recognize our moral responsibility toward our closest living relatives and to make restitution for the terrible suffering we have caused them in the name of "scientific progress." Biomedical research on chimpanzees simply cannot be justified and must come to an end.
