Chimpanzees – to freedom!
The United States stops conducting medical experiments on chimpanzees
RIA News
The United States stops conducting medical experiments on chimpanzees, the New York Times reported (U.S. Will Not Finance New Research on Chimps – VM).
According to her, the American National Institutes of Health on Thursday refused to finance new grants for research using these animals.
The newspaper quotes the director of the institute, Francis Collins, who said that chimpanzees, as the closest relatives of humans in the animal world, deserve "a special approach and respect." With this in mind, the scientists accepted the recommendations of the expert council of the independent Institute of Medicine of the USA, which concluded that most of the experiments on chimpanzees have no need.
"We have succeeded in establishing strict criteria for the use of chimpanzees in biomedical and behavioral research," the New York Times quotes Jeffrey Kahn, chairman of the expert council that prepared the recommendations, as well as a professor of bioethics and public policy at Johns Hopkins University.
At the same time, as the New York Times notes, the researchers themselves involved in experiments on chimpanzees are also happy about the termination of such studies.
The publication quotes the director of one of the scientific centers containing 471 chimpanzees, who said that the refusal of research only confirmed what the scientists themselves had been talking about for a long time.
The newspaper writes that such studies have already come to naught by themselves, because they were expensive.
At the same time, the expert council of the Institute of Medicine allowed only two areas of experiments in which it is impossible to do without chimpanzees so far: the search for a vaccine against hepatitis C and research in the field of immunology. Already started projects in this area, as scientists note, should be completed.
Animal advocates are trying to ensure that the chimpanzees currently in scientists' possession are moved from their cages to a more natural habitat – nature reserves.
In October of this year, the United States announced the cessation of testing of nerve agents on monkeys. As previously reported, it was about injections that simulate the defeat of poison gases. The tests were conducted to train army medical personnel to assist soldiers with possible exposure to toxic substances.
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16.12.2011