Animal Testing On Non-human Primates - Use - Chimpanzees in The U.S.

Chimpanzees in The U.S.

Further information: Chimpanzee#Animal research

The US and Gabon are the only countries that still use chimpanzees for research purposes, with the US having the largest colony in the world of more than 1,000 chimpanzees at six laboratories as for middle 2011:

• New Iberia Research Center, affiliated with the University of Louisiana (372)
• M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, affiliated with the University of Texas (178)
• Alamogordo Primate Facility (affiliated with the National Institutes of Health and Charles River Laboratories) at Holloman Airforce base (176)
• Southwest National Primate Research Center, affiliated with the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research (173)
• Yerkes National Primate Research Center, affiliated with Emory University and Georgia State University (86)
• BIOQUAL, Inc. (15).

Chimps routinely live 30 years in captivity, and can reach 60 years of age.

Most of the labs either conduct or make the chimps available for invasive research, defined as "inoculation with an infectious agent, surgery or biopsy conducted for the sake of research and not for the sake of the chimpanzee, and/or drug testing." Two federally funded laboratories use chimps: Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, and the Southwest National Primate Center in San Antonio, Texas. Five hundred chimps have been retired from laboratory use in the U.S. and live in sanctuaries in the U.S. or Canada.

Their importation from the wild was banned in 1973. From then until 1996, chimpanzees in U.S. facilities were bred domestically. Some others were transferred from the entertainment industry to animal testing facilities as recently as 1983, although it is not known if any animals that were transferred from the entertainment industry are still in testing centers. Animal sanctuaries were not an option until the first North American sanctuary that would accept chimps opened in 1976.

In 1986, to prepare for research on AIDS, the U.S. bred them aggressively, with 315 breeding chimpanzees used to produce 400 offspring. By 1996, it was clear that SIV/HIV-2/SHIV in macaque monkeys was a preferred scientific AIDS model to the chimps, which meant there was a surplus. A five-year moratorium on breeding was therefore imposed by the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) that year, and it has been extended annually since 2001. As of October 2006, the chimp population in US laboratories had declined to 1133 from a peak of 1500 in 1996.

Chimpanzees tend to be used repeatedly over decades, rather than used and killed as with most laboratory animals. Some individual chimps currently in U.S. laboratories have been used in experiments for over 40 years. The oldest known chimp in a U.S. lab is Wenka, who was born in a laboratory in Florida on May 21, 1954. She was removed from her mother on the day of birth to be used in a vision experiment that lasted 17 months, then sold as a pet to a family in North Carolina. She was returned to the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in 1957 when she became too big to handle. Since then, she has given birth six times, and has been used in research into alcohol use, oral contraceptives, aging, and cognitive studies.

With the publication of the chimpanzee genome, there are reportedly plans to increase the use of chimps in labs, with scientists arguing that the federal moratorium on breeding chimps for research should be lifted. Other researchers argue that chimps are unique animals and should either not be used in research, or should be treated differently. Pascal Gagneux, an evolutionary biologist and primate expert at the University of California, San Diego, argues that, given chimpanzees' sense of self, tool use, and genetic similarity to human beings, studies using chimps should follow the ethical guidelines that are used for human subjects unable to give consent. Stuart Zola, director of the Yerkes National Primate Research Laboratory, disagrees. He told National Geographic: "I don't think we should make a distinction between our obligation to treat humanely any species, whether it's a rat or a monkey or a chimpanzee. No matter how much we may wish it, chimps are not human."

In January 2011 the Institute of Medicine was asked by the NIH to examine whether the government should keep supporting biomedical research on chimpanzees. The NIH called for the study after protests by the Humane Society of the United States, primatologist Jane Goodall and others, when it announced plans to move 186 semi-retired chimps back into active research. In December 15, 2011 the Institute of Medicine committee concluded in their "Chimpanzees in Biomedical and Behavioral Research: Assessing the Necessity" report that

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while the chimpanzee has been a valuable animal model in past research, most current use of chimpanzees for biomedical research is unnecessary

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as scientific research indicates a decreasing need for the use of chimpanzees due to the emergence of non-chimpanzee models. Later that day Francis Collins, a head of the NIH, said the agency stops issuing new awards for research involving chimpanzees until the recommendations developed by the IOM are implemented.