NIH Plans to Retire Chimpanzees From Research

Research with chimpanzee. Courtesy of Everett Collection / shutterstock Researchers have made strides in understanding human diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV-Aids by using chimpanzees as test subjects. But public and institutional pushback has caused the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to rein in its chimpanzee research in recent years. A report [pdf] released by a NIH working group Tuesday calls for an even more drastic cut in the number of chimpanzees used for research as well as a reform of the way that research is conducted in the future. Chimpanzees are a valuable resource for medical research because they are the present-day species most closely related to humans. For the same reason, using chimps as test subjects brings up a whole crop of animal rights issues. The real question is if these animal studies are really necessary for medical research anymore. The National Institutes of Health are ...