Chimpanzees in science Yesterday, the National Institutes of Health issued a directive suspending all new funding for biomedical and behavioral research on chimpanzees. The action, hailed by animal rights groups, was based on an Institute of Medicine report that concluded most research involving chimpanzees is unnecessary. The NIH’s action and the IOM’s report do not spell the end to all such research. At least not in the foreseeable future. But the report does establish the first uniform criteria for the necessity of using chimpanzees as experimental subjects. It sets three main rules: The knowledge gained must be necessary to advance the public’s health. There must be no other research model by which the knowledge could be obtained, and the research cannot be ethically performed on human subjects. The animals used in the proposed research must be maintained either in ethologically appropriate physical and social environments (similar to their natural environment) or in natural habitats. NIH director Francis Collins lauded the historic value of chimpanzees in research, but suggested it was time to move on. “While used very selectively and in limited numbers for medical research, chimpanzees have served an important role in advancing human health in the past,” he said. “However, new methods and technologies developed by the biomedical community have provided alternatives to the use of chimpanzees in several areas of research.” The IOM report committee did note some areas where research with chimpanzees might still be necessary and useful, citing on-going studies of “monoclonal antibody therapies, comparative genomics and non-invasive studies of social and behavioral factors that affect the development, prevention and treatment of disease.” Response to the IOM report and the NIH action has been mixed. We asked Ajit Varki, MD, professor of medicine and cellular and molecular medicine and co-director of the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny, for his thoughts: “My position on the ethics of doing research on captive chimpanzees remains unchanged: that one should not do research on chimpanzees that one could not do in humans, realizing that conditions for ethical management are necessarily a bit different.  The report mentions genomic and behavioral research, leaving out the wide chasm in between these extremes, including biochemistry, cell biology, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology.  Also completely missing is any mention of the remarkable differences in disease incidence and susceptibility between humans and chimpanzees, which remains largely unexplored and unexplained.   “While the current recommendations should theoretically not much hinder this kind of ethically acceptable research, there is a genuine fear that they will be used to achieve just that, as there is a strong lobby for banning all research.  This is one of the reasons why I am disappointed that these issues were not raised. “I believe that chimpanzees deserve to have research done on them in all these aspects, not only for the potential benefits to human health, but also so that we can be better stewards of this endangered species both in captivity and in the wild.”
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Chimpanzees in science

Yesterday, the National Institutes of Health issued a directive suspending all new funding for biomedical and behavioral research on chimpanzees. The action, hailed by animal rights groups, was based on an Institute of Medicine report that concluded most research involving chimpanzees is unnecessary.

The NIH’s action and the IOM’s report do not spell the end to all such research. At least not in the foreseeable future. But the report does establish the first uniform criteria for the necessity of using chimpanzees as experimental subjects. It sets three main rules:

  1. The knowledge gained must be necessary to advance the public’s health.
  2. There must be no other research model by which the knowledge could be obtained, and the research cannot be ethically performed on human subjects.
  3. The animals used in the proposed research must be maintained either in ethologically appropriate physical and social environments (similar to their natural environment) or in natural habitats.

NIH director Francis Collins lauded the historic value of chimpanzees in research, but suggested it was time to move on.

“While used very selectively and in limited numbers for medical research, chimpanzees have served an important role in advancing human health in the past,” he said. “However, new methods and technologies developed by the biomedical community have provided alternatives to the use of chimpanzees in several areas of research.”

The IOM report committee did note some areas where research with chimpanzees might still be necessary and useful, citing on-going studies of “monoclonal antibody therapies, comparative genomics and non-invasive studies of social and behavioral factors that affect the development, prevention and treatment of disease.”

Response to the IOM report and the NIH action has been mixed. We asked Ajit Varki, MD, professor of medicine and cellular and molecular medicine and co-director of the Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny, for his thoughts:

“My position on the ethics of doing research on captive chimpanzees remains unchanged: that one should not do research on chimpanzees that one could not do in humans, realizing that conditions for ethical management are necessarily a bit different.  The report mentions genomic and behavioral research, leaving out the wide chasm in between these extremes, including biochemistry, cell biology, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology.  Also completely missing is any mention of the remarkable differences in disease incidence and susceptibility between humans and chimpanzees, which remains largely unexplored and unexplained.  

“While the current recommendations should theoretically not much hinder this kind of ethically acceptable research, there is a genuine fear that they will be used to achieve just that, as there is a strong lobby for banning all research.  This is one of the reasons why I am disappointed that these issues were not raised.

“I believe that chimpanzees deserve to have research done on them in all these aspects, not only for the potential benefits to human health, but also so that we can be better stewards of this endangered species both in captivity and in the wild.”

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    Thass my nigga tho
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  11. jtotheizzoe said: One only needs to listen to Radiolab’s “Lucy” to understand that chimpanzee research rules are long overdue for a renewed set of standards. Hopefully some middle ground will be achieved, but those stories of “humanity” in chimps, chilling.
  12. ucsdhealthsciences posted this