No more medical testing on chimps?
Chimpanzees: valuable test subjects, or caged relatives who deserve better treatment?
With a ban on all ape-testing now in Congress, the controversial practice dating back to the 1920s may soon be over, the New York Times reports. “Now is the time to get these chimps out of invasive research and out of the labs,” says the US Humane Society president. A Maryland Republican who sponsored the bill says it would save taxpayers $30 million per year and save apes a lot of agony.
“We shouldn’t abuse our power,” he insists. On the plus side, chimp-testing has produced a vaccine for hepatitis B, and one is aimed at for hepatitis The director of a San Antonio primate research lab agrees that this is “a crucial moment” for chimp-testing, but passionately defends the practice: “It would be grossly unethical not to do research” on chimpanzees, he says. The US is one of two countries that allows chimp-testing, and has about 1,000 of them in research facilities.
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Professor Mike
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I agree neighbor. Those times are gone indeed.
I’m sad to say that experimentation on these poor animals at one time did much to help us in our search for cures. Those times, however, are past.