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Chimps still stuck in research labs despite
promise of retirement
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Despite a promise more than a year and half ago
by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to
retire the vast majority of government research
chimpanzees to sanctuaries, hundreds of chimps
are still being held for potential medical
experimentation, many of them aging and being
intentionally infected with disease for research.
In June 2013, the agency's top officials pledged
with great fanfare to eventually retire the
chimps to habitats where they could roam more
freely instead of being cooped up in corrals or
cages at research facilities. But so far, only
six of the 310 research chimps have been allowed
to leave government research facilities, and the
agency has no timetable for when it will retire
the rest to sanctuaries. In the meantime, dozens
of the chimps have died waiting. Advocates for
the chimps say there's no reason the retirements
to sanctuaries should be taking so long,
especially since the NIH says scientific advances
have rendered the chimps largely unnecessary for
research. One researcher from the NIH offered
this reason for the delay before retiring the
chimps, the agency needs to select up to 50 that
will remain in research facilities because they
might be needed for "critical research" in the
future. Selecting those 50 chimps "may require a
period of several years," she said.
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