NIH Chimps Pushed Toward Retirement

A National Institutes of Health working group urges the agency to send most of its chimpanzees to a national sanctuary and halt half of the experiments involving such animals.

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WIKIMEDIA, IKIWANERThe National Institutes of Health (NIH) should scale back its research involving man’s closest cousin, according to recommendations released this week (January 22) by an agency working group. This would involve sending most of the agency’s chimpanzees to federal sanctuaries and shutting down as many as half of the ongoing chimp studies.

Following a December 2011 report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which found that the majority of chimp research was unnecessary, NIH Director Francis Collins tasked his agency with evaluating its own research, determining which of its studies met the IOM report’s criteria for justifying chimp research. The working group reviewed 22 NIH-funded chimp projects and determined that half of them should be terminated.

Some projects, the group concluded, can continue, but even many of those should be modified to create better living spaces for the chimpanzees. According to the report, the animals should live in groups no larger than seven, and each should have access to at least 1,000 square feet of outdoor space.

The group also encouraged the agency to retire most of ...

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Meet the Author

  • Jef Akst

    Jef Akst was managing editor of The Scientist, where she started as an intern in 2009 after receiving a master’s degree from Indiana University in April 2009 studying the mating behavior of seahorses.
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