Gov’t to adopt strict new limits on chimp research

Booie the chim­panzee, who died Sat­ur­day, Dec. 11, 2011, at age 44, while being treated for a heart con­di­tion. Booie kicked a smok­ing habit at the ani­mal sanc­tu­ary near Los Ange­les, where he had lived since 1995, after retir­ing from a research lab. A pres­ti­gious sci­en­tific group told the U.S. gov­ern­ment Thurs­day, Dec. 15, 2011, that chim­panzees should hardly ever be used for med­ical research. The Insti­tute of Med­i­cine stopped short of rec­om­mend­ing the out­right ban that ani­mal rights activists had pushed. Instead, it urged strict lim­its that would make inva­sive exper­i­ments with chimps essen­tially a last resort, say­ing today’s more advanced research tools mean the pri­mates’ use only rarely will be nec­es­sary enough to out­weigh the moral costs. (Cour­tesy | Wildlife Waysta­tion, Dave Welling)

LAURAN NEERGAARD

AP Med­ical Writer

WASHINGTON — The gov­ern­ment on Thurs­day said it would adopt strict new lim­its on using chim­panzees in med­ical research, after a pres­ti­gious sci­en­tific group rec­om­mended that exper­i­ments with humans’ clos­est rel­a­tive be done only as a last resort.

The National Insti­tutes of Health agreed that sci­ence has advanced enough that chimps sel­dom would be needed to help develop new medicines.

NIH Direc­tor Fran­cis Collins tem­porar­ily barred new fed­eral fund­ing for research involv­ing chimps, and said a work­ing group will review about 37 ongo­ing projects involv­ing the ani­mals to see if they should be phased out.

Chimps’ sim­i­lar­ity to peo­ple “demands spe­cial con­sid­er­a­tion and respect,” Collins said.

These apes’ genetic close­ness to humans has long caused a quandary. It’s what has made them so valu­able to sci­en­tists for nearly a cen­tury. They were vital in cre­at­ing a vac­cine for hepati­tis B, for exam­ple, and even were shot into space to make sure the trip wouldn’t kill the astro­nauts next in line.

But that close rela­tion­ship also has had ani­mal rights groups argu­ing that using chimps for bio­med­ical research is uneth­i­cal, even cruel.

Chimp research already was dwin­dling fast as sci­en­tists turned to less costly and eth­i­cally charged alternatives.

Thursday’s deci­sion was trig­gered by an uproar last year over the fate of 186 semi-retired research chimps that the NIH, to save money, planned to move from a New Mex­ico facil­ity to an active research lab in Texas.

Where and how to house those ani­mals — and oth­ers scat­tered around the coun­try who prob­a­bly no longer will be needed — are among the issues that Collins said a gov­ern­ment work­ing group will decide as it deter­mines how to imple­ment the new research restrictions.

The Insti­tute of Medicine’s rec­om­men­da­tion on Thurs­day stopped short of the out­right ban that ani­mal rights activists had pushed. Instead, it urged strict lim­its on bio­med­ical research — test­ing new drugs or giv­ing ani­mals a dis­ease — that would allow using chimps only if stud­ies could not be done on other ani­mals or peo­ple them­selves, and if fore­go­ing the chimp work would hin­der progress against life-threatening or debil­i­tat­ing conditions.

The panel advised the gov­ern­ment to limit use of chimps in behav­ioral and genetic research as well, say­ing such stud­ies must pro­vide insights that oth­er­wise are unat­tain­able — and use tech­niques that min­i­mize any pain or distress.

“We under­stand and feel com­pelled by the moral cost of using chim­panzees in research,” said bioethi­cist Jef­frey Kahn of Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity, who chaired the Insti­tute of Med­i­cine panel. “We have estab­lished cri­te­ria that will set the bar quite high for jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of the use of chimpanzees.”

The U.S. is one of only two coun­tries known to still con­duct med­ical research with chim­panzees; the other is Gabon, in Africa. The Euro­pean Union essen­tially banned such research last year.

Here, too, the prac­tice was becom­ing uncom­mon. The Insti­tute of Medicine’s inves­ti­ga­tion found over the past 10 years, the NIH has paid for just 110 projects of any type that involved chimps. There are not quite 1,000 chimps avail­able for med­ical research in the country.

While it’s impos­si­ble to say how many have been used in pri­vately funded phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal research, the indus­try is shift­ing to higher-tech and less costly research meth­ods. One drug com­pany, Glax­o­SmithK­line, adopted an offi­cial pol­icy end­ing its use of great apes, includ­ing chim­panzees, in research.

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