The Humane Society of the United States is urging private research entities, such as pharmaceutical and biotech companies and their subsidiaries, to halt research on chimpanzees. The effort is part of The HSUS' Chimps Deserve Better campaign.
"Chimpanzees are highly intelligent animals who suffer immensely from being kept in cages for decades on end and are subjected to painful experiments despite their repeated failure as a model for human disease," said Kathleen Conlee, The HSUS' director of program management for animal research issues.
As part of the effort to change corporate policies regarding the use of chimpanzees in invasive research, The HSUS sent a survey letter to 404 research facilities registered with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which is the agency responsible for enforcing the Animal Welfare Act. The survey asked if the companies use, or fund the use of, chimpanzees for invasive research. The survey also asked if they had any existing policy regarding chimpanzee use.
More than 1,000 chimpanzees are housed at nine research labs across the country. The use of chimpanzees has been declining, with most chimpanzees still in laboratories simply being warehoused at significant taxpayer expense. This decline is due to the expense of using them, the poor history of scientific value from using chimpanzees, a National Institutes of Health moratorium on breeding chimps for research and major ethical concerns. The goal of the survey is to determine which of these research facilities are conducting research using this population of animals.
The HSUS applauds companies that have adopted a policy against using chimpanzees in research and strongly urges other companies to join.
After conducting reviews of scientific literature and examining other public sources, HSUS scientists believe that the majority of the research facilities contacted are not conducting or contracting for research using chimpanzees. In those cases, the goal of the survey was to verify that information and obtain a commitment to refrain from future invasive chimp research projects. Yet many of the facilities have not responded to the survey. Even some of those companies that did answer requested that The HSUS keep their information confidential.
Results and conclusions of the 2008 survey:
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