She was born inside four walls and iron bars of a medical torture center. She had no childhood. We see our baby chimpanzees running, jumping and playing for hours, until their bodies do not resist, and we think of her, with whom none of this happened. She has never been embraced, nor protected by a mother or a father. When she was very little, she was sent to another location, where they also breathed sadness, discouragement, unhappiness and even premature death.

Men and women with masks and gloves poked needles into their young bodies; pain and terror accompanied her days and haunted her nights. This was Dorothy’s life and her destiny was to be a guinea pig in the hands of humans without feelings or remorse.

Suddenly her luck turned. One day men and women with embarrassed and distressed look took her out of that torture place and she returned to her roots, where the environment was another. The men and women of masks and gloves were gone and she met others who feel and cry when they see the suffering of innocent beings and extended a helping hand.

Dorothy was born in the Coulston Foundation, in the State of New Mexico, a breeding center of torture, funded by NIH (National Institutes of Health of United States) to play and experiment with nonhuman primates. When she was still a baby, she was sent to another similar center. She was taken out her parents, as it is common in this dark world, where a chimpanzee is a valuable life, worth many thousands of dollars in the trade created “for the benefit of science…”.

The Coulston Foundation went bankrupt due to the pressure from the environmental world and Save the Chimps Sanctuary, in Florida, bought its facilities and all innocent beings that existed there, who were about to die. Dorothy went with a group of chimpanzees to the sanctuary in Florida. For the first time she had hope, could run, play, be cuddled by an equal and be treated with love for humans, who did not wear masks or gloves.

But life has inexplicable things. Why young beings, full of life, with a promising future, have their life cut shortly by an early death? In recent days, in Santa Maria, in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, in Brazil, more than two hundred young people, who hanging out in a happy night, had a horrible and unexpected death, caused by the greed of some humans, who did not even needed to hide behind masks and gloves.

Dorothy passed away prematurely. A chimpanzee in adolescence was a being, such as the young people in Santa Maria, who had the world and happiness in the company of his fellows ahead. Those, who like us have suffered the premature loss of human children and nonhuman unexpectedly, know the suffering felt by our souls and the frustration that pervades our existence.

Dorothy died at the age of 14. She could have buried us all. But the injustices of life forced us to make her obituary. REST IN PEACE, great Dorothy … Those who knew you will NEVER forget you!

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian

President, GAP Project International