A report that looks good was conveyed days ago by North American Health Institute (NIH), an agency of the U.S. Government that controls the research with chimpanzees and other animals and fund laboratories and medical centers of torture, to search new drugs against diseases that affect human population. One hundred and ten chimpanzees who were at New Iberia torture center would be retired, 10 of them would go to Chimp Haven, a Federal sanctuary, and another 100 to another torture center camouflaged as Texas Biomedical Research Institute.

The media understood this as a victory for environmentalists who fight for the release of almost 1,000 chimpanzees used in medical research in North America. But the truth is otherwise. If the decision was transparent, the 110 chimpanzees should go to Chimp Haven sanctuary, and not to another laboratory, where they can always be reactivated for use in medical research.

Dr. Theodora Capaldo, president of Project R & R and organization NEAVS, denounced this attitude NIH announced as something spectacular by director Francis Collins, who refuses to retire permanently the hundreds of chimpanzees who are still under the possession of the U.S. Government and to send them to sanctuaries.

The excess of chimpanzees in laboratories began in 1986, when NIH started to reproduce, uncontrollably, adults to have infants that could be used in the search for a vaccine against HIV. But they did not test previously to verify that chimpanzees are resistant to HIV. Besides this uncontrolled reproduction, the institute provided funds in high amounts for pharmaceutical companies to initiate research projects using primates and still continue to allocate financial resources to this objective.

At the end of the Clinton administration, the Chimp Act was approved- a measure to remove all research chimps of labs. But this approval was changed at the last minute due to “NIH lobby”, allowing retirees chimpanzees to return to research in case it was needed.

According to Dr. Capaldo, there is an understanding that defines the criteria for retirement of the chimpanzees remaining in laboratories of federal estate (475), as well as the ones who are property of pharmaceutical companies (500), who either have an interest in keeping them in research. The rules for the chimpanzees to be retired would be as follows:

1) When it is determined that they are no longer needed;
2) When they do not participate of any medical research program for 10 years;
3) The elderly and those who have a long history of use in research and those who suffer from chronic or severe diseases, induced by the researches they have undergone in the past.

NIH and pharmaceutical companies that have chimpanzees must sign this rule, if in fact they want to be transparent, and not deceive North-American people pretending that they protect those who actually they wish to continue exploring.

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian
President, GAP Project International

Related news:
https://www.projetogap.org.br/en-US/noticias/Show/4421,937-chimpanzees-wait-their-freedom