On the 80’s, HIV appeared in the life of humans beings to disturb them and also enrich a lot of big corporations. We know very well the interests behind the cure of AIDS. We suffered with that because our business group was the first one in the world to develop a manual and cheap test to the diagnosis of the contamination. Someday we can tell this story, which exposes a lot of people who get profits with health issues.

Now let’s talk about chimpanzees, who were, having no guilty at all, mutilated and tortured on behalf of AIDS cure. National Health Institute of United States (NIH) and other pharmaceutical organizations concentrated their efforts in the end of the 80’s to develop a vaccine for HIV, no matter what.

With no scientific plan – there was no test to check if chimpanzees were contaminated by the virus – a lot of babies began to be taken out of their mother and families in Africa, which reinforced the trafficking of these primates and inflated their prices on the “market”. But the number was not enough and Breeding/Reproduction Centers of Chimpanzees were established in several North-American cities to attend the demand of pharmaceutical labs. These labs invested, with the approval of NIH, millions of dollars so they could reach first the cure or the prevention of AIDS.

Chimpanzees used to be sold for USD 60 thousand and were pulled away their mothers 24 hours after their birth, so they could be quickly used in the experiments. But there was a “law” problem. Fishing and Wild Life Service of United States (FWS), responsible to inspect the entrance, exit, permanence and use of wild animals, classified chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) as an “endangered” species, following a international classification system. A species in this category could not be imported, exported, sold, used in medical experiments or explored with commercial purposes.

As if by magic, not explained until nowadays, FWS changed the classification to “threatened” species, arguing that chimpanzees who were born in captivity in USA were a different species from the ones in Africa. Besides the big pharmaceutical corporations, NIH pressured a Federal authority to change the conservation status classification of a species, so chimpanzees born in the country could be tortured, used and exploited in the most insane way and this be justified.

A few days ago, Humane Society of United States, Jane Goodall Institute, PASA and other organizations asked, officially, to FWS come back in its decision and change the classification to endangered. For no species in the world there is difference of treatment for those ones in the wild and those ones in captivity.

In reality, the organizations that required the re-classification were too kind, because the scientific trap sponsored by NIH and executed by North-American Agriculture Ministry was a crime of torture against hundreds of chimpanzees in the country. And after 20 years of exposing and suffering, scientists finally assumed that chimpanzees are resistant to human AIDS and had their own virus, which does not infect humans.

It is simple just to forget everything that happened. A society that promotes itself a fair one must start a real investigation about what was behind the change of a so important classification (who asked for it, who approved), which caused the death of hundred of innocent chimpanzees. And the ones who survived suffer with traumas and emotional disturbs due to the years lived imprisoned in labs cages and being tortured.

It is necessary a public explanation. Chimpanzees can not talk and ask for Justice, but we, who were also victims in the 80’s of the ones interested in getting profits from human health issues, demand that the ones who to be blamed are punished for their crimes.

THE DEATH OF HUNDREDS OF CHIMPANZEES CAN NO REMAIN UNPUNISHED!

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian
President, GAP Project International