Last week, NIH – US National Institute of Health announced that the last 50 chimpanzees who were chosen absurdly by the Institute as a strategic reserve, in case they had to use them in biomedical experiments, were also being released and will not be used anymore.

For decades, NIH encouraged medical torture experiments in great apes, as a way to use their bodies, so similar to ours, as living test subjects for the development of medicines and chemical molecules with therapeutic potential in humans.

In 2011, the pressure of all animal welfare organizations and advancing of the knowledge by society of the uselessness of those tortures led the US Institute of Medicine to assume an opinion in which it recognizes the futility of the use of chimpanzees for medical experiments and suggests their retirement.

Despite this evidence, NIH did not accept the recommendations, since in the end everything had become a business for the participants – the money from the US Treasury, administered by NIH, generously remunerated all torture centers with approximately 56 US dollars per day per chimpanzee, to maintain them in hundreds of laboratories.

In 2013, NIH gave up and announced that it was retiring more than 360 chimpanzees owned (hundreds in private hands were not included. However, not to totally surrender its power to destroy the lives of the great apes, it has reserved 50 as a strategic reserve, for use in case of need for emergency experiences.

On 12 June, FSW – US Fish and Wildlife Service, the body that oversees the treatment and status of wildlife in the United States, acknowledged that the chimps were not to be considered threatened species anymore, which allowed NIH to use them in the USA without breaking the law. Now they are classified as an endangered species, as the chimpanzees in the wild in Africa, and both, captive and wild ones, finally began to be treated in the same way.

It is worth mentioning that years ago, after the emergence of AIDS, NIH began a frantic campaign of breeding chimpanzees in North America by hiring smugglers who caught them in  Africa, when they were babies, in collusion with zoos, to have full power over the species. It also declared that all chimpanzees born in America were “Americans” and not Africans. This allowed them with  full jurisdiction over the lives and futures of these beings, since they were considered other species.

Last week, NIH “finally threw in the towel” and announced that it is retiring the last 50 individuals of the absurd strategic reserve and that it will send to the Chimp Haven Sanctuary in Louisiana, which is federal and must be expanded by the Institute, with 90% of the financial cost. Not a long time ago, the Institute were refusing to pay this cost, claiming that it would require an alleged authorization of the US Congress, which could take forever.

At the end of this story, the American chimpanzees can give thanks to God for getting rid of the operation mounted by an organization that did not have reasons to become their tormentor. These chimpanzees can now enjoy the last years of their eventful life without the fear of a gloved hand of a human plunging an anesthetic needle and cutting pieces of their organs to unnecessary biopsies, which caused pain and terror in that innocent lives.

Dr. Pedro A. Ynterian

President, GAP Project International