Despite the pressure of North-American society to end the use of chimpanzees in medical experiments, NIH (National Health Institute of United States) tries to postpone the final decision, to continue with the business it has with various centers of torture, sponsored by the institute, and keep the chimpanzees available to the experiments.

In December 2010, NIH requested, due to a call of Institute of Medicine (IOM), an official opinion on the use of chimpanzees in medical research, despite knowing what would be the answer. IOM took a year to give an answer, denying the usefulness of primates in biomedical research.

After receiving the response, Dr. Francis Collins, Director of NIH, announced that it would welcome the recommendations of IOM, but created another group called COC (Council of Councils Working Group on then use of Chimpanzees in Research) to implement the recommendations of IOM.

A year later, COC sent its findings to Dr. Collins, recommending that 90% of chimpanzees should be retired from medical research and, within 3 to 5 years, should be transferred to sanctuaries. The report of this Working Group states, “research involving chimpanzees rarely has accelerated advance new discoveries in the treatment of infections that affect human health.” And adds: “There are no scientific reasons to justify keeping a large reserve of chimpanzee populations, which can be used in biomedical research.” The report recommends: “keep a group of 50 chimpanzees as a reserve for future research.” Every five years this number would be revised.

As it can be seen, NIH continues to consider chimps as objects in their hands, to use them and they wish, when it is considered to be productive.

This “novel, never-ending story”, created by Dr. Collins and his companions, to continue promoting the torture of helpless and innocent beings, will continue for some time, possibly for years. Now they give a deadline of 60 days to respond to the recommendations forwarded by the Working Group.

In fact, United States is the only country in the world that still uses great apes in medical torture. Throughout Europe and dozens of many other countries have already banned this practice and a lot of pharmaceutical companies also gave up using them as a model of clinical research. Why the insistence of NIH to delay a decision, which already has a global consensus? What is the interest of Dr. Collins and the direction of NIH in keeping chimpanzees in torture centers, funded by the taxes of North-American people, to use them when they decided it is useful? I think the tolerance of society to this endless dram must end and an investigation should be instituted to discover who is earning something with this terrible exploitation of hundreds of living beings locked in medical laboratories, submitted to the cruelest tortures.

NIH: STOP TORTURING PRIMATES!