On December 1 it is celebrated the World Day Against HIV/AIDS and NEAVS/Project R&R remembers Yoko’s story, a male chimpanzee purchased from a circus at age 7 and sent to the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates in 1981.

He was used extensively in research and infected with both HIV and hepatitis C – today he tests negative for both.  Why?Although HIV can replicate in their bodies, chimpanzees infected with HIV do not become sick with symptoms of AIDS.

Now in sanctuary at Fauna, Yoko has become very social and can often be found in a grooming circle of friends. A fast runner who loves to play chase, he is a very small adult male, but what he lacks in size he makes up for in personality.

The use of chimpanzees was once hailed as “the key” to a cure for AIDS. Yet AIDS continues to kill millions worldwide. Today, HIV research using chimpanzees represents an extremely small, nearly non-existent percent of all HIV research – an admission by scientists that the chimpanzee model of AIDS/HIV is a failure. Still, a few studies backed by federal funding continue.

Then, on World Day Against AIDS, GAP Project is together with NEAVS/Project R&R in the campaign for better science and asks the project’s supporters to reach out Northe-American representatives for the approval of the Great Ape Protection Act (H.R.1326), a bill to end chimpanzee research.