By Rafael Garcia and Reinaldo José Lopes (published at Folha de São Paulo newspaper on November 6^th 2011)

The impression we have when we enter in the laboratories of Bioqual, clinical Research Company in Rockville, Maryland, USA, is that it is a children hospital. During cleaning time, the most you see are toys all over the floor. Inside the glass walls enclosure areas, there are piece of papers with colorful drawings of the names of the patients.

The interns there, however, are 11 baby chimpanzees used by guinea pigs in medical research. There are other one thousand in the same condition in United States, but the species is near to achieve a universal right that no other no-human animal has: the “enfranchisement” of the guinea pig life.

North-American scientists are among the least that still can use invasive procedures in research with chimpanzees. Apart from Gabon, in Africa, United States are the only place in the world where monkeys can be infected deliberately with hepatitis C virus, for instance, to be used in vaccine tests.

There are three initiatives in course – a bill proposal at North-American Congress, an revaluation of the federal financing system and a request of a change in an environmental order – that have potential to make the invasive medical research with chimpanzees not viable.

It is easy to understand the commotion of the public. It`s disturbing to visit Bioqual and see Xavier, a chimpanzee who is not eight years old yet, hitting his fists on the walls of his glass cage, asking for the attention of a stranger. Clara, a younger offspring, got moody in a corner while the journalists visited the place.

Tiffany, her neighbor, on the other hand, started to sway in a plastic chain hanged on her cubicle, looking at the intruder. The three of them will only be retired of the role of guinea pigs when they turn nine years old and become strong enough to represent risk for researchers.

Bioqual does not allow journalists with cameras to enter in its laboratories, in order that situations like are not shown in the internet “out of their context”. One of the scientists of the company, anonymously, affirmed he considered the debate about the ban of the use of chimpanzees in experiments legitimate. A highly intelligent animal, which today is the one who is closest to humans in the evolutionary chain, could not be treated as a rodent, after all.

The total prohibition of the researches, however, will not be an easy choice to be made.

According to statistics from World Health Organization (WHO), 3% of world population is infected with hepatitis C. Every year, 350 thousand people die due to complications caused by the disease, such as cirrhosis. Regardless the researches that try to use smaller guinea pigs (other monkeys, mice), chimpanzees are still the unique viable experimental model for the tests of vaccines against the virus.

There are other researches for which chimpanzees are still considered to be essential. One of them, least known, is the cure for the respiratory infection caused by virus RSV, which kills, each year, 66 thousand children who are less than five years old.

Reasonable or not, the use of chimpanzees in laboratories is getting down. National Institute for Health of United States (NIH) owns today 620 chimpanzees. A great part of them was born in captivity in the 80`s, when researchers believed that the animal would be useful in the studies of a vaccine against HIV.

Today these chimpanzees are spread along several facilities. The largest one, New Iberia Research Center, hosts 360 of them, who revealed themselves as bad experimental models for Aids studies: HIV virus does not infect them in the same way it infects us. Today most of them are kept “retired” in sanctuaries.

As long as North-American legislation forbids the euthanasia of chimpanzees, NIH has to support them, with an estimated cost of US$ 1 million per animal, if he or she lives for 60 years. With no jobs for them, NIH avoids them to reproduce for 15 years. Now the institution is discussing if it is worth to stop financing invasive studies.

“Researchers community is misinforming the public about the utility of chimpanzees in biomedical researches”, says Kathleen Conlee, director of Humane Society, NGO that is asking the review on the classification of the conservation status of chimpanzees.

In United States, legislation considers that individuals in captivity are different from the ones of the same species in the wild. Therefore it allows the experimental use of chimpanzees, even when they are threatened to extinction on their habitat in Africa. Conlee convinced Fish and Wildlife Service to open a reviewing process of the rule, which can be changed. The review would also put an end on the rental of chimpanzees for movies, private zoos and thematic parks. There are around one thousand of them in these conditions according to the NGO, apart from another thousand used in research.

Apart from this law review, a law proposal in the Congress, sponsored by Republican senator Roscoe Barlett, asks for the prohibition of invasive research with chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas and orangutans – the species of primates closest to humans, the great apes. Barlett is a retired scientist from NASA and says he acts due to the remorse for having sent animals in tests in spatial flights in the 1950`s.

For instance, the female reshus monkey Able can be seen stuffed at Space and Aeronautical National Museum, in Washington, inside the plastic clothes that immobilized her to travel in a rocket. The species, evolutionary speaking more distant from us, is the primate which is most used as guinea pigs, condition that would not be changed with the new law.

If Bioqual, in Maryland, looks like a children hospital, GAP – Great Ape Project Sanctuary in Sorocaba, countryside of São Paulo state, in Brazil, seems to be, at the first sight, a mixture of sanatorium, orphanage and kindergarten. Founded in 2000 by microbiologist and business man Pedro Ynterian, who keeps it with private funds, GAP does not reveal its maintenance costs and does not allow visitation, in order not to distress the animals.

Supported by Jane Goodall, scientist who became famous in the 1960`s for having shown behavior similarities between humans and chimpanzees, GAP has the ambition of guarantee basic rights to great primates. The arguing of scientists and philosophers like British Richard Dawkins and Australian Peter Singer is simple: creatures with advanced intelligence, intricate social life and emotional complexity deserve a Universal Great Primates Declaration. The main rights are: the right to life, the prohibition of torture, and, whenever it is possible, the protection of individual liberty.

The last one is very important, points Ynterian, as long as a great number of the 50 chimpanzees he host in the sanctuary will not be able to enjoy a normal social life with their equals; none of them will be able to develop the necessary abilities to live and survive in the wild.

Considering this, GAP looks more like a sanatorium than a sanctuary. There, the majority of chimpanzees are former “pets” (who became too strong and uncontrolled) or came from bad structured zoos and circuses. The sequels are physical (lack of teeth, scars) and, mainly, psychological. Without the long and required social learning in the wild, females are not able to take care of their infants and a lot of males are impotent. A lot of them also mutilate themselves.

The hope lies with the baby chimpanzees and young adults, seven of them born in the sanctuary (Guga, 13, adopted by Ynterian when he was a baby, is the father of three children; the youngest one, Suzi, a three-month old female, has her disposable diapers changed by the same human nanny who took care of her father. Less traumatized, they play and run along the large open air enclosures of the sanctuary.

In the interview to Folha de SP, Ynterian criticized the hypocrisy of North-American government when it allows the experimentation with chimpanzees born in captivity. “And it more than proved that chimpanzees are bad models to human diseases”, affirms, remind the case of AIDS as the major example. “It is possible to developed most effective research with computational simulations and fabric cultivation.”

Part 2 – https://www.projetogap.org.br/en-US/noticias/Show/4052,the-time-of-the-chimpanzees-part-2