Eugene Schiff, director of Hepatic Diseases Research Center of Florida University, one of the institutions that use data of invasive research with chimpanzees, disagrees. According to him, the ethical dilemma is not only of biologists, but of everyone who had already used and benefit of drugs tested in chimpanzees.

“Chimpanzees were clearly the heroes of hepatitis”, he affirms. “They are the only experimental animal model in which it was possible to reproduce hepatitis A, B, D and E to tests of vaccines. Maybe it will not be impossible to develop a vaccine to hepatitis C with no use of these monkeys, but it will be surely much harder”.

The alternative today would be use humans in secure tests of vaccines and then making clinical tests in hundreds and millions of people to put the substance under proof. This, however, would turn the research to be more risky, bureaucratic and slow, because scientists cannot inoculate people with the virus of hepatitis C. It is necessary to wait for bad lucky to contribute with science.

According to Schiff, there is hypocrisy in the movement that tries to isolate United States as the unique country that use chimpanzees as guinea pigs. According to a survey of Nature magazine, nine countries that forbid medical research with chimpanzees support the fundraising for the studies in North-American territory.

“If a scientist today submits a research project with chimpanzees, the first question of the ethical committee is: can`t you do it with rhesus monkeys?”, says Frans de Waal, of Yerkes Primates Research Center, in Atlanta.. The kind of experiment he develops in an enclosure with 24 chimpanzees would not work with no other animal.

“Chimpanzees have an inestimable value for behavior studies”, he says, explaining that Yerkes does not promote anymore invasive procedures with chimpanzees. “As long as they are the closest species of men in terms of evolution, they are used as the models to comparisons with humans.”

Author of books about the species, such as “Chimpanzee Politics”, De Waal works in the office of the observation tower of the facilities of the chimpanzees at Yerkes. There, through the acrylic walls and floor, he observes everything the monkeys do in their spare time. In the afternoon they participate of experiments on cognition and behavior.

“We are interested in understanding, for instance, the evolution of morality”, he explains. “We want to know if chimpanzees have some level of empathy and altruism, and we study other kind of behaviors associated to human character, as the ability of cultural transmission.”

Experiments of the primatologist and observation in the field are leading to believe that the answers for these questions are positive. If science helped to raise the moral status of chimpanzees to a semi-human conscious creature, now it is threatened to be blocked to use the animal as guinea pig.

The main questioning is about the invasive procedures, but some defenders of the freedom of the chimpanzees also criticize the treatment towards the monkeys in behavioral experiments.

Documentary “Nim Project”, recently launched in USA, shows the lack of professionalism of the experiments made with Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was used in linguistic research in the 1970`s in Columbia University (his name is a playful comparison with linguist Noam Chomsky).

After years of research developed with a not very trustful method, he had been abandoned in a sanctuary. He died depressed, because he was used to live with humans. The same happens with a lot of chimpanzees at GAP Sanctuary of Sorocaba.

Researchers from Yerkes fear that the bad experience with Kim lead authorities to believe that the animals suffer with stress in every research center. De Waal affirms that only monkeys that enjoy participating of the work are recruited.

“And they love it”, says Victoria Horner, a very important scientist from Yerkes in the studies of culture and altruism in chimpanzees. Interacting with them through a video game screen and with plastic toys created by her, Horner submits them to cognitive skills tests.

“It is a stimulating activity to animals who live in captivity”, she says. “If you offer them a choice, some will prefer to participate of the experiment and win a free banana.”

The majority of the scientists bet that, due to Yerkes, a model institution, NIH will decide to limit only invasive research. However, behavior research still faces another question: the moratorium in the funding for reproduction in captivity.

When you visit the facilities in Atlanta you have a sample of this situation. Chimpanzee Tera, 15 years old, likes to spit strangers that go by. It is considered to be a childish play, even for a monkey. “At this age she could be already a mother. But as long she is the youngster here, the group treats her like a baby”, says Horner. “She has a kind of behavior that should have disappeared when she was four. She likes to poke the eldest ones, asks to play…”.

The oldest ones, on the other hand, present signs of senility in Yerkes, similar to the ones they would have in the wild. Female Mae, 46, suffers from cataract and is partially blind. She spends all the time besides her daughter Missy, 16, who is her guide.

Horner affirms that there will be a moment that the country will gave to debate the resumption of reproduction in captivity. In order to have good results in behavioral researches, it is important that the monkeys have a more similar as possible structure of their equals in the jungle.

De Waal says that he hopes that federal authorities that regulate and manage research funds will be convinced of the importance of his studies. “We share a recent ancestor with chimpanzees. Today there are economists, anthropologists, philosophers and other specialists interested in understanding these monkeys, for they help us to understand human nature.”

Ynterian, the owner of the sanctuary in Sorocaba, is in favor of behavior studies with a condition: that they aim to learn more about them, about the relationship they have with us. He says that there are good reasons for reproduction be allowed in the sanctuary: to preserve a relic, something that, according to him, is condemned to disappear in the wild.

“You just have to look at the reality of Africa today”, he says. “ I have no hope that, among so many corruption in Governments and civil wars, chimpanzees and other great primates will be able to survive there”. According to Ynterian, only the individual that are protected directly by humans will survive in the next decades. “They are humanized animals and I see that for the ones who are here, who eat our food and live with us. It will be, at least, a memory of what existed.”

While the theatres were sell-out for the sessions of “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” in August, USA Medicine Institute promoted an audience in Washington, attending NIH, to debate the use of chimpanzees in experiments. While there was a rebellion of the guinea pigs in the movie, in the audience the rebels were biologists and animal rights activists.

The most distinguished intervention was the one by primatologist Jane Goodall. To illustrate how the memory and intelligence of the apes are sensitive to psychological suffering, she told stories of chimpanzees, and one of them was of one chimpanzee who, after working for 16 years in a laboratory, was donated to her research camp in Tanzania.

He was released in the jungle and climbed a tree in which another chimpanzee was eating a banana. Irritated, the local monkey knocked down the intruder and hit him. Two females arrived and began a physical beating. In a higher branch, an oldest female chimpanzee, with more status in the group, saw the scene and went down to intimidate the aggressors. The former guinea pig escaped alive.

The female, said Goodall, was his mother. Sixteen years after their separation, she did not forget him.