NIH begins to retire most of chimp inventory from research
From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2013:
SHREVEPORT––The National Institutes of Health Council of Councils Working Group on January 23, 2013 “agreed that all but 50 of hundreds of chimpanzees kept for federally funded research should be retired from labs and sent to a national sanctuary,” summarized Janet McConnaughey of Associated Press. “Already,” McConnaughey reported a day later, “nine chimpanzees have arrived at Chimp Haven, outside Shreveport, Louisiana, “from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette’s New Iberia Research Center, which no longer has an NIH chimp research contract.” Another 102 chimps were expected to come from New Iberia during the next few months. Four NIH chimps at New Iberia were said to be too ill to relocate. About 230 chimps belonging to the University of Louisiana at Lafayette are to remain at New Iberia. The NIH pledged in 2011 to phase out most invasive research on chimps. An 86-page set of recommendations released by the Council of Councils Working Group suggests that chimps should henceforth be used in research only if there is no other way to investigate a risk to human health. Read more