PCRM
Physician’s Committee for Responsible Medicine
Chimps’ Days in Labs May Be Dwindling
Dear Ms. Albanese,
Lab Chimps Are Moving to Sanctuaries—Slowly
Getting to this point was a big job. It actually started with a group of chimpanzees in New Mexico who were going to be taken out of retirement and put back into research. We were alerted by local activists, and we worked with then-Governor Bill Richardson and several members of Congress to halt the transfer as soon as we could. The next step was to convene an Institute of Medicine panel to opine on whether chimpanzees were needed at all in research. We had to do a lot of work behind the scenes to kick out bad panel members, buteventuallythe Institute of Medicine did indeed conclude that there was no need for experimentation on chimpanzees. With that in hand, it was reasonably easy to convince the NIH to pull the plug on its chimpanzee research, and the retirement process began.
So, in the scheme of things, it was a rather quick victory, even though each piece of it took a lot of doing. We worked a lot with the folks in New Mexico, and HSUS was helpful on Capitol Hill. So it was very much a group effort—and that includes you. We could not do this work without your generous support. Thank you!
With gratitude,
Neal Barnard, M.D.
President