| Story Views | |
| Now: | |
| Last Hour: | |
| Last 24 Hours: | |
| Total: | |
Feds Cut Funding for Chimpanzee Experiments, Many to Be Retired
For decades, PETA has been calling for an end to the cruel and irrelevant use of
chimpanzees in experimentation. We’ve made significant progress over the years bring an end to this national
disgrace, and now
the
government is finally taking concrete steps to do the same.
© Jo-Anne McArthur / We Animals
An Historic Decision
At a historic meeting
this afternoon, a National Institutes of Health (NIH) committee recommended
that the agency cut funding for seven of the nine current taxpayer-funded
grants for biomedical experiments on chimpanzees and fully or partially cut
funding for 12 of 13 behavioral studies. With regard to the fate of these 360
NIH-owned chimpanzees, the committee stated that “the majority of
NIH-owned chimpanzees should be designated for retirement and transferred to
the federal sanctuary system. Planning should start immediately ….”
The NIH's momentous move follows the landmark 2011 finding of the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that “most current biomedical research use of
chimpanzees is not necessary.” After the report's release, the NIH formed a committee to determine, among
other things, which taxpayer-funded projects should be ended and how many
chimpanzees should be retired.
Persistence Pays Off
PETA submitted recommendations calling for a complete end to
experimentation on chimpanzees to both IOM and NIH during these deliberations—and
that's just one part of the extensive groundwork that led to this exciting
development. Every step of the way, PETA has relentlessly pursued any and all
avenues to uncover abuse to chimpanzees in laboratories and has advocated for
the creation of stronger federal policy and legislation to protect chimpanzees
from being tormented in experiments.
PETA
has exposed cruelty in laboratories,
filed complaints against laboratories
that experiment on chimpanzees, reached out to Members of Congress, organized demonstrations, gained celebrity support, filed shareholder
resolutions, launched online advocacy
campaigns, and called for an end to this barbaric practice in popular and academic publications.
What You Can Do
The end is in sight, but we must not stop until all
chimpanzees are out of laboratories. Please sign PETA's petition asking Congress to retire all
federally owned chimpanzees to sanctuaries.
2013-01-22 15:45:24
Source:
