According to an article I just read entitled, "Chimpanzee Research and Endangered Species as experts debate usefulness,ethics," which was written by Brian Vastag of the Washington Post,
"the highest scientific body in the land (USA) put the issue on trial as a committee of the Institute of Medicine, part of the congressionally chartered National Academy of Sciences, met to deliberate the fate of nearly all of the world’s remaining medical research chimps". source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/chimpanzee-research-an-endangered-species-as-experts-debate-usefulness-ethics/2011/08/12/gIQAGt0xDJ_story.html
As stated by Roscoe D. Bartlett in his article in the New York times entitled, " Stop Using Chimps as Guinea Pigs" , "chimpanzees experience pain, stress and social isolation in ways strikingly similar to the way humans do.James Marsh’s recent documentary, “Project Nim,” chronicles the 27-year life of Nim Chimpsky, a chimpanzee who was the subject of a controversial research project that involved raising him as though he were a human. Nim was taught sign language — and he used those signs to tell his human interlocutors that he was traumatized by his living conditions." source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/11/opinion/stop-using-chimps-as-guinea-pigs.html
Chimpanzees are extremely intelligent and exhibit extremely complex social behavior and we humans have no right to imprison them for grisly scientific research experiments or for any other reason!!
In the article: "Animal rights: Chimpanzee research on trial: it is stated:
"In the United States, public pressure to shut down the research intensified after the television exposé. The show contained video footage obtained surreptitiously by an HSUS investigator who infiltrated the NIRC and worked there for nine months."
"In one scene from the resulting documentary, aired by the ABC news show Nightline, a sedated chimp fell several feet from a bench to the cement floor of a cage. In another scene, a sedated chimp is carried by its arms and legs, not on a stretcher."
"Footage of some of the centre's monkeys was equally damaging. A technician hit a baby on the head after it bit her, and another employee rapped a monkey's teeth with a metal pole. In a different scene, an anaesthetized monkey was allowed to fall from a chest-level counter to the floor of a lab room.
The show drew strong reactions. Jane Goodall issued a statement saying: "In no lab I have visited have I seen so many chimpanzees exhibit such intense fear." source: http://www.nature.com. (Note you have to get an account at www.nature.com to read the article)
It is time to stop using Chimpanzees for human purposes and ends! These facts about Chimpanzees justify my statement:
1."Chimpanzees are our closest living relatives, sharing more than 98 percent of our genetic blueprint. Humans and chimps are also thought to share a common ancestor who lived some four to eight million years ago.Chimpanzees are highly-intelligent animals"
2."Chimpanzees are one of the few animal species that employ tools."Chimpanzees use more tools for more purposes than any other creatures except humans. These statements show how intelligent they are as a species and as individuals!
3."Chimpanzees communicate much like humans do -- by kissing, embracing, patting on the back, touching hands, tickling."
4."Historically, chimpanzees have been used in all manner of invasive experiments, from head injury experiments to space research in which they were spun giant centrifuges and placed in decompression chambers to induce unconsciousness. Today, chimpanzees are used predominantly in infectious disease experiments, most commonly hepatitis and AIDS. Once infected, these chimpanzees often remain isolated from other chimpanzees and confined indoors for life.
The AIDS epidemic was the driving force behind the government’s chimp breeding program. But the chimpanzee model for AIDS has been a failure. Although chimps are the only known animal other than humans that can get infected with HIV, the infections seldom develop into full-blown AIDS, because the virus replicates differently in chimp cells than in human cells." This is so cold and callous of scientists to use chimpanzees in this awful manner!
sources :http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/chimpanzee/ ,
http://www.olpejetaconservancy.org/chimpanzee_sanctuary/facts , http://www.janegoodall.org/chimpanzee-facts
http://www.idausa.org/facts/chimpresearch.html
What can you do as an individual to help Chimpanzees?
Please visit the following websites and find out:
http://www.savethechimps.org/
http://www.chimphaven.org/donate-make.cfm
http://www.janegoodall.org/action
http://www.redjellyfish.com/wildlifeconservation.html
http://www.adopt-a-chimp.com/about.html
