Purpose: This bill would prohibit invasive research on great apes (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, orangutans, and gibbons) as well as the funding of such research within and outside the U.S. In addition, it would ban the transport and the breeding of great apes for this type of research. Finally, the legislation would require the permanent retirement of all federally-owned great apes.
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Status: Referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce.
Action: SUPPORT. Please contact your Representative and urge him/her to support H.R. 1326. Tell your Representative that this legislation is an important step toward better, more humane science for all of us.
Talking Points for Your Letter:
- Millions of Americans believe that it is time for the U.S. to join other Western nations that have either banned or limited their use of chimpanzees in invasive biomedical research. Decades of research on chimpanzees have shown that they are a poor scientific model to study human disease. During this time, the research has caused them enormous suffering and wasted millions of taxpayer dollars. There are alternatives.
- H.R. 1326 would phase out the use of chimpanzees in invasive biomedical research as well as requiring the permanent retirement of the 500 government-owned chimpanzees currently held in research laboratories to suitable sanctuaries. Also, this bill would make the current permanent moratorium on government-funded breeding of chimpanzees statutory.
- About 1,000 chimpanzees — some who were captured from the wild, used by the entertainment industry or kept as pets — currently live in nine biomedical research and testing laboratories across the United States. Despite extensive knowledge of their rich social and emotional lives and their ineffectiveness as models for human diseases like HIV, chimpanzees continue to be subjected to painful and invasive experiments — some for over 40 years now.
- At any given time, the vast majority of chimpanzees aren’t being used in active research protocols and end up languishing in laboratories for decades, wasting taxpayer dollars. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has already decided to permanently end the funding for breeding of federally-owned chimpanzees for research — it’s high time to finally end this wasteful and poor treatment of our closest living and endangered relatives.
- What we know about these animals should serve as a wake-up call. They exhibit a range of emotions and are very social, highly intelligent, and proficient in tool use, problem solving, and numerical skills. Their intelligence and ability to experience emotions so similar to humans bolster the argument that chimpanzees intensely suffer under laboratory conditions.
- The scientific community and others have decreased the use of chimpanzees both nationally and internationally due to: high costs of keeping chimpanzees in laboratories; serious ethical concerns; unsuitability of chimpanzees as research models for humans; and public pressure.
- In the wild, chimpanzees live in diverse social groups and travel several miles a day. However, in some research protocols, chimpanzees are forced to live alone in cold, metal cages approximately the size of a small closet. Individual housing can cause severe problems such as depression, heightened aggression, frustration, and even self-mutilation. In addition, chimpanzees used in research are often subjected to painful and distressing procedures including numerous liver biopsies, isolation from others for long spans of time, injection of human viruses, and frequent “knockdowns” in which chimpanzees are shot with a dart gun of anesthetic.
- U.S. taxpayers spend an estimated $20–$25 million each year on chimpanzee maintenance and experiments. The estimated expense of simply maintaining one chimpanzee in a laboratory is $42–$76 per day. This high cost works to the chimpanzees’ advantage, as it is one reason their use has been declining. The government will save more than $20 million per year if invasive research is ended and the 500 federally-owned chimpanzees are retired to suitable sanctuaries.