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NIH Restricts Use of Chimpanzees in Labs
vikingpower writes "The U.S. National Institutes of Health on Thursday suspended all new grants for biomedical and behavioral research on chimpanzees and accepted the first uniform criteria for assessing the necessity of such research (full report here). Those guidelines require that the research be necessary for human health, and that there be no other way to accomplish it. A San Francisco Chronicle article points out why chimpanzees are so often used for medical research, as they are evolutionarily the closest to human beings. One may wonder if Europe and Asia are to follow the U.S.?"
Shh! Don't point out things like that. America likes to make a big deal about how enlightened it is, even if it's doing it years, sometimes decades, after everyone else has already done it. "We totally abolished slavery!" (30 years after the rest of the Western World).
I'm sure in 50-100 years time there'll be loud pronouncements about this awesome new 'metric' system America has adopted, followed by slack jawed yokels wondering aloud when the rest of the world will catch up with the United States' pioneering conception.